All Disquiet on the Southern Front

The U.S. hardens its line on El Salvador, and confusion results

Just about the time John Paul II was preparing to leave for Central America, the Reagan Administration suddenly, and perhaps deliberately, began sounding alarm bells about El Salvador. Amid reports that leftist rebels were regaining the initiative in their struggle to topple the government, Ronald Reagan announced that he wanted $60 million in emergency military aid to El Salvador. The President was also considering an increase in the number of U.S. military advisers in the country, now informally set at a maximum of 55, together with an expansion of their duties. Finally, an American envoy was dispatched to El Salvador to persuade the country's leaders to advance the date of presidential elections from March 1984 to some time later this year in order to dramatize the Salvadoran commitment to democracy. Said a White House official: "It could be just a matter of weeks before that government could go under altogether."

The aura of urgency recalled former Secretary of State Alexander Haig's controversial efforts to cast El Salvador's rebellion as a major East-West conflict. After Haig left office last summer, the Administration lowered the volume on its talk about Soviet subversion and the threat posed to the U.S. Yet officials made it clear last week that the Administration's basic view on Central America remained the same. Reagan depicted the Salvadoran conflict in its starkest ideological colors. "We believe that the government of El Salvador is on the front line in a battle that is really aimed at the very heart of the Western Hemisphere, and eventually at us," he told an audience at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. "If El Salvador should fall, I think Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama — all of those would follow."

Unfortunately, the Administration damaged its own cause with perplexing, often contradictory, statements. There was much confusion about whether Reagan did indeed plan to send more advisers. Washington had hoped that its idea for early elections would be seen solely as a Salvadoran initiative, but the top U.S. official entrusted with the negotiations blabbed about them within earshot of a reporter. The bungling made a skittish Congress even more skeptical of White House plans. Conceded an Administration official: "This is an unfortunate way to do business. We're talking first and deciding what we mean afterward."

Last March's elections, in which 74% of those eligible voted, gave the government an indisputable legitimacy and seemed to justify the Reagan Administration's policy of supplying arms while pressing for reforms. Instead of talking about winning the war, Administration officials tried to bolster the economy and make the political system more democratic. They encouraged the newly elected Constituent Assembly, led by Rightist Roberto d'Aubuisson, to pursue a program of land redistribution and to improve the country's lamentable human rights record.