United States argument over Central America, 1981-1986: A study of congressional debates over United States policy towards Nicaragua, with special reference to the House of Representatives

This dissertation offers a contribution to the study of the conflicting discourses that emanated from the legislative branch of the United States government regarding the conflicts and tensions in Central America, and regarding the role of the United States with respect to the region, in the years 1981-1986. It presents an overview of the congressional debate over U.S. policy towards Nicaragua, one of the two countries of the region that engaged the U.S. Congress's attention the most (the other being El Salvador), and then focuses on two floor debates in the House of Representatives that were of particular importance with respect to U.S. policy towards Nicaragua: the one held in 1983 over the Boland-Zablocki bill that attempted to cut off U.S. covert support for the Nicaraguan insurgents or "Contras" fighting against the Sandinista government, and the debate held in June 1986 that culminated in congressional approval of a $100 million military and nonmilitary package for the Contras requested by the Reagan administration. Congressional decisions are heavily influenced by deliberation and debate, that is by argument. The full gamut of policy options compatible with Congress's representative character can be found nowhere better than in Congress itself. These options are expressed discursively, and to study conflicts over policy, to an important degree, is to study discursive conflicts. The dissertation examines the centrality of rhetoric, or persuasive argument, to politics, and the dependence of rhetoric upon discourse. It then applies a novel tripartite classification of discourses of virtue, rights, and manners, suggested by the work of Nicholas G. Onuf to the two key House debates mentioned above. It concludes from the analysis of the arguments offered in the debates that the outcome of the battle over U.S. policy towards Nicaragua in the House was discursively determined: for all the strenuous and sometimes spectacular opposition to Contra aid, debate was bound, under certain conditions, to favor the policy in favor of such aid advocated by the Reagan administration.