ABSTRACT
In July 1982, shortly after the Israeli army encircled Beirut, the chief US representative at the scene, Philip Habib, proposed bringing in a detachment of US Marines to oversee the departure of Palestinian fighters from the city. The process is called consensus decision making. It is a method of splitting the differences. It has the dubious merit of preserving the appearance of harmony in the cabinet and the grave defect that it has no bottom line. By comparison, US policy toward Nicaragua has been a good deal less successful. Some of the more thoughtful people in Congress, after studying the issue, have been unable to divine just what US strategy in Nicaragua is. There are no such milestones as the Enders speech and the Woemer report. Instead, there are four points—democracy, disarmament, expulsion of foreign advisers, and a halt in support of external insurgent groups.
