Bush Has Stilled the Impulse to Intervene : Central America: The Administration’s passive approach hasn’t fostered peace; now it can take a constructive tack toward negotiations.

The dramatic events in Central America--this month’s prolonged guerrilla offensive in El Salvador together with last month’s abortive coup attempt in Panama and the breakdown of Nicaragua’s cease-fire--represent both a major setback and some modest advance for the foreign policy of George Bush’s Administration.

It is obvious why these events amount to a significant defeat for the United States. Week by week it becomes more evident that the Reagan Administration’s obsessive approach toward Central America produced a foreign-policy cul-de-sac. In Nicaragua, the Reagan policy of military aid for the Contras turned into a slow-motion Bay of Pigs. In El Salvador, massive U.S. economic and military aid has come to exceed the regime’s revenues from all other sources combined, yet it could not strengthen the Salvadoran center nor defeat the guerrilla insurgency, and the country’s violent polarization has continued apace. In Panama, U.S. officials imprudently and ostentatiously promised to bring down Manuel Noriega, yet only the Panamanian people, and perhaps some U.S. corporations, have been hurt by the failed campaign against the regime.

The hesitant U.S. role during last month’s attempted coup in Panama, President Bush’s futile efforts to avoid being photographed with Daniel Ortega when they met at the hemispheric summit in Costa Rica a few weeks ago, the pseudo-activism of sending U.S. troops to “liberate” the Sheraton Hotel during the battle in San Salvador--all these incidents symbolize how hard it is for the United States to act effectively within the bounds of long-established policy.

The approach that the United States has pursued in Central America for a decade is bankrupt. This stark reality has vividly impressed itself upon many U.S. policy-makers, and on Congress, during the past few weeks.

Though it is less obvious, these weeks have also registered a real success for the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. The Administration has been able to absorb the Central American setbacks without succumbing to the temptation to intervene--indeed, without feeling strong pressure to do so.

When Ortega unilaterally ended the Nicaraguan cease-fire, Bush called him names but did not volunteer to resume U.S. aid to the Contras, and there was little sentiment to do so on Capitol Hill. When Sens. Jesse Helms and John Kerry (an unlikely pair) called for U.S. intervention in Panama against Noriega, Bush kept his cool. And when the Salvadoran guerrillas unleashed their bold attack, the Bush Administration backed away from expanding U.S. involvement. Within days, as a result of the brutal assassination of six Jesuit leaders at the Central American University, the Administration actually found itself under some pressure to cut off aid to El Salvador, not to intervene or to increase U.S. assistance.

The radically changed political and policy context framing U.S. reaction to events in Central America reflects in part the skill with which the Bush Administration has maneuvered during its first year to lower the profile and the temperature of the Central American policy debate in Washington.

By focusing during the Administration’s first few weeks on negotiating a bipartisan accord on Nicaragua and reinforcing the prior bipartisan approach to El Salvador, Secretary of State James A. Baker III bought time and political space for the Administration. This approach was made much more likely to succeed, of course, by the winds of change blowing from the Soviet Union. The domestic right cannot persuasively argue that the United States faces a rising communist threat in Central America when Eastern Europe is in such spectacular disarray.

The flaw in the Bush Administration’s approach to Central America lies in its failure to invest wisely the time and space it has won. Faced with so many other foreign-policy challenges and opportunities, the Administration has been largely content to postpone dealing with Central America until next year, after the Nicaraguan presidential election scheduled for February. But the region’s own actors have not been similarly passive; they have used the lull in U.S. attention to regroup their forces and stake their claims.

The FMLN offensive in El Salvador has succeeded--at enormous human cost, to be sure--at clarifying the essential choices facing the Salvadoran Establishment and the U.S. government. After nearly a decade of unstinting U.S. assistance, including the quadrupling of El Salvador’s standing army, that country’s government could not prevent an impressive demonstration by the FMLN of its presence and force in the capital city and in two-thirds of the nation’s provinces. The political meaning of that display is clear: The government of El Salvador must resign itself to countless more years of inconclusive war or redouble its military efforts to repress the insurgency. Or else it must come to terms with the left through meaningful negotiations.

The first of these options is understandably and universally rejected, though it could occur anyway. The second option would require a significant increase in U.S. assistance and involvement, which is far from likely under current budgetary and geopolitical conditions.

Pressures for meaningful negotiations in El Salvador are bound to mount, therefore. The Bush Administration and the Democratic Congress may turn U.S. policy in that direction in 1990 as they may come to terms with the Sandinista government in Managua. After decades of deep frustration, it is just possible that U.S. policy toward Central America will finally take a new tack.