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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Central America
Message-ID: <247@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Dec-84 12:16:55 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.247
Posted: Fri Dec  7 12:16:55 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Dec-84 05:35:15 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 82

-----
Jeff Hull, blessed be he, writes:
> And don't tell me the domino theory doesn't work, tell it to the people in
> Cambodia, Laos, etc.

The domino theory doesn't work.  I heard it from the people in Thailand,
Malaysia, etc.

> Now will all of you who want to lobby, protest, etc., against American
> military involvement in Central America please start coming up with some
> substantive suggestions about ANY positive actions the US or the
> Contadora Group or ANYONE can take to relieve the situation there.

With pleasure.  To avert a wider war in Central America, the US should take
the following short-range steps:

NICARAGUA:  Cease backing the counterrevolutionary forces based in
Honduras and Costa Rica, and support Contadora efforts to normalize
relations between Nicaragua and its neighbors.  

EL SALVADOR:  Cut off military aid, and support efforts for a negotiated
settlement involving power-sharing among the contending forces.

HONDURAS:  Dismantle the US bases in Honduras, withdraw US troops and
warships and participate in development aid.

GUATEMALA:  Express disapproval of the government's repressive policies
toward indigenous people, maintain the cutoff of military assistance and
provide aid for Guatemalan refugees in Mexico who have fled from the
violence there.

COSTA RICA:  Oppose militarization and extend economic assistance.  

CUBA:  Begin a process designed to achieve normal diplomatic and
commercial relations.

A longer-range program for development:

AID:  US economic assistance should flow towards those regional programs and
governments that are narrowing the gulf between rich and poor, as well as to
grassroots institutions and projects that diversify the economic base of
each country.

TRADE:  US trade should be liberalized alongside support of limited
commodity agreements to help Central American countries stabilize earnings
from their commodity exports.

DEBT:  The US should support regional plans for renegotiation of external
debt.

WORKERS AND MIGRANTS:  The US should develop programs to compensate and
retrain US workers affected by liberalized imports and guarantee rights to
immigrant workers.  

The above program is to be found in _Changing Course_ by a group called
Policy Alternatives for the Caribbean and Central America (PACCA).  This is
the best short (~100 pp.) analysis of the Central American situation that I
know of.  It also contains a response to the Kissinger Commission's report.
With all due respect to Dr. Kissinger, he is the last person who should
have been chosen to head the commission, with the possible exception of Gen.
Pinochet.  His disposition to see world politics as a chess game between the
superpowers prevents him from understanding Central America (and much of the
Third World).  He once told the Chilean foreign minister, "You come here
speaking of Latin America, but this is not important.  Nothing important can
come from the South.  History has never been produced in the South.  The
axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over to Washington,
and then goes to Tokyo.  What happens in the South is of no importance."
Deep thinker, that Henry.  

The Reagan Administration continues to commit the classic error of post-WWII
American foreign policy, which has been well described by Richard J. Barnet
in _Intervention and Revolution_:

"Revolutionary movements grow in the soil of exploitation and injustice....
The danger in treating local revolutions as part of a worldwide conspiracy
and not as expressions of nationalistic feeling and indigenous political
sentiment is that so faulty an analysis cannot be the basis of a practical
strategy.  That lesson became clear in Vietnam and, I fear, will be taught
to us again.  Where the greatest power in the world scares itself with a set
of beliefs that have at best only a tangential connection with the reality
of revolution, that nation becomes a menace to itself and to others."

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes