The limits of solidarity: The Soviet Union, Nicaragua, and a decade of Sandinista rule

The most vexing and divisive foreign policy issue for the United States in the 1980s concerned the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and its relationship with the Soviet Union. Fear of such a relationship and its anticipated consequences for American security interests led the United States to undertake a series of controversial actions to limit, if not eliminate, ties between Moscow and Managua. Most of these actions were concentrated on the Sandinistas themselves, but on occasion the U.S.S.R. was directly involved. American hostility toward revolutionary Nicaragua, however, served only to accelerate the very process the U.S. actions were meant to counter: close and intimate relations between Nicaragua and the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R. was certainly sympathetic toward the Sandinista cause, and provocative American moves to destabilize the revolutionary regime merely forced the Soviets to increase their own commitments to help defined Nicaragua.