Not Anything More Than Carter Plus

As the situation in El Salvador continued to take shape under Reagan's administration, the growing chorus of skeptics remained focused on the hardline public rhetoric suggesting that the United States would stop communism at any cost, even if it violated democracy or human rights. Marked increases in military and development aid and strident rhetoric during Reagan's initial year in office in 1981 were just the first steps on a slippery slope of what would be a massive U.S. military involvement in El Salvador. Beneath the surface though, and certainly from what the U.S. Embassy was recommending, the Reagan Doctrine in El Salvador remained Carter plus. Even Reagan himself argued that his approach was a continuation of what his predecessor had started. “They [the Carter administration] were doing what we're doing [in El Salvador]: sending aid…of the same kind we're sending.” In a separate speech to the Organization of American States (OAS), Reagan forcefully defended America's right to stop the communist threat in El Salvador, but added, “We will not walk away from human rights problems.”

At the same time, a mounting chorus of critics interpreted Reagan's initial responses to El Salvador, and more broadly Central America, as inherently radical. One critic wrote in 1981: