Only a few short years ago, Central America was the major foreign policy focus for the United States. Today, the Bush administration is turning away, consigning the place to a convenient memory hole. And worse, it has given the Salvadoran peace process, now at a crucial juncture, only lukewarm encouragement.
After more than a decade of U.S.-sponsored war in El Salvador, a UN-supervised cease-fire is tentatively scheduled for shortly before Christmas. The hope is that this armed truce will serve as a prelude to a full-fledged peace agreement. The odds are otherwise. The Salvadoran military insists that the members of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Movement (FMLN) lay down their arms in exchange for governmental commitments. The FMLN, understandably, wants to see not just promises but real compliance before disarming. Pressure from the U.S. could break the deadlock. But in relation to Central America, our government is still mired in cold-war thinking.
In public statements, U.S. officials still indulge in ritual condemnations of Cuban and Nicaraguan support for the FMLN. Salvadoran army hard-liners delight in these statements by U.S. officials, for who can deny the obligation of an army to stamp out subversion by any means? Thus do tired phrases about external interference left over from the Reagan days undermine the peace process the Bush administration claims it supports.
As for the forlorn hope that the U.S. military would teach professional conduct to the Salvadoran army, the influence has, if anything, run the other way. In the Salvadoran military, rank order goes: major, colonel, millionaire. Peace holds few attractions for the swollen Salvadoran army; it is war that buys the condominium in Miami and puts the Mercedes in the garage. Congressman Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) has identified Gen. Emilio Ponce as one of the senior officers most directly implicated in the 1989 murder of the six Jesuit priests. Ponce, who is still a CIA favorite, has bragged, “This war can yet be won.” As if to reinforce Ponce’s thesis, the Bush administration argues that military aid is needed to strengthen the hand of the government in its negotiations with the FMLN.
Properly understood, there are two negotiations underway. The first is the official one, between President Alfredo Cristiani’s government and the FMLN. The second, and by far the more important, is between Cristiani and the army. Military assistance simply strengthens the army hard-liners in their determination first to limit the agreements as they are negotiated and then to gut the agreements Cristiani and the FMLN leaders reach.
Skilled UN diplomats searched for months for the elusive formula that would guarantee the safety of the guerrillas after they laid down their arms and reentered civilian society. This was no idle search. Tens of thousands of Salvadorans have met torture and death merely because they sympathized with change.
The FMLN first proposed total demilitarization. The UN softened that proposal but could never get the backing of the Bush administration. Another FMLN initiative called for the integration of the FMLN combatants into the army. It received no support from any quarter.
With these two avenues closed, the UN came up with an ingenious formula that meets the FMLN demand that its combatants be protected. Under this plan, agreed to by the Cristiani government, the military of El Salvador would no longer have power to enforce its will inside the country. It would confine its role to the defense of the nation against external threats. The present dreaded internal security forces, which have strong links to the army, would be abolished, and a new civilian police force, completely removed from military control, would be established to enforce the laws and maintain domestic order. It would include a significant FMLN presence. As a result, the army would no longer have a pretext to persecute its enemies; and the FMLN presence in the national police force, particularly in the zones traditionally under guerrilla control, would help integrate the combatants into the power structure.
Hurdles remain. A crucial provision of the UN peace frame-work requires that the army be cleansed of human rights violators. This purging would appear to be the indispensable minimum for El Salvador to reenter the company of civilized nations. The FMLN had demanded not merely dismissals but prosecution. Yet because there have been no apparent pressures from the Bush White House, the Salvadoran military high command feels free to resist even dismissals, proposing instead a “self-purification” that most observers, including the UN negotiators, regard as an empty promise.
The Bush administration has given at best lukewarm endorsement to the Salvadoran peace process. When the New York agreement was signed in September, UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar welcomed it as a breakthrough. Neither President Bush nor Secretary of State James Baker congratulated the parties on what was truly a historic achievement.
As new democratic forces in El Salvador seek to untangle competing demands and needs, the White House should join Congress and send a clear message to El Salvador’s military leaders that we expect them to stand down from their position as arbitrator of political power, and to abide by the agreements reached by the elected civilian government and the FMLN. In Central America, as elsewhere, democracy and militarism are incompatible.
