ABSTRACT
In the early 1960s, John F. Kennedy (JFK) offered his classic characterization of the options for US policy in developing regions undergoing rapid social change: We have three choices in descending order of acceptability—a decent democratic regime, another dictatorship, a communist government. In the perceived emergency of the guerrilla offensive in El Salvador in late 1980 and early 1981 and perhaps flush with November victory, the Reagan administration forgot for a time the fundamental lesson of North American politics identified by JFK: “decent democracies” must be the goal of a sustainable US policy toward Latin America. Nicaragua policy has never displayed the agility on the part of the administration that was demonstrated in El Salvador. A fundamental reason for this is that the administration has never been confronted with an alternative policy by Congress. There are various ways to resolve this dilemma of US policy toward Nicaragua.
