The Last Battles

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In foreign policy, the most dramatic ideas the President is hearing are dubious ones advanced by hard-liners. One group is urging that Reagan both announce he is moving toward early deployment of his Strategic Defense Initiative and greatly increase pressure on the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Central American initiative would mean asking for a huge increase in U.S. aid to the contra rebels and assigning American ground troops to support the guerrillas. "That would focus public debate on something useful to the country," says one adviser.

It would also be a prescription for a bitter conflict with Capitol Hill that Reagan probably could not win. The Administration will have all it can do next month to persuade Congress to release the final 40% of the $100 million in aid for the contras that it approved last year. The fear that Congress might cut off aid to punish the White House for slipping Iranian arms-sale profits to the contras has faded; reliable nose counters like Senate Republican Leader Robert Dole discern a majority in favor of continued help. But it is an extremely thin one -- perhaps 51 to 49 in the Senate -- and vulnerable to any change in the political winds.

Even with continued U.S. aid, the contras are unlikely to "liberate" any Nicaraguan territory. Administration realists foresee at best a long campaign of guerrilla harassment; they warn that the contras' ability to continue the fight depends on their retaining sanctuaries in an increasingly nervous Honduras. Says an American diplomat: "Since the Iran business blew up, we have felt a definite increase in the Hondurans' eagerness to see the contras somewhere else -- either in Managua running the country or in New York and Los Angeles waiting on tables, but out of Honduras."

Should the contras be defeated in battle or expelled from Honduras, or both, Reagan's strategists see the bleakest of choices. Some warn that the U.S. might have to consider an American invasion of Nicaragua in the year ahead. The alternative would be an unsatisfactory political settlement with the Sandinistas. Some strategists sound as if they are not quite sure which would be worse.

In any event, Central America is not the place to look for a foreign policy success that would repair the damage of Iranscam. That could come only from an arms-control agreement. Says a White House official: "There is a feeling around here, heightened by the Iran business, that Soviet-American relations and arms control are the only game in town."

It is, however, a game with most uncertain prospects. Mikhail Gorbachev and his chief Americanologist, Georgi Arbatov, have been talking of Soviet eagerness to negotiate arms reduction. Arbatov, on a December visit to Washington, went so far as to hint about a compromise on SDI that would permit a vigorous research-and-develo pment program, prohibiting only advanced, large-scale testing that could lead to quick deployment. However, such remarks may be intended partly to intensify pressure on Reagan to make a deal -- and intensify criticism if he does not. Gorbachev's refusal to repeat the televised New Year greetings that he and Reagan beamed at each other's countries at the start of 1986 was a reminder that the Kremlin is not counting on a breakthrough this year.