Copping out on the contras

WE ARE ONE NATION, and we must have one consistent foreign policy," Secretary Baker remarked when the details of the deal between the Administration and Congress on Contra policy were finally worked out and announced. He and the President had better hope that consistency is a virtue, because the new policy has few others.

The agreement claims to settle $4.5 million a month on the Contras through February 1990, when the Sandinistas are supposed to hold an election. But the money is actually guaranteed only through November, when the White House must get letters of approval from four congressional committees. No tickee, no money. This unusual arrangement, the press has noted, had to be spelled out in letters from the White House to the Hill, not in legislation, since if it ever were written into law, it would surely be ruled unconstitutional. Secretary Baker is on a bipartisan high now, though C. Boyden Gray, who had the wit or the luck to object to this bit of sub-legal jerry-building, may find his stock rising as the White House sees what it has given up.

In a small but symbolic point, the deal also commits the White House, for the first time, to offering what everyone denies is "mustering-out pay," because that is exactly what it is: funds to enable the Contras to resettle in Nicaragua, should they so choose. Presumably most of the freedom-fighters will have the wisdom to wait until after the promised elections before exercising that option.

The future of Nicaragua now rests in three sets of hands: Congress's, Managua's, and Gorbachev's. Historically, only two things have been able to deflect the congressional Democrats from their disposition to let the Sandinistas have their way: White House pressure, and the gross misbehavior of Managua. The first factor has been removed. How the Sandinistas act between now and February may be determined partly by the economic state of the country, which is awful. One thing the Administration can do is keep the screws of the present embargo tight.

Finally, there is Gorbachev, the man of the hour, letting a hundred flowers blossom worldwide. To hear his admirers tell it, he ought to be the next president of the National Endowment for Democracy. Bush and Baker rather pointedly called on the Soviets to help the "new day" in Central America dawn. Certainly it is within their power to do so, by the simple expedient of cutting their massive subsidies to Managua.

But what would be the expected quid for this quo? Disarmament in Europe? A situation in which, by the time roughly that Bush's term is up, West Germany has become a second, and bigger, Austria? Pay attention. The worst effects of our Central American policy may be in Central Europe.

COPYRIGHT 1989 National Review, Inc.
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