Real Peace

by Richard Nixon

  Since the West is moved to outrage in such matters of sharp black and white, the Soviets have learned to do much of their dirty work in gray areas. Theirs is a thoroughly modern technique of expansionism. They provide arms, training, and propaganda support to revolutionary forces within a country. Their recent victories—in Yemen, Ethiopia, Angola, and Nicaragua—have been sleights-of-hand, backdoor operations in which their involvement was hidden behind local forces or proxies.

  Overt aggression across a border entails great risk and cost in terms of worsening relations with the West, as was the case following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Aggression-by-proxy is a low-cost, low-risk enterprise that can therefore be carried out on a far vaster scale. An indication of the success of this tactic is that nine countries and 100 million people have come under Soviet domination since 1974. Until Afghanistan no Russian soldiers were lost in combat in the process of bringing these victories about. Such conquests cost only as much as the weapons do. And the risk to Soviet interests is minimal, because the West usually directs its response against the proxy forces, not the source.

  The West has not yet found an effective way to combat indirect Soviet aggression, and our weakness in this regard is one of the Soviets’ greatest strengths. Their policy is one of sheer, ruthless opportunism; the West, meanwhile, struggles to find ways to combat covert Soviet aggression that are in accordance with accepted rules of traditional warfare. As a result we have found ourselves outgunned and outmaneuvered time and time again in the Third World because we have been unwilling to do what is necessary to win.

  It is not that we should “sink to their level” in combating the Soviets. It is simply that we should be just as aggressive in promoting our ideals and in assisting our friends in the Third World as the Soviets are in promoting and assisting theirs. At a time when the Soviet Union’s entire strategy is based on using covert rather than overt tactics, for instance, it would be the height of stupidity for the United States to castrate our CIA.

  Our first step in building real peace in the Third World should be to end our romance with left-wing revolution. The catharsis of violent revolution has been so common in this century that many have come to think of it as inevitable. If we are to play a productive role in the Third World, and if we are to stop playing into the Soviets’ hands, we must stop assuming that violence is the only road to change that developing nations can take.

  Revolutions can begin without outside support. But they cannot survive and prevail without weapons, logistical expertise, food, medical supplies, communications equipment, and training. These things must be provided from outside the country. The North Vietnamese could not have conquered the South without the support of the Soviet Union. In Nicaragua the Sandinistas would have been hard-pressed to take power without the backing of the Soviets and the Cubans. And while there would have been a guerrilla insurrection in El Salvador without outside support, the guerrillas could not survive without the weapons they receive through Nicaragua, again from the Cubans and the Soviet bloc.

  One nation falls after another, often with the help of communist leaders in nations that fell before. But eventually all roads and supply lines lead back to Moscow. In recent months shipments from the Soviet bloc have been intercepted en route to Central America. Crates marked “medical supplies” have been found to contain arms. Here in a nutshell is the essence of the Soviet policy in the Third World: the weapons of war wrapped in the empty promise of peace; the promise of soothing misery, the reality of exacerbating it.

  We are a nation of idealists, yet we are often blind to the cynicism of Soviet foreign policy. The Russians make revolutions, and they feed on them. Like a vulture hunting fresh carcasses the Soviet Union scans the globe for potential trouble spots, places where people are groping for a better way or suffering through periods of instability. Poverty and injustice do not produce communism; communism produces poverty and injustice. But the Soviets are skilled at exploiting peoples’ grievances in order to bring about communist takeovers.

  The Soviet challenge is total. Our response must be total. We must provide military and political support to governments threatened by Soviet-supported revolutionary forces. While this sometimes poses a difficult choice, it is rarely between a bad regime and a potentially good one. Rather it is usually a choice between an imperfect regime and a post-revolutionary regime that would be far worse. The liberal critics cannot bring themselves to recognize this stark fact of international life. Time and again they have glorified and celebrated revolutionaries, no matter how inflated their promises or how vicious their tactics. And yet when have the critics been right? Do they believe now that Iranians are better off under Khomeini than the Shah, that Cubans are better off under Castro than under Batista, or that the Vietnamese are better off under the communists than under Thieu?

  Still, simply opposing violent, communist revolutions is not enough. We must be able to convince people that they should fight against insurgents not just because of the fear of communism but also because of the promise of freedom. The people in these countries have terrible problems. The communists at least talk about the problems. Too often we talk only about the communists. It is not enough for us to point out that going down the communist road is the wrong way. The only effective answer is for us to offer a better way.

  That is our task today in Central America.

  In the 1970s the United States failed a critical test in Indochina. Central America, which has triggered the most bitter American foreign policy debate since Vietnam, is also the most important test of American fortitude since Vietnam. We have had nearly a decade to study the lessons of our past failure. If we fail again there will be no excuses and little hope that we will ever again be able to defend our interests beyond our borders.

  El Salvador is only today’s crisis. As long as Soviet ambitions remain there will be other ones like it. This newest instance of Soviet aggression on our doorstep, however, challenges us to find both an effective way to counteract a Soviet-backed insurrection already under way and also to stop future such insurrections before they are hatched. How we meet these challenges in the Third World will decide whether we will preserve Western civilization or preside over its demise.

  Two things are at stake in El Salvador: American interests and the interests of the people of El Salvador. As far as resisting communist aggression is concerned, our interests are identical.

  America’s new isolationists are living in a dream world when they contend that what happens in “little” El Salvador does not threaten our interests. Apart from our concern that in the event of a communist takeover hundreds of thousands of refugees would flood into high-unemployment areas of Texas and other border states, the U.S. has a vital strategic interest in the outcome in El Salvador. Nuclear missiles based there would take only eight minutes to get to Washington. If the Panama Canal were blocked by hostile forces American shipping would be paralyzed. If the communists, who now have a foothold on our continent in Nicaragua, extend that foothold into El Salvador they will have a secure basing station for further forays—both to the south into South America, and to the north into Mexico and beyond.

  The refrain of the new isolationists is unchanging and unending. In the 1960s, after Castro’s revolution, they asked: “What can little Cuba do to hurt us?” Cuba became a proxy of the Soviet Union, a supplier of crack shock troops for conquests in Africa and elsewhere. One of its victims was Nicaragua, and after the Sandinistas took power there in 1979 the new isolationists were again in full chorus: “What can little Nicaragua do?” The Sandinistas, having made a mess of their own country by replacing a right-wing authoritarian regime with a left-wing totalitarian one, began to export their revolution. One of their targets is El Salvador. And just as they were not satisfied with Nicaragua the communists would not be satisfied with conquering the 2.4 million people of El Salvador. If the communists win there they will look elsewhere: Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama—and eventually the Soviets’ bi
g enchilada, Mexico.

  Like many who were born and raised in southern California and the Southwest, I have great respect and affection for Mexico and its people. I went to school with Mexican-Americans for 16 years. Mrs. Nixon and I spent two weeks in Mexico in 1940 on our wedding trip. Our daughters’ second language in college was Spanish. We have been back to Mexico many times for both public and private visits. As Vice President-elect in 1952 I attended the inauguration of President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. He made a profound impression on me as being one of the free world’s ablest and wisest statesmen.

  Mexico’s people are able, hard-working, and proud. But as a nation Mexico is dangerously unstable. It is a prime candidate for communist subversion. Over half a century of one-party government has left it awash in corruption. As a result of short-sighted economic policies and in spite of its position as a major oil-exporting country, its economy is in shambles. The strength of its currency has hit a record low. The Cubans, meanwhile, already have a beachhead in Mexico. The two countries have signed 27 major formal agreements on trade and other forms of cooperation. The Mexican far-left is fanatically pro-Castro.

  We have learned over and over again that once they establish a beachhead, the communists always want more. Mexico and the other countries that follow El Salvador on the Kremlin’s shopping list are the ones that have the most to fear both from the revolutionaries and from any hesitancy on our part about stopping them. For the moment the U.S. could endure a communist government in El Salvador. To its neighbors such a development would be an immediate, mortal danger.

  Resisting the communists is in the interests of all the nations of Central America. It is also in the interests of the people of El Salvador. There is no question but that El Salvador needed a revolution. Of the more than 80 countries I have visited I can think of none in which the gap between rich and poor was greater than in the El Salvador I visited in 1955. For generations the oligarchs had been squeezing the people dry. Reform on all levels of Salvadorean society was desperately needed.

  In recent years, however, peaceful revolution has been under way in El Salvador. The current government, empowered as a result of a free, fair election in which 77 percent of the country’s eligible voters participated, is working to bring justice and progress to a nation that has seen little of either. But it must also contend with a murderous insurrection by an 8,000-man guerrilla army, dominated by Marxist-Leninists and armed with Sovietbloc weapons channelled through Nicaragua.

  American media coverage is blatantly biased against the Salvadorean government. Virtually every day we hear or read of guerrillas and civilians being killed by government troops. The fact that in the past year alone the guerrillas have killed or wounded 7,000 government soldiers and murdered hundreds of innocent civilians receives only passing notice.

  The senseless killing on both sides must stop. We should support efforts by the nations in the area to end the war by negotiation, but with two caveats.

  We talk to bring peace. As we learned in Vietnam, the communists use talking as a screen for continued fighting.

  Also, under no circumstances should we support the guerrillas’ demand that they should hold high posts in a popular front government. A popular front would be a front for the guerrillas’ ongoing revolution. Communists usually enter negotiations or coalition governments not to achieve peace but to achieve the same objective they had sought on the battlefield: total victory.

  The choice is clear-cut. Should ballots or bullets determine what kind of government El Salvador will have? If the communists have so much faith in their system, why do they resist letting the people decide the question in a free, internationally supervised election? It is time to let the people of El Salvador decide whether they will have a better chance to get reform and economic progress under a Nicaraguan- or Cuban-style communist government, or under one supported and influenced by the United States.

  Nicaragua is a tragic example of the kind of government El Salvador will get if the guerrillas win. When the Sandinistas took over many in Washington said we should just leave them alone. Keep the economic aid flowing, the revolutionaries’ apologists assured us, and Nicaragua will flower into a functioning democracy.

  Instead it is degenerating into a Castro-style dictatorship. A quarter-million refugees have fled the country. The villages of the Miskito Indians, who refused to be assimilated into the revolution, were burned to the ground. The free press was closed down, religious leaders were harassed, and citizens were taught to spy on each other Stalin-style through neighborhood “defense” committees. Children receive Marxist indoctrination in school. Meanwhile, real wages are down by 50 percent, unemployment is rising, and there are shortages of key foodstuffs.

  With their people and their economy on the ropes, the Sandinistas turned away from problems at home to expansion abroad, building up a 138,000-man army, larger than the armed forces of all the other nations of the region put together, and prosecuting their “revolution without borders” in El Salvador and elsewhere—with the assistance of Soviets, Cubans, East Germans, and Libyans. As these foreigners flooded in thousands of Nicaraguans, including former Sandinistas, flooded out, vowing to return and oust those who betrayed their revolution.

  In Nicaragua the U.S. policy of hands-off and handouts—including $120 million in aid to the Sandinistas from 1979 to 1981—didn’t work. A policy designed to encourage the Sandinistas to allow more democracy only encouraged them in their belief that they could get away with less. A policy designed to leave them alone to mind their country’s business only freed them to meddle with impunity in their neighbors’ business. That is why the Reagan Administration began its covert support of anti-Sandinista rebels based in Honduras.

  The Administration’s Central America policies are designed to achieve three goals.

  The purpose of our support of anti-Sandinista forces is to help the elected government of El Salvador by cutting off military supplies to the guerrillas: As British M.P. Julian Amery recently observed, “Experience has shown that a guerrilla movement can generally be beaten only if the base from which it operates is destabilized.”

  Our policy of economic and military aid to El Salvador is designed to strengthen the anti-communist government forces so that they can stop the communist-dominated revolutionaries, thus derailing Soviet hopes of subverting other governments in a strategically vital region.

  A third goal is to quarantine Cuba and Nicaragua by preventing them from infecting their neighbors with their tyranny and their misery. In that connection the United States should not be defensive about our military presence in the area. We should not make threats as to what we will do. But even more important, we should not proclaim what we will not do. In attempting to reassure our own people we should not reassure our potential enemies. We should leave no doubt in their minds that we have the capability and the will to do what is necessary to stop the flow of arms from Cuba and Nicaragua into El Salvador.

  The question now is whether Congress will support the President’s policies or cut the authority and the funds he needs to continue them. In considering that question the critics should bear in mind that President Reagan did not create the crises in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He inherited them.

  The specter of American men dying in Vietnam is being raised to defeat the Administration’s military aid and training program. The comparison does not bear analysis. American troops were sent to South Vietnam because communist North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam. As the North Vietnamese have since admitted, they instigated, supplied and controlled the guerrillas in South Vietnam from the beginning. That was why President Kennedy sent the first American combat troops to Vietnam in 1962. Crack North Vietnamese regulars, not barefoot peasants, rode Soviet tanks triumphantly into Saigon in April 1975. Had there been no outside forces in South Vietnam, American troops would not have been needed.

  There are as yet no outside troops in El Salvador. As long as this is the case no American combat troops will or shoul
d be sent there. Our policy in El Salvador and in other countries similarly threatened by revolutionary forces should be to provide arms and economic aid only. They must provide the men. If when adequately trained and armed they lack the will and the ability to defeat the revolutionary forces, we cannot do it for them. Even if we were to win, the victory would be temporary. As soon as we withdrew the revolutionaries would take over.

  The doves who oppose military aid contend that the primary problem in El Salvador is poverty. Since poverty causes communist revolution, they assert, then we should deal with the cause by providing economic rather than military aid.

  I first heard this argument in 1947, when President Truman asked the Congress to provide military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey. Thousands of postcards inundated our congressional offices. The message was simple: “Send food, not arms.” Fortunately, a bipartisan majority resisted the pressure and supported the Truman Doctrine. If we had not done so and the U.S. had sent only food and not arms, Greece and Turkey would probably be communist today.

  Both military and economic aid are essential. Either one without the other will fail to do the job. That is why the U.S. is sending El Salvador three dollars in economic and humanitarian aid for every dollar of military aid, a fact the critics persistently ignore.

  The hawks contend that our primary emphasis should be on military aid rather than economic aid. This course would also be folly. Helping a government stop a violent revolution without helping it deal with the economic conditions that helped spawn the revolution would also buy only a short-lived victory. After one revolution was put down, another would take its place.

  The critics—both hawks and doves—fail to recognize a fundamental truth about nations in the developing world: they cannot have progress without security, and they cannot have security without progress.

  If there is one justifiable criticism of U.S. Latin American policy which applies to all Administrations since World War II, it is that we have consistently provided too much military aid and not enough economic aid for our friends and allies in the area.