Nicaragua in Regional Context

Abstract

Three propositions form the core of Professor van den Haag’s defense of Reagan administration policy toward Nicaragua. One is that the Sandinista regime is unalterably hostile to the United States and reflexively supportive of the Soviet Union. Another is that these facts constitute a national security problem of sufficient weight to justify a modest investment for the purpose of mitigating or liquidating it. The third is that, for a country as wealthy as the United States, the cost of bleeding the Sandinistas by supporting the Contras is trivial—one hundred million or so dollars per annum out of a gross national product in excess of three trillion dollars. Even on the most pessimistic assumptions about Contra capabilities, he believes that cost should be borne. Although they may never overcome, at a minimum the Contras preoccupy the comandantes and drain Nicaraguan resources that would otherwise be available either to aid extant insurgencies elsewhere in central America or to develop Nicaragua into a more solid platform for future efforts to export revolution.