Ending the War in Washington

Congress and the Bush Administration are fighting over El Salvador again, but in truth they are really not that far apart. Both sides want to help end El Salvador’s civil war. Both want the fighting there to stop. Both took steps this week to move the process along. They ought to put their heads together and get their political egos out of the way.

The most significant step was the Senate’s vote to trim U.S. military aid to El Salvador. It was a firm message to the Salvadoran military that U.S. taxpayers are weary of paying for an inconclusive 10-year war that has claimed more than 70,000 lives.

Spokesmen for President Bush warned that he might veto the foreign-aid bill. He would prefer a smaller cutback than the 50% approved by the Congress but should reconsider that stance. A veto could undermine a potentially significant effort that the State Department launched to reinvigorate the stalled peace talks in El Salvador.

Thursday, the United States and Soviet Union called on the two sides in the conflict to intensify efforts to negotiate a peace agreement. The joint statement, issued in both Moscow and Washington, marked the first time the Cold War adversaries had cooperated over El Salvador. Washington wants Moscow to use any leverage it has left with Cuba’s Fidel Castro to get him to stop pumping up the Salvadoran guerrillas.

The last time American and Soviet diplomats tried this approach in Central America, it had a salutary effect. Prior to this year’s elections in Nicaragua, U.S. and Soviet diplomats worked out a secret agreement to trim aid to the warring sides there. That agreement helped calm the battlefield standoff between the Soviet-supported Sandinista government and the U.S.-backed Contra rebels.

But El Salvador isn’t Nicaragua. It will take more than superpower goodwill for El Salvador’s rabidly anti-communist military to work out its differences with the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. But once both sides in that sad, bloody war realize they can’t look outside their borders for military aid, the better the chance they will try to bridge the political chasm that divides them. Continuing warfare only widens the gap.