Word: nicaragua
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...central arms-control issues. But Dobrynin's messages last week, both literal and atmospheric, will make it difficult for Gorbachev to back out without considerable provocation. What remains to be seen is whether the Reagan Administration's policy of challenging the Soviets directly and in places like Libya and Nicaragua will force concessions or lead to another stalemate over the summit...
Some Americans see Nicaragua drenched in a dangerous sea of red. Others view the country as bathed in a brilliant aureole of white light. Forget gray. Much as in the debate that polarized Americans during the war in Viet Nam, cool heads and dispassionate judgments seldom prevail in a discussion of U.S.-Nicaraguan relations. The Sandinistas are either hard-core Communists with a cruelly totalitarian agenda or committed revolutionaries with a uniquely Latin American vision of the future. The U.S.-backed contras, on the other hand, are either brave freedom fighters or treacherous mercenaries. WARNING: entry into the debate...
Then came the deluge. In October 1984 Leiken (rhymes with bacon) published an article in the New Republic titled "Nicaragua's Untold Stories." It was a searing indictment of the Managua regime that accused the Sandinistas of repression, corruption, political manipulation and fealty to Moscow...
...left as a betrayal and by Reaganites as a vindication of their long-held views. Most important, many Democrats who had relied on Leiken's analyses began to reconsider their Sandinista sympathies. Senator Edward Kennedy had the article read into the Congressional Record. Suddenly, Leiken became as controversial as Nicaragua itself...
...Since then, Leiken has assessed the Sandinista issue in other articles, including two pieces in the New York Review of Books. After two trips this year to Nicaragua, the most recent with Democratic Congressman Les Aspin of Wisconsin, he has changed his assessment of the contras. He argues that while the rebels were initially a small mercenary force made up of supporters of ousted Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, they have, as a result of widespread disenchantment with the Sandinistas, grown into a diverse army of 20,000 that is now a popularly based vanguard for a widespread and growing rebellion...