rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (02/26/86)
[ Reproduced without permission from the 2/20/86 Boston Globe, page 21. ] HONDURAS: REAGAN'S SPRINGBOARD? By Edward R. F. Sheehan (Last of 4 articles) SAN JOSE, Costa Rica --- If the United States invades Nicaragua, it will need a staging base. The Reagan administration is turning Hon- duras, on Nicaragua's northern border, into a prime military arsenal, and if the invasion ever happens Honduras may be the springboard. Consider the Honduran air force base at Palmerola, in the southwest of the country. Palmerola is headquarters of Joint Task Force Bravo, a rotating unit of more than 1,000 US Army and Air Force troops; the unit has been in Honduras since 1982. The United States has built at Palmerola an airstrip of 8,005 feet, and uses it to land regularly C-130 and C-5 transports (the biggest we have) and UH-1 and CH-47 helicopters, and, occasionally, even Air Force jet fighters. In recent years, the United States had conducted joint exercises with the Honduran armed forces that include parachute maneuvers and beach landings, with up to 6,000 Americans participating at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. This year, the US Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a joint road-building exercise over tropical and mountainous terrain similar to the topography of Nicaragua. American military officials cheerfully admit the operation is "wonderful training for war contingencies." Besides Palmerola, the United States has military landing rights at the Honduran bases of La Ceiba, La Mesa and Trujilo. At La Ceiba, the United States intercepts Nicaraguan communications; from San Lorenzo, neart the Nicaraguan border, we send aloft remotely powered drones (RPVs) to monitor Sandinista messages and military movements. US artillery units practice in Honduras periodically, and we plan to improve Honduran naval facilities, partly for our own use. US Navy ships maneuver off the Honduran coast, and call regularly at Honduran ports on the Caribbean. Our vessels include submarines, destroyers, cruisers, guided-missile frigates and the battleship Iowa. The list goes on, and clearly amounts to a major component of the US strategy to surround Nicaragua with armed and hostile states. During my recent visit to Honduras, I asked American officials if the enormous US military presence there was the prelude to an invasion of Nicaragua. They denied any such intention, or even intimidation. "We simply want to send a signal," they said. The signal is chilling. It amplifies the private admission of American officials elsewhere that the Reagan administration is interested not in a negotiated solution with the SDandinistas --- but only in their over- throw, or at least a radical reversal of their Marxist policies. In keeping with this logic, if the contras cannot topple the Sandinistas (and they probably can't), then the United States must do it directly. "Reagan," says a Western diplomat, "will have to choose." His hour of choice most likely will come as he approaches the end of his presidency, during the six or seven months following the congres- sional elections in November. He would probably start with air strikes. Western military experts doubt that this alone could do the job. "By then the Sandinistas might have, from the Soviets, an effective air defense," says one. "Reagan would have to send in several divisions of ground troops as well, and it could all be very bloody." With swiftness and luck, American losses might be kept relatively low, but thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Nicaraguans would inevitably die. The United States would bear the moral burden of yet another intervention in Latin America, and any new regime it sponsored, however well intentioned, would be a pariah among the Latin nations. My visits to Honduras, the contras and Nicaragua persuaded me of the mounting probability of worst-case scenarios combined with the Kafka- esque and an element of Greek tragedy [ oh, please ]. Both sides --- Reagan and the Sandinistas --- are locked in ideological rigor from which they will not or cannot escape. With diplomacy at an impasse, there is a relentless escalation of martial planning --- on the American side, with Honduras and the contras; on the Sandinista side, by the increasingly harsh militarization of their society. The Contadora process, sponsored by Mexico, Panama, Venezuela and Columbia --- aimed essentially at arms reduction on both sides and internal reconciliation in Nicaragua --- is moribund. It will die altogether, unless the arms race in Central America is arrested and both the United States and Nicaragua resort seriously to diplomacy. Diplomacy --- at this late hour --- will be painfully difficult. The United States would have to forswear invasion, suspend or reduce its aid to the contras, and cease its saber-rattling from Honduras. The Sandinistas would have to face the reality of their ruined economy, stop persecuting the church, pack off thousands more of their Cuban and Soviet-bloc advisers, and undertake a serious dialogue to share power with the internal opposition. Neither side could emerge as a clear winner, and in exchange for the concessions of the Sandinistas, the United States and the people of Nicaragua would have to resign themselves to a regime on the American mainland that retains some elements of Marxism. Hardly an ideal solution --- but one that would at least prevent a torrent of bloodshed. I do not, of course, expect such a solution to be achieved. *********************************************************************** Edward R. F. Sheehan, novelist and a winner of the Overseas Press Club Award, is a former fellow of Harvard's Center for International Affairs.
gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (02/26/86)
One of the other little discussed matters relating to American intervention in Central America is the militarization of the region by us as the "friend of Central American countries". Take a look at the % of the wealth of, say, Honduras and Costa Rica over the last ten years devoted to military strength (I thing that one of those countries didn't even *have* a military to speak of before '74 or so) and compare that to AMerican Involvement.
franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) (03/06/86)
In article <298@astroatc.UUCP> gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (Greg Taylor) writes: >One of the other little discussed matters relating to American >intervention in Central America is the militarization of the >region by us as the "friend of Central American countries". Take >a look at the % of the wealth of, say, Honduras and Costa Rica >over the last ten years devoted to military strength (I thing that >one of those countries didn't even *have* a military to speak >of before '74 or so) and compare that to AMerican Involvement. Costa Rica not only didn't have a military before '74, they don't have one now. Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108