US-Nicaragua relations: an excessive twitch?

Thèmes abordés

US-Nicaragua relations, President Roosevelt

Résumé du document

In 1904, President Roosevelt, who aimed at maintaining the order defined by the 1823 Monroe doctrine, declared: “We would interfere with [Latin America] only in last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.” On the 19th of July of 1979, the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua collapsed, and the Junta de Reconstrucción Nacional came to power.

Supported by an important part of the populace and by some regional governments, the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) succeeded in implementing a revolutionary government, inspired by socialism. The socialist government won the 1984 democratic and fair elections, and this kept power until 1990. This seemed to mark the end of the American political influence in that country, since the Somozist government had been highly sustained by the United States. However, the financing of rebel forces opposed to Sandinistas, the Contras, by the United States, and the high tension that characterises the US-Nicaragua during the 1980's leads us to wonder about the causes of such an interest. Did Communist adventurism really threaten the stability of Central America? On the contrary, were US-Nicaragua relations based on excessive twitching? Our analysis will focus on the Reaganian foreign policy towards Nicaragua during the 1980's. We will try to understand if Nicaragua exemplifies the whole US-Central America relations, or if the particular attention that the Reagan administration devoted to that country distinguishes it from the rest of the continent.

Extraits

[...] The second important thing in Kagan's book is that he strongly underlines the Marxist dimension of the Sandinista revolution and, as a republican, severely denounces it. He shows how deep their links were with the Soviet party and that the FSLN secretly received arms from the USSR ("The Sandinistas, therefore, were eager suitors of Soviet patronage - more eager, in fact, than the Soviets were to act as patrons" p 195). In addition the Carter administration and a certain part of the press and of public opinion was particularly naïve about the motivations of Sandinistas. [...]

[...] All this led the US to implicate strongly in Nicaragua and to legitimate the Contra aid. In his book US-Sandinista diplomatic relations: voice of intolerance, David Ryan analyses the contradiction in the conduct of the Reagan doctrine, that swung between the desire of hegemony and a necessary compromise, and thus explains why any agreement could not be reached. He denounces the misunderstanding, the division and the intolerance in the conduct of such policy, First, he opposes the Reagan point of view of a Marxist-led revolution. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, Washington refused every compromise that could legitimate the Sandinista regime and to allow them to stay in power. For example, the Reagan administration refused to recognize as fair and democratic the elections of 1984 Sandinistas, however, gained further legitimacy making it difficult for the issue to be introduced into the bilateral formulae, whithout any compromise from Washington” 92). However, the United States had not a total liberty of action for intervening in Nicaragua since they had to deal with the constraints of what Ryan calls the “Vietnam syndrome”. [...]

[...] Cultural beliefs (anti-Spanish, anti-Catholicism, anti- black racism, fear of revolution and trust in the “rule of specific US stereotypes (Latin Americans would be inherently unproductive, violent, unable to govern themselves) and US policies (“military intervention and occupation, support for dictators and economic domination, cultural infiltration” ) would be the three levels of negative stereotypes widely shared by US citizens that facilitated the legitimacy of any intervention of the superior country, the US, in the inferior country, Latin America. In addition, McPherson transcends LaFeber rigorous concept of neodependency and emphasizes the cultural aspect of the entwined destinies of American countries. He does not bring response to the debate between the dependency model (that we defined before) and the diffusion model. McPherson defines the diffusion model as healthy transfer of productivity from the United States to Latin America” 3). [...]

[...] On the contrary, were US-Nicaragua relations based on excessive twitching? Our analysis will focus on the Reaganian foreign policy towards Nicaragua during the 1980's. We will try to understand if Nicaragua exemplifies the whole US-Central America relations, or if the particular attention that the Reagan administration devoted to that country distinguishes it from the rest of the continent. The first part of this paper will analyze three books focusing on US-Nicaragua diplomatic relations: Robert Kagan's Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua 1977-1990, a clear and precise study on the subject by a Republican, David Ryan's US-Sandinista diplomatic relations: voice of intolerance, that underlines the reasons why an agreement couldn't be found, and Roy Gutman's Banana Diplomacy: the making of American Foreign Policy in Nicaragua 1981- 1987, a controversial study on the motives of Reagan administration's intervention. [...]