First Steps Toward a Policy

By Michael Kramer

As past masters of the technique, the Viet Cong had a term for it: Danh va dam, dam va danh -- fighting and talking, talking and fighting. By adopting that pattern of feints and jabs, the P.L.O. in the Middle East, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador have managed to keep Washington's foreign policy off-balance and on the defensive. Only now is the Bush Administration beginning to make moves that may allow it to capture some momentum.

In the Middle East the P.L.O. has been ahead in the battle for world opinion ever since last December when it acknowledged Israel's right to exist while continuing to support Arab uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza. But last week, smack in the middle of a visit to Washington by Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens, Secretary of State James Baker unveiled a series of admittedly "small" confidence-building trade-offs designed to get the antagonists talking. The Palestinians are being asked to moderate the intifadeh in exchange for a looser Israeli grip on the occupied territories.

Neither side is ecstatic about Baker's gradualist approach, and the hard- line Likud government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir does not want to concede anything of substance. But Baker's hint in testimony to Congress last week that the U.S. may urge Jerusalem to deal directly with the P.L.O. rather than with "moderate" West Bank Palestinians (who can never be found) may eventually force Shamir out of his bunker. Baker "was rather astute," concedes an Israeli diplomat. "The fact that Baker is clearly not eager to play a central role in our crisis may actually cause Shamir to be more forthcoming with his own proposals when he visits Bush in April."

If Baker's Middle East strategy includes avoiding a sense of urgency, the , U.S. must step up the pace in Central America, where events threaten to outrun the Administration's ability to deal with them. In Nicaragua the Sandinistas have cried "peace" just cleverly enough to convince the Central American Presidents that the contras, who number about 11,000, should be dislodged from Honduras and disbanded. Although the rebels are pretty well finished as a fighting force, Bush and Baker want to keep them in place and continue supplying them with food, clothing and medical supplies until the Nicaraguan elections, which the Sandinistas promise to hold next February. "Without the contras," says a Baker aide, "there will be even less incentive for Managua to fulfill its commitment to democratize, as it said it would when it signed on to the peace plan ((of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez))."

However incontrovertible the logic, even Baker admits the Administration will have no Nicaraguan policy "without Congress being a full partner." Last week he met privately with key congressional leaders to urge that support for the contras, scheduled to run out on March 31, be extended at the rate of about $4 million a month. The Democrats haven't said yes yet, but they have been willing to listen. "There's a lot more trust with these guys than there ever was with the Reagan crowd," says Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, a persistent critic of Reagan's Central America policy. "We're a fair way from agreement, but barring the unforeseen, I think we'll get there."

Congress may soon be even less inclined to continue support for El Salvador. After almost five years of fledgling democracy under President Jose Napoleon Duarte, Salvadoran voters are likely to transfer the presidency to the rightist ARENA party in elections that began last Sunday. A shift right, combined with a renewed guerrilla offensive, could incite the Salvadoran military and right-wing death squads to a scorched-earth policy, the kind of "final solution" to the civil war long urged by ARENA's strongman, Roberto d'Aubuisson. If that happens, Congress will surely move to suspend El Salvador's $600 million plus in annual aid.

Last month the Bush Administration dispatched Vice President Dan Quayle to give the Salvadorans a well-publicized lecture about death-squad activity. In an equally significant but little noted accomplishment, the Administration forced the indictment of army officers implicated in a recent massacre of civilians, an application of pressure engineered by Bernard Aronson, Baker's choice as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. Now Baker wants the Salvadoran generals to know that the Administration will not defend them on Capitol Hill if the military launches an unlimited war against its own population.

But if ARENA behaves moderately, a negotiated end to the civil war may be possible. In January the F.M.L.N. offered to participate in elections if the voting was delayed. The guerrillas backed away when faced with a counterproposal -- crafted primarily by Baker's State Department team -- but the mere fact they made the offer was significant. "The trick now," says a Baker aide, "is to create a bipartisan consensus that will demonstrate to the F.M.L.N. that it cannot split Congress from the White House -- as the Sandinistas did with respect to Reagan's contra policy. With a united front up here, the F.M.L.N. might finally come to the table."

The Administration's Central America moves are tied together: agreement on the contras can create a precedent for fashioning a concerted Salvador policy. Tiny triumphs, to be sure, and past Administrations have seen similar "small" steps collapse despite the best intentions. But it seems that Bush and Baker finally know where they want to go. And none too soon.