The thorn in America’s side

Press, 14 May 1985, Page 20

The thorn in America’s side

RICHARD WEST, of the “Daily Telegraph” asks if Nicaragua is the trigger that will turn Central America into another Vietnam for the United States.

The tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, followed by President Reagan’s declaration that a state of national emergency exists over Nicaragua, has once more encouraged talk of a “new Vietnam” in Central America.

Two Vietnam veterans, now Democratic Congressmen, were among the anxious visitors recently in the Nicaraguan capital. A Vietnamese Communist dignitary also came to Managua and made a speech comparing Ho Chi Minh with the Nicaraguan Augusto Cesar Sandino, who led a guerrilla war against the United States in the 19205, and now has his name enshrined in the Sandinista political movement.

For years, American journalists in nearby El Salvador have tried to present the war there as a replay of Vietnam, with peasant communists up in arms against a corrupt military clique backed by Washington. The analogy seemed to be even more neat when President Reagan chose as his diplomatic adviser in Central America, the same Henry Kissinger who had

advised President Nixon on SouthEast Asia. The Central Americans are themselves well aware of how Vietnam haunts the United States. A recent article in the Salvadorean newspaper, “El Diario De Hoy,” said that the phrase “Remember Vietnam” has paralysed the United States policy in the face of Fidel Castro’s threat to communise Latin America.

Referring to a recent Gallup poll in the United States, “El Diario de Hoy” went on, with savage irony: “More than 50 per cent of those questioned think that Washington should shut its eyes to the communist revolution which threatens to take control of the isthmus, passing from Nicaragua to El Salvador to go across Guatemala in a rolling human tide to the frontier of the United States.”

The article makes the point constantly heard in Central America, that Texas is nearer to Nicaragua than to the United States. Such articles are intended to make the North American flesh

creep. Even if Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala were all to turn Communist, they would still number only 15 million — hardly enough for a human tide to roll across Mexico, let alone drown the United States.

Many United States citizens are more concerned with the influx of Latin American immigrants looking for jobs, than they are with a hypothetical invasion. Military fears are confined to Russian bombers or rocket bases in Central America. But the Salvadoreans have reason to stress that the United States has close geographical and historical links with Central America, as it did not have with South-East Asia.

Students of geopolitics would say that Central America comes in the sphere of influence of the United States, just as Eastern Europe and Afghanistan come in the sphere of influence of Russia, and Vietnam in that of China.

The North Americans have a long and not always glorious record of intervention in Central America. United States Presidents have always asserted the right, known as the Monroe Doctrine, to keep out meddling European powers, notably Spain, England and France in the 19th century,

and Russia and Germany in the 20th.

Central America has attracted United States oil men, canal and railway builders, and growers of coffee and bananas. It has also attracted filibusters, or pirates.

The most notorious was William Walker who, in the 1850 s, invaded Nicaragua and Honduras. Almost every town in Central America has, at least once, suffered an earthquake; the Nicaraguan town of Granada has been destroyed both by earthquakes and William Walker.

In the early part of the century, the United States played an active role in Central America and the Caribbean. The United States Marines at various times took over the Governments of Cuba, Haiti, Panama and Nicaragua, generally in the role of bailiffs, to seize the security on a loan.

American Democratic Party politicians now loudly accuse President Reagan and his Republican Party of an aggressive policy to Central America and the Caribbean. Their own record is scarcely different. It was the Democrat President Kennedy who launched the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro’s Cuba. In November, 1962, President Kennedy forced the

Soviet Union to withdraw its nuclear rockets from the island. It was the Democrat President Johnson who sent American troops to the Dominican Republic. The trouble there started at the end of April, 1965 — another anniversary — when Left-wing army officers, backed by the Santo Domingo mob, revolted against a Right-wing military clique. Four days later the United States Marines arrived to protect American lives and property.

Then the Americans sent in a task force of 5000 men, largely composed of the 82nd Airborne Division, supported by troops of Brazil, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay. President Johnson’s intervention provoked a howl of fury from the Left at home and abroad. It did however keep the peace in Santo Domingo. There was little bloodshed. The 82nd Airborne troops I met there were quietly satisfied with a job well done. In 1966, a free election was held. President Johnson’s success in the Dominican Republic was overshadowed by the disaster in Vietnam. He sent the Marines to Danang only a few months after he sent them to Santo Domingo. The coincidence of these two adventures serves to underline the difference in nature between the United States involvement in Central America and in South-East Asia, one a familiar, the other an unfamiliar part of the world. The words “remember Vietnam” should not be used to justify cowardice in the face of aggression. The tragedy of Vietnam was not that the United States tried to defend the South against the North, but that it failed. The Americans would be well advised to “remember Vietnam” in the sense of learning from their mistakes. Most historians of the war are now agreed that it was futile to fight a guerrilla army with carpet bombing and random artillery strikes, frequently on civilians.

The employment in Vietnam of up to 600,000 American troops also had the effect of reducing the will to fight of the South Vietnamese. They became demoralised, until the Americans left in 1973, when they got back their fighting spirit, only to be overwhelmed at last by the tanks and artillery of the northern army. There are no American combat troops in El Salvador. A United States adviser seen with a gun in the field had to be sent home.

American combat troops have been on a prolonged “exercise” in Honduras but they have not launched the invasion so often predicted in Left-wing circles. The United States has given support to the Nicaraguan anticommunist guerrillas, the “Contras.” These men seem to include a high proportion of thugs but at least they are Nicaraguan thugs. The Americans now are wiser than in 1928, when United States Marine bomber planes destroyed the Nicaraguan town of Chinandega, killing many civilians, as part of the war against General Sandino’s guerrillas.