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... Turkey in 1980 was in large part due to a steadily escalating level of violence between the countrys political parties and factions; at the time of the coup there were literally dozens of politically motivated homicides taking place each day. (n 11) And a key reason for the Nigerian militarys overthrow of the second Nigerian republic in 1983 was the republics inability to control civil violence. (n 12) In El Salvador the current wave of violence is criminal in origin rather than the sort of politically motivated violence of the civil war, but this criminal violence has also had a negative effect on the countrys newly created democratic order because in a limited but very real way the military has been brought back into performing a domestic policing role. Specifically, armed gangs victimizing sugar cane and coffee workers have led to the creation of joint military / police patrols in the countryside. (n 13) The 1992 peace accords had been carefully written to get the military out of such a domestic policing role on the sound argument that in any democratic society allowing the military a major, ongoing role in domestic policing is dangerous to democratic institutions. (n 14) As Americans are all too aware in light of their own society's high rate of violent crime, there are no easy solutions to such violence. However, it is very much to be hoped that the El Salvadoran government will respond to crime by reforming and upgrading their police and judicial systems rather than by further involving their military once again in domestic policing. The second critical issue confronting the peace accord in El Salvador is what will happen if, as seems quite possible in light of the March 1997 elections, the FMLN candidate defeats the ARENA candidate in the 1999 presidential election. In the March 1997 elections the total ARENA vote (396, 301) was only slightly ahead of the total FMLN vote (369, 709). (n 15) If the FMLN wins, will ARENA allow it to take power, or will it attempt, as conservative forces did after the 193 ] and 1972 elections, to have the military annul the elections?
ARENAs predicament is aggravated by its long-term political strategy. After their decisive victories in the 1989 and 1994 presidential elections the leadership of ARENA began to style themselves as the El Salvadoran version of the long-dominant Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), assuming that they would never have to yield the presidency because they would have a secure majority of the national vote. (n 16) The accelerating disintegration of the PRIs lock on the Mexican political process that has taken place in the past three years should have been a warning to ARENA. In the event that they somehow missed this warning, their own electoral setbacks in the March 1997 legislative and municipal elections were unambiguous. ARENA is thus faced with the same sort of painful dilemma that the apartheid government in South Africa faced with respect to the African National Congress (ANC) and that the Israelis faced with respect to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO): Do they have enough faith that the peace process will hold up to allow their one-time implacable foes into positions of real political power? No one can say for certain what ARENAs leaders would do if such a moment of truth was to come in 1999, but the following analogy gives ground for hope. In October 1975 I attended a press conference in Israel by Yitzak Rabin, the countrys prime minister.
Rabin was asked if Israel would negotiate with the PLO if it agreed to recognize Israel. Rabin replied tersely: We will never negotiate with the so-called PLO. (In Rabin's eyes the PLO was so illegitimate as a possible negotiating partner that he would not even acknowledge its name. ) Yet in 1993 Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn after signing the Oslo peace accord, demonstrating the wisdom of the aphorism offered by former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson: A week is a long time in politics, and a year is an eternity. In any case, two key lessons from El Salvador's passage from civil strife to civil peace can be briefly summarized as follows. First, there is a saying about terrorist movements to the effect that todays terrorist is tomorrows prime minister. And as the cases of Eamon de Valera, Menachem Begin, John Kenyatta, and Nelson Mendel indicate, there is much truth in this aphorism. One could also say that todays extremist is tomorrows peacemaker.
Specifically, Alfredo Cristiani and the ARENA party, upon coming to power in 1989, were able to be the peacemakers of the El Salvadoran conflict, much as the French national hero Charles de Gaulle got France out of Algeria, the fervent anticommunist Richard Nixon went to China, and the Likud party leader Menachem Begin signed the first Israeli peace treaty with an Arab state. As was the case with each of these men, Cristiani was able to do what more moderate, mainstream politicians could not do: convince their concerned and fearful supporters that it was safe and honorable to peacefully settle a long-standing conflict. Such a lesson may be more broadly applicable to illustrate Northern Ireland, for example. Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, has been savagely attacked by much of the British, American, and Irish media as a terrorist who masquerades as a peacemaker. (n 17) Gerry Adams may well prove to be an effective peacemaker in Northern Ireland precisely because, as someone who has paid his dues with the IRA, he might be able to convince his deeply skeptical and distrustful IRA followers that their long-term aims can best be achieved through peaceful rather than violent means. A second important lesson of the El Salvadoran peace process is that peacemaking is a long-term, protracted process.
A week may be a long time in politics, but peacemaking is not an activity that can be accomplished in weeks. Some twenty years took place between the event that triggered the El Salvadoran civil conflict (the annulling of the 1972 victory of Christian Democratic candidate Jose Napoleon Duarte) and the signing of the peace accords; moreover, as already noted, the peace process in El Salvador still confronts major obstacles. For the United States the key lesson of El Salvador may be precisely that peace processes are protracted, as eloquently described in a 1968 article in Foreign Affairs by the British unconventional warfare expert Sir Robert Thompson: Peoples Revolutionary Wars are by their nature destined to be long, arduous, protracted struggles; but I have no doubt at all that if the means are correctly deployed and applied they can be won. That it will now take much longer is not something the South Vietnamese and their history can be entirely blamed. The question which still has to be answered is whether the United States can do it before it is too late. This is not for me to say.
All I can add is what I said five years ago: If we plan for a long haul, we may get quick results. But if we go for quick results, we may at best get a long haul. (n 18) Conclusion: In the euphoria that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War there were hopes that a New World Order would emerge in which violent conflicts would decline in number and intensity. Sadly, the post-Cold War world today looks a lot more like Rudyard Kiplings Savage Wars of Peace than a peaceful and tranquil New World Order. While not all will agree with John Mearsheimers argument that we will soon miss the Cold War, (n 19) in retrospect it is clear that communism masked and in many cases repressed violent civil conflicts based on racial, ethnic, and religious distinctions. (n 20) As recently as a few decades ago many (if not most) of these bushfire wars could be safely ignored by outsiders; J. Bowyer Bell, a well-traveled student of violent conflict, told me in 1974, Ive been to wars that didnt make it into the New York Times.
In the age of CNN it is no longer so easy to forget about such civil conflicts; it is also no longer correct to assume that such conflicts pose no threats to U. S. national security interests. The Lockerbie bombing in l 988, the World I race Center bombing in 1993, and the recently discovered plans of some Palestinian terrorists to bomb New York Citys subways were all associated with such conflicts. For those violent civil conflicts that do pose a direct or indirect threat to U. S.
national security interests, the most appropriate U. S. response may be to undertake peacemaking initiatives. In such future U.
S. peacemaking initiatives, it is to be hoped that the lessons of the El Salvadoran peace process will be remembered and will not have to be relearned at a great cost in lives lost and resources wasted. References: (n 1. ) Patti Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997). (n 2. ) Talleyrand's comment was in response to Napoleons execution of a young duke of the Bourbon family, Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Conde. In March 1804 Napoleon, after having heard (erroneous) reports that the duke was part of a plot to overthrow him, had the duke summarily executed.
Napoleon received much criticism at home and abroad for having executed an innocent man. (n 3. ) Victor M. Rosello, Lessons from El Salvador, Parameters 23 (Winter 1993 / 1994), p. 104. (n 4. ) Ernesto she Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Vintage, 1967), p. 2. While there is much truth in Guevaras argument, one must be careful not to assume that democratic elections, in and of themselves, automatically inoculate a democratic government from being overthrown by a revolutionary movement. The Nazi movements overthrow of the Weimar Republic in 1933 and the considerable success of the Tupamaros against Uruguay's elected government and of Sender Luminoso against Peru's elected government show that, particularly during periods of severe economic depression, the publics of democratic societies are willing to give considerable support to revolutionary movements. (n 5. ) Interviews with Dr. Tommie Sue Montgomery in May 1997. (n 6. ) The unholy alliance between Israels Jewish fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists is strongly similar to the unholy alliance of the Nazi party and the Communist Party in the Weimar Republic. Specifically, the German communists actively worked to bring the Nazis to power; their slogan was After Hitler, us. (n 7. ) Tommie Sue Montgomery, Constructing Democracy in El Salvador, Current History, February 1997, pp. 61 - 62. (n 8. ) Ibid, p. 61. (n 9. ) For a discussion of the breakdown of democracy in Uruguay, see Arturo C.
Porzecanski, Uruguay's Tupamaros: The Urban Guerrilla (New York: Praeger, 1973); for a discussion of the Uruguayan militarys campaign against the Tupamaros, see F. A. Godfrey, The Latin American Experience: The Tupamaros Campaign in Uruguay, 1963 - 1973, in Armed Forces and Modern Counter-insurgency, ed. Ian F. W. Becket and John Pilot (New York: St.
Martins Press, 1985), pp. 112 - 135. (n 10. ) For a discussion of the fall of the Allende government, see Arturo Valenzuelas essay in The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. Chile, ed. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 3 - 138. (n 11. ) Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), p. 23. (n 12. ) Larry Diamond, Nigeria in Search of Democracy, Foreign Affairs, 62: 4 (Spring 1984), p. 910. (n 13. ) Montgomery, Constructing Democracy in El Salvador, p. 62. (n 14. ) For example, in the United States use of the military to enforce domestic laws is forbidden by the posse cogitates act (Title 18 of the U.
S. Code [Crimes and Criminal Procedures], Section 1385). (n 15. ) Tommie Sue Montgomery, El Salvador's Extraordinary Elections, l: ASA Forum, 28: 1 (Spring 1997), p. 4. (n 16. ) Montgomery, Constructing Democracy in El Salvador, p. 64. (n 17. ) See, for example, Sean OCallaghans article, The Smile on the Face of the Jackal: Inside the IRA, National Review, 49: 1 (January 27, 1997), pp. 31 - 35. (n 18. ) Sir Robert Thompson, Squaring the Error, Foreign Affairs 46 (April 1968), pp. 442 - 443. The title of this article is derived from Sir Roberts pithy summary of the U. S.
effort in Vietnam: The trouble with you Americans is that whenever you double the effort you somehow manage to square the error. (n 19. ) John Mearsheimer, Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War, Atlantic Monthly 266 (August 1990), pp. 35 - 50. (n 20. ) For a thoughtful and stimulating analysis of ethnicity and international politics, see Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandemonium: Ethnicity in International Polities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
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Research essay sample on El Salvador Prime Minister
