Making Sense of Central America

Extract

Most discussions of U.S. policy in Central America have focused on operational questions: Should the United States support the Contras seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua? Should we condition military aid to El Salvador on curbing the death squads? These are the issues debated too by the Kissinger Commission on Central America, whose report was presented to President Reagan earlier this year. They are important, vexing, and decisive. But they are also essentially unanswerable on their own terms.