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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Why The Contras (1st of 2 parts)
Message-ID: <117200147@inmet>
Date: Tue, 23-Sep-86 17:00:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.117200147
Posted: Tue Sep 23 17:00:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 08:01:08 EDT
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Nf-ID: #N:inmet:117200147:000:2112
Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw    Sep 23 17:00:00 1986


The following is an excerpt from the article WHY THE  CONTRAS,  
*The  Economist*, Sep 6, 1986, pp. 12-13
=================================================================

Not many people doubt that the Sandinists are running a nasty re-
gime that is impoverishing their country. [...] Economic miseries
have been piled on political ones. Nicaragua's foreign debt of $6
billion  is far larger than the country's shrinking GDP, manufac-
turing industries have collapsed, even rice and beans are now ra-
tioned in peasant diets.

The wisest policy towards such a regime  is  usually  to  let  it
self-destruct.  The  Sandinists  seem  well on their way to that.
The guess of some observers is  that  perhaps  only  a  fifth  of
city-dwellers, and a slightly greater proportion of peasants, now
back the government.

But the worry about the Sandinists is that they  may  be  putting
themselves  in  a position where no amount of unpopularity or in-
competence will ever make any difference to their grip on  power.
Their  75,000-man  army  (Central  America's  largest by far) and
44,000-man reserve are there, very likely, not just to fight  the
contras but also to impose a full-blooded communist government on
the country.

COMMUNISTS ARE DIFFERENT 

For democrats,  the  prospect  of  another  communist  government
matters  not  so much because such regimes are unpleasant, as be-
cause they seem irreversible. Francoists give way in Spain,  Mar-
coses depart from the Philippines, Duvaliers leave Haiti, Somozas
eventually get thrown out of Nicaragua; but after  too  many  de-
cades  of  experience the world has yet to see a single communist
regime dislodged.

These regimes  stay  in  place,  even  when  their  people  would
overwhelmingly  wish  them to go [...]. That leaves the democrats
little room for manoeuvre. If a country is sliding into Leninism,
more modest instruments of pressure, like economic sanctions, are
often useless.  Military force is frequently the only thing  that
can  stop  it, and the decision has to be made at an early stage:
once a country has crossed the line, it is lost.