Nicaragua: the strategy of counterrevolution

NICARAGUA: THE STRATEGY OF COUNTERREVOLUTION

On July 19, 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front marched triumphantly into Managua. Over 50,000 people had given their lives in the war to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship, whose fifty dark years had left the country in ruins. The Nicaraguan people believed the nightmare was over, and that they could finally build a new, more just society in peace. Yet within months of the triumph the United States was beating the war drums against Nicaragua. It has continued to do so, with increasing intensity, ever since.

Although, as we shall show in what follows, U.S. strategy in its war against Nicaragua has evolved, its policy has always been the same: at the core of the U.S. objective in the region is the destruction of the Sandinista People's Revolution. Carter administration policy, reflecting the general defensive character of an imperialism still limping from the Vietnam experience, deferred the military option in favor of attempts at undermining postrevolutionary consolidation through economic and diplomatic pressures alone. But as Washington moved from the defensive to the offensive--expressed in the advent of the Reagan administration--the military option for Nicaragua moved from a latent position to the top of the agenda. Within days of Reagan's inauguration, the CIA set about resurrecting the instrument that had protected U.S. interests in Nicaragua for fifty years, the defeated Somoza National Guard, which they then molded into a modern mercenary army under an umbrella organization, the Nicaraguan Democratic force (FDN).

Despite Reagan's attempts to present the Nicaraguan counterrevolution as including a broad cross-section of the population, its political leadership has always been the Somocista faction of the overthrown bourgeoisie and the military elite, and its military leadership the former Somocista Guardsmen. An April 1985 Congressional report concluded that forty-six of the forty-eight positions in the FDN's command structure are held by former Guardsmen. The FDN includes about 80 percent of the total estimated 15,000 contras, and is the principal recipient of U.S. assistance.

In many revolutions the ruling classes leave the country. In Nicaragua, however, the pre-victory division of the bourgeoisie into pro- and anti-Somoza factions (with the latter tactically supporting the popular insurrection), and the post-triumph Sandinista strategy of political pluralism and a mixed economy has meant that a significant sector of the former ruling class has remained inside the country, providing exceptionally fertile ground for the formation of an "internal front" of the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution. They have organized themselves into the Nicaraguan Democratic Coordinator (CDN), comprised of four political parties, two trade union groupings under their control, and the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP), a businessmen's organization that is the dominant force in the CDN coalition. The reactionary daily La Prensa acts as the "official organ" of the internal front, operating within the framework laid out in the U.S. army's manual of psychological warfare.

The White House envisioned a relatively rapid military victory for the counterrevolution, in an inverted version of the 1960s foco theory of revolution in Latin America. As one agency official involved in the program put it, Washington's timetable "projected month-by-month growth of the CIA-backed army up to the end of 1983, when the anti-Sandinista rebels were to march into Managua and seize power." The internal front was initially relegated to a rearguard position, complementing the armed aggression with political maneuvering and ideological assaults from within "enemy" territory.

By 1982 the armed apparatus was fully in place and the aggression began to resemble modern warfare. The Revolution was unprepared, and the contras were able to take the initiative. In 1983 they launched three successive large-scale offensives, spanning hundreds of kilometers along the northern and southern borders, the Atlantic Coast region, and the central highlands. Nevertheless, the Sandinistas were able to defeat each one of these offensives, thanks to the phenomenon of "people's war": the active participation of the entire population in its own defense, be it with gun in hand in the mountains or in rearguard work in the cities. In addition to the standing army (Sandinista People's Army--EPS), tens of thousands of young adults joined the Popular Militia. In the countryside, peasants organized themselves into Self-Defense and Production Cooperatives, whose members rotated between work in the fields and armed patrols to protect the communities. In Managua, factory-based workers' councils organized production so that part went to the war fronts and part was earmarked for civilian consumption.

The contras failed in every one of their objectives: seizing a piece of Nicaraguan territory and establishing a "provisional government," launching urban terrorist actions, advancing toward Managua, and sparking a right-wing insurrection. In the face of these defeats Washington resorted to a number of tactics to shore up the contra effort, including the expansion of logistical support and the direct participation of both the Honduran army and U.S. forces. The desperate attacks in October 1983 on Corinto and other Nicaraguan ports by CIA commandos were telling signs that the hope of a quick military victory was dissipating. A major turning point came in November 1983, when the CIA informed the President in a secret report, later leaked to the press, that the contras were incapable on their own of militarily defeating the Sandinistas.

Low-Intensity Warfare

The next stage of the war was a period of flux and reevaluation in Washington, in which the contras were assigned the role of waging a grinding "war of attrition" while Washington explored various formulas for moving toward a better form of intervention. The mining of Nicaragua's harbors in early 1984, and the sharp divisions within the upper echelons of the administration that it produced, epitomized the kind of maneuvering that was going on.

The objective behind the "war of attrition" was to pound away at the social and economic fabric of Nicaraguan society, thereby limiting the Revolution's ability to meet the material needs of the population and whittling away at its base of support. Once the defensive capacity of the nation was weakened, conditions would theoretically be favorable for the next step in U.S. aggression.

In essence, this war of attrition reflects the maturation of U.S. imperialism's strategy of global counterrevolution in the 1980s, and at its heart lies the concept of low-intensity warfare (LIW). LIW quickly became the favored alternative to traditional counterinsurgency practices. This strategy involves a multiplicity of prolonged political-diplomatic, economic, psychological, and ideological aggression that is synchronized with permanent but low-key military aggression. In Nicaragua, the strategy was being instituted even while fierce debates raged within the Reagan administration between its proponents and those who continued to advocate immediate invasion--preferring the costs of a military adventure to the "dangers" of ongoing revolutionary consolidation.

Following the defeat of the U.S. forces in Indochina, bewildered North American military and political analysts began a systematic evaluation of the reasons behind the U.S. failure. These analysts concluded that the United States had experienced a tactical victory and a strategic defeat, and that military superiority does not guarantee victory. In fact, like trying to kill an ant with a sledgehammer, it can be inimical to the main objectives. They argued that a new strategy for waging counterrevolution in the third world would have to be devised if the empire were to suceed in future conflicts, and that the need to wage counterrevolution throughout the world makes large-scale intervention in any one place risky for two reasons: (1) it weakens the capacity to act elsewhere, and (2) it generates national and international political opposition which threatens the entire worldwide offensive. They studied the theorists of revolutionary warfare, including Mao Tsetung, General Giap, and even Che Guevara, and drew on the lessons of British, French, and other colonial wars in the third world. They also reexamined the classic work of the great Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, On War, whose axiom that "War is the extension of politics by other means" was distilled in the new strategy." They came to the conclusion that the strength of the revolutionary forces rests on their symbiotic relation with the population, and that war therefore must be a political not a military undertaking, whose strategic objective is the political defeat of the enemy rather than its military annihilation. War is thus redefined as a struggle between antagonistic alternatives (revolution and counterrevolution), with the military element only one of a number of means for attaining the newly defined objective. As Colonel John D. Waghelstein, former head of the U.S. military advisor's team in El Salvador and a leading LIW strategist has written, "LIW is "revolutionary" and counterrevolutionary warfare. It is total war at the grassroots level--one that uses all of the weapons of total war, including political, economic and psychological warfare, with the military aspect being a distant fourth in many cases."

Since LIW is the diametric opposite of the invasionist line, it does not involve U.S. ground troops. There is no sudden escalation, advances are not measured in numbers of casualties or battlefield victories, the cost is low and the conflict can last as long as it takes to achieve the objective. In fact, the distinction between war and peace is obscured--because it it "total war," LIW often seems invisible.

LIW seeks first to crack the logic of the revolution, deciphering its internal cohesion and understanding the tactics it employs to advance its interests, and then to devise a strategy that will warp this logic, undoing its internal cohesion and rendering its tactics ineffective--in short turning the revolution against itself. LIW is extremely flexible: its tactics are made to suit the conditions of each conflict. Edward Luttwak, perhaps the foremost theorist of LIW, has described its priorities clearly: "In low intensity wars victory is normally obtained by altering the political variables to the pont where the enemy becomes ineffectual, and not by actually defeating enemies in battle. Without donning the eyeglasses of the LIW framework, it is not possible to understand the logic and coherence of the war against Nicaragua.

The war against Nicaragua is thus aimed at delegitimizing, isolating, and suffocating the Revolution to the point where it is no longer considered a viable political alternative in the eyes of the population. At the same time, an attempt is made to legitimate and stabilize the counterrevolutionary alternative to revolution: it must develop its own internal cohesion. Not only must the revolution be invalidated but its antithesis must be validated. Once this is achieved, the counterrevolution has triumphed; all that remains is to work out the way in which state power will be transferred from the revolutionary forces to the counterrevolution.

Thus a permanent and all-sided ag gression has been launched in the northern mountains of Nicaragua, in the pulpits of Managua, in the international lending agencies, in diplomatic forums, and in the U.S. media, gradually building up the terrain for either of two possibilities: the total political defeat of the Nicaraguan Revolution (which does not rule out a military element), or a future large-scale intervention, but one undertaken under much more favorable conditions--a "mopping up" operation in which an already attained victory is merely formalized (such as in Grenada).

The Nicaraguan Revolution has thus become a test case for a new strategy. For the people of Nicaragua, this means facing a perpetual state of military alert and mass mobilization, reduced possibilities of socioeconomic development, and permanent tension--a virtual war psychosis, fed by deliberate invation scares. This is precisely the purpose of the LIW war.

The Current Phase

In 1984, two developments paved the way for the third and current phase of the counterrevolution. Having lined up behind Washington's abstentionist strategy in the 1984 elections, which meant boycotting the vote and mounting an international propaganda campaign to discredit it, the political parties of the internal front lost their legitimate political space within the country, while the electoral process strengthened national social consensus around the goal of defeating the imperialists. This is turn accelerated the internal front's move to united strategically and tactically with the armed contra forces, eliminating their operational autonomy.

Simultaneously, after two years of reorganizing the nation socially and economically in its own defense, the military balance shifted in favor of the Revolution. The Sandinistas were able to go on the offensive, and the relative stalemate was broken. According to Nicaraguan Ministry of Defense figures, the contras suffered 411 deaths in 1982, 1,824 in 1984, approximately 4,000 in 1984, and 1,300 in the first five months of 1985. In May the EPS forced the bulk of the FDN troops to retreat to their camps in southern Honduras and completely routed ARDE from the south of the country, triumphantly hoisting the Sandinista flag over Eden Pastora's long-time military headquarters in Nicaraguan territory. "The contras no longer represent a strategic danger," explained Defense Minister Comandante Humberto Ortega in early 1985. In August, Daniel Ortega announced that 1986 would be the year for "consummating the strategic defeat." The Sandinistas believe that the contras have been defeated militarily and, barring unforeseen developments, have been permanently contained. The current U.S. plan to double the number of contras and provide them with sophisticated new weaponry is not, according to the Nicaraguans, aimed at a qualitative advance, but at sustaining the capacity to remain in the battlefield.

This defeat will not, however, translate into a diminished capacity to inflict punishing socioeconomic damage, at least in the short and medium run. and there is no doubt that the military aggression has had a devastating effect: According to the Ministry of the Presidency, in addition to the more than 12,000 deaths, direct and indirect economic losses resulting from the war are over $1.3 billion, an overwhelming amount for a country of 3 million inhabitants, one that earns less than $400 million per year in foreign exchange.

Furthermore, LIW was precisely developed for this sort of situation because it is flexible enough to allow for the rapid adoption of new forms of aggression when earlier variants decline in effectiveness. The strategic defeat of the contras has thus given rise to the ascent of the internal front. The internal forces are moving from merely complementing the military aggression to taking on responsibility for the essential task of generating a social base for a counterrevolutionary alternative to Sandinismo. The heightened importance of the internal front and the subordination of the military element are evidence of a new stage of low-intensity warfare, one is which a counterrevolutionary political program becomes a key ingredient in defeating the revolution. The contested zone has shifted from the northern mountains to the Pacific coast cities.

Nevertheless, the internal front, having lost its historic legitimacy, its control over the state, and its ideological hegemony over the masses, remains the weakest part of the counterrevolutionary apparatus. For while the hardships brought about by the war and the confusion created bu the internal front's ideological obfuscation have generated discontent among a not insignificant sector of the population, these forces have not been able, thus far, to translate the discontent into active support for the counterrevolution.

Enter the Church

In the face of this internal front has turned to the Catholic Church hierarchy--one of the most conservative in all Latin America--for ideological and political leadership. Historically a firm ally, first of Spanish colonialism, then of oligarchic rule, and later of the Somoza dynasty (the Somoza patriarch was dubbed "Prince of the Church" by one Archbishop of Managua), the Church hierarchy has from the outset been an enemy of the Revolution. Further, the Church--unlike the bourgeoisie's political institutions--has two thousand years of moral authority behind it and continues to wield great influence throughout the population. In fact, the Church is the only institution in Nicaragua with any real capacity for converting those discontented with the revolution into supporters of the contra project and for disputing the rest of the population's support of the Sandinismo.

Thus over the past six years each time a political initiative taken by the internal front, in coordination with the armed aggression, has faltered, the Church hierarchy has thrown out a lifeline by transferring the initiative to its own turf, where it can be converted to--or disguised as--a religious issue. A social struggle between classes is increasingly turned by the counter-revolution into a struggle between church and state--as when the Church argues that it is morally and religiously justified to resist the draft.

In the current phase of the war, however, the Church is no longer simply shoring up the beleaguered forces of the internal reaction but is assuming the leadership of the entire counterrevolution. And the Bishop of Managua, Obando y Bravo, occupies a strategic position in this phase of the war--leading to widespread suspicion that heavy U.S. pressure was behind his selection as cardinal.

The Contra Strategy: "National Reconciliation"

The theme of "national reconciliation" is the political platform upon which the internal front and the armed contras are unifying under the leadership of Obando y Bravo. Former CIA agent Philip Agee predicted as far back as 1979 that the "political goal [of the CIA] would be to create an emotive 'cause'. ...As the 'cause' is established, effort can be made to foment popular disillusion with the revolution."

the "necessity" of national reconciliation was raised by the United States as far back as 1981, but this was principally for external consumption and it did not become a central plank in the war strategy until April 1985. In that month Reagan presented his notorious "peace plan": "Reconciliation is indispensable to peace. The Communists in Nicaragua have turned a cold shoulder to appeals for national reconciliation from the Pope and the Nicaraguan bishops. And we know that without incentives they won't change," he said. As always, the "proposal" was presented as an ultimatum: if the Revolution does not surrender by accepting "peace" through dialogue, the war will escalate. The use of the term "dialogue" is an attempt to present the U.S. aggression as a "civil war" in which the armed contras are legitimate contenders. The Sandinistas are then offered the "olive branch" of dialogue as the only means to achieve peace. If this "offer" is refused, Sandinistas intransigency is to blame for the continuing war.

There was widespread indignation at REagan's proposal in the beginning, but, in a crude application of Langley's "big lie" tactic, it was subsequently repeated so often by the internal front that it came to be accepted among certain sectors of the population, who were manipulated into believing that real peace could be achieved through dialogue with the contras. The Catholic Church played a major role in this, leading the reconciliation campaign from its moral sanctuary and invoking the biblical justification of "universal brotherhood."

In this new stage of the war, reconciliation is the vehicle for building the counterrevolution's social base. Washington hopes to create a polarization of the population around the false issue of those wanting war and those wanting peace: it is attempting to channel an authentic yearning for peace into discontent with the Revolution as the "cause" of the war, and making the Catholic Church (along with the contras) into the standard bearer of peace, while the Sandinistas and their supporters become the warmongers. Reconciliation becomes the issue that the population can rally around--but by doing so they also rally around the counterrevolution. This, according to the strategy of LIW, will lead to the political defeat of the Revolution. And as COSEP vice-president Jaime Bengochea put it to use in a June 1985 interview in Managua, "We prefer a political defeat. The strategy for brining about such a political defeat must be varied--from individual discontent, to group discontent, and finally national discontent. This is why we're calling for a national dialogue. There are a thousand things that could happen, a thousand factors that could come together to produce a political defeat."

The new level of internal confrontation was clear from the moment Obando y Bravo stepped off the plane from Miami, (in June 1985) where he had spoken in front of a crowd of 4000 contra supporters. "Long live Reagan! Long live Obando!" chanted some one hundred provateurs who attached unarmed airport police as the plane touched down. A few days after his return the Cardinal began an ongoing tour of the countryside to push "reconciliation," while the president of the Bishop's Conference, Pablo Vega, convened meetings with CDN leaders to "organize the dialogue." Before long antigovernment political marches, disguised as "religious processions," were taking place throughout the country, called for by the Cardinal and organized by the CDN. In many cases CDN members passed out leaflets calling for reconciliation while supporters sprayed slogan--such as "I follow Obando, and I'm ready to die with Calero" and "With the Christian resurrection, we will defeat the revolution"--on public walls. The Cardinal led the march. At the same time, and taking advantage of the climate these rallies created, the internal reaction began a number of efforts at destabilization, including campaigns to encourage youth to desert from the country's defense forces and the publication of previously censored counterrevolutionary literature. In August and September the government broke up clandestine FDN cells that had been working with the support of various CDN members to carry out urban terrorist actions.

It is in this context that the National State of Emergency was declared in mid-October, reinstating certain restrictions on civil liberties (including the right to public assembly without prior government permission). These measures provide the Revolution with the "juridical instruments to defend the homeland from aggressions and conspiracies imported from abroad," as Vice-President Dr. Sergio Ramirez put it.

The Lessons of History

The FSLN is keenly aware that those who have not learned from history are doomed to repeat it. In 1934 the first Somoza, installed in Managua by U.S. marines, invited Sandino down from the northern mountains for "negotiations." Once in Managua, Somoza disarmed the "General of Free Men," murdered him in cold blood, and then proceeded to massacre his supporters. The Sandinistas are determined that this will not happen again. Sandino's successors are now in Managua and they have armed the people.

In a speech in April, Tomas Borge, the Minister of Interior, rejected all imperialist ultimatums:

Those who now demand negotiation would like to repeat history. We will enter into a dialogue with them when the gentlemen of COSEP count all the grains of sand in the ocean, and all the stars in the sky, and the day they finish counting, they'll have to go back and count two times more, and then we'll think it over many times before giving them an answer. To enter into a dialogue with them would mean that we give them a legitimacy they don't have, that we forget who they are and lost sight of their strategic objective: to destroy the Sandinista people's revolution and return Nicaragua to a neocolonial status. Accepting dialogue would be the beginning of a series of concessions that in the end would lead us to forsaking revolutionary power, the power of the people.

The Sandinista Revolution has demonstrated its creative capacity to remain one step ahead of the u.S.-sponsored counterrevolution. The FSLN leadership understood, long before the North American proponents of LIW came to the same conclusion, that the essence of the struggle is political and not military. Faced with the growing sophistication of the U.S. war, the Nicaraguan people are themselves deepening their revolutionary process, and this is their ultimate defense.

The newly devised and implemented autonomy project for the ethnic minorities on the Atlantic Coast is breaking down the historic isolation of that region and patching up the initial errors committed by the Sandinistas, two of the factors that had allowed the contras to establish a limited social base in that region. The "Indian problem" runs deep throughout Latin America: only a dynamic revolution is capable of providing a historic solution, and every step that the Nicaraguan's have taken in this direction is a setback for the U.S. counterrevolution.

Similarly, a more profound phase of the agrarian reform, first introduced in 1982, was initiated in the northern was zones in 1985. The promise of the transformation of land tenure and rural production relations is rendering the military aggression of the armed contras and the ideological manipulation of the internal front increasingly less effective in these volatile zones.

The autonomy and agrarian projects are examples of how the deepening of the revolutionary process defends the revolution. In addition, the ongoing national defense effort is a further attack on the counterrevolution: social mobilization generates increased levels of popular organization and consciousness that constantly renew the Revolution.

At the same time, a "war economy" is being created. Production and distribution are being reorganized both to meet the requirements of defense and to guarantee the most essential needs of the population even under prolonged wartime conditions. Internationally, the ranks of the anti-intervention front have not been significantly diminished despite Washington's success in driving the wedge ever deeper between Nicaragua and its Cental American neighbors. The Reagan administration's inability to turn most of the bourgeois democracies in Latin America and Western Europe against Nicaragua, as well as the relative ease (despite initial dislocations) with which Nicaragua has weathrred the economic embargo imposed in May 1985--thanks primarily to its broad and diversified trade relations--demonstate that the world of the 1980s is too complex and multipolar for U.S. imperialism to achieve easily its objective of isolating Nicaragua internationally.

As the war intensifies, so will the challenge Nicaragua faces. But for how many years can imperialism go on waging a low-intensity war? Despite Washington's unlimited material resources, the war against Nicaragua will continue to generate domestic and international political contradictions for the United States--a chicken that will sooner or later come home to roost.

COPYRIGHT 1985 Monthly Review Foundation, Inc.
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