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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 8, 1985
ON THE WORLD SCENE
U.S.-EUROPE RIFT OVER CENTRAL AMERICA;
ETHIOPIA AND KENNEDY; NOVEL SOLUTION TO AIDS
PAGE 7
There's no mistaking it now: Central America has become the number one
foreign policy concern of the Reagan Administration. Washington is step
ping up both the rhetoric as well as the actual physical pressure on the
Marxist Sandinista regime.
In some of the bluntest words to date, President Reagan said in a press
conference that he won't be satisfied until the Sandinista rulers say
"uncle," and open up the governmental process to the pro-Western forces now
arrayed against them. This challenge only makes the Sandinistas cling all
the tighter to power.
Secretary of State George Schulz, in a major address in San Francisco,
called for the free-world equivalent of the "Brezhnev Doctrine."
The
latter was formulated by the Soviets in 1968 in response to the threatened
break-away of Czechoslovakia from the communist world. Simply stated, the
Brezhnev Doctrine affirms a once-communist-always-communist policy, that
the Soviets and other bloc countries have the right to intervene in a wobbly
communist state in order to "preserve the fruits of socialism." Secretary
Schulz said the U.S. and the West in general should not be afraid to restore
a free-world country, having fallen under communism, to its former status.
Thus the ante is mounting. President Reagan knows he has but two choices
open to him now: Let Nicaragua alone, allowing it to infect other countries
in the region--for theirs is a revolution without borders--or support those
indigenous contra forces fighting the Marxist government. Should the lat
ter policy fail, the U.S. somewhere down the road will be faced with two
other more painful choices: Let communism spread throughout the region--or
send in American troops to redress the balance of power.
No one wants to entertain the latter option, but the Democratically con
trolled House of Representatives also insists on blocking military aid to
the contra "freedom fighters" (as the President calls them). The Sandin
istas know this reluctance well; they float phony proposals designed pri
marily to sound peaceful--such as offering to send home 100 Cuban advisors
(out of the few thousand who are there)--in order to influence Congress to
withhold arms going to their enemies.
This is a big and growing foreign policy cr1s1s. And it is having an in
creasing impact on the solidarity of the NATO alliance.
Washington and
most European capitals view the crisis through different prisms. Simply
put, the Reagan Administration perceives a genuine threat to America's na
tional interests. Many Europeans, on the other hand, believe the U.S. is
acting paranoid over the existence of a small "socialist" state.
This
"misunderstanding" over the true nature of the crisis in Central America
has the potential of ripping NATO asunder, as American analyst Irving Kris
tal writes in the March 1985 issue of ENCOUNTER, a British journal of cur
rent affairs, literature and the arts.
Here are key excerpts from his
lengthy warning to the Europeans, titled "A Transatlantic 'Misunderstand
ing
I II
: