Central America at the crossroads.

CENTRAL AMERICA AT THE CROSSROADS

FOR THE last seven years, America has been acting as policeman at the juncture between North and South America. From Guatemala and El Salvador to Costa Rica and Panama, the Reagan Doctrine has meant a policy that is steadfastly anti-Communist, anti-terrorist, and pro-democratic. But today, Central American leaders are wondering whether U.S. policy will change after the November presidential elections.

Oscar Arias's recent remarks at a meeting in Washington with Vice President Bush imply that Central Americans are hedging their bets. The Nobel Prize-winning president of Costa Rica told Bush that U.S. policy toward Noriega is not going to force him from office, although it will hurt Panama's economy. Arias also called on the U.S. to pressure the Contras to reach an accord with the Sandinistas. One day later, he turned his rhetoric on Gorbachev, accusing the Soviets of "not doing all in their power" to force the Sandinistas to pursue reconciliation with their democratic opposition.

But all this is optics. Arias badly wants the Panama problem and the Managua threat settled before Reagan returns to California next January. And, secretly, many other Central American leaders feel the same way. Confronted in the early 1980s with Nicaragua's massive military buildup and support for terrorist movements in Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, these leaders welcomed a get-tough U.S. policy to counter Soviet and Cuban meddling.

However, these same leaders are mostly constrained by their countries' cultural and political Zeitgeist to criticize any U.S., as well as Soviet, intervention in the region's affairs. The potency of the "Yankee Bigfoot" image was revealed again recently by the reaction to the proposal to nominate William Walker as U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica. Walker has the misfortune of having the same name as an American freebooter who briefly took over Nicaragua in the mid nine-teenth century and then tried to annex Costa Rica. That earlier Walker met with a firing squad more than one hundred years ago, but memories are long in Latin America, and any memory lapses were remedied by a motion picture on the subject recently released. After an outcry from Costa Ricans, the twentieth-century Walker's nomination was scuttled.

What Latin leaders want is for the U.S. to hold the stick so that they can offer the carrot. This strategy has worked particularly well for Arias, allowing him to win a Nobel Peace Prize and pursue his dream of building an international "peace" consensus on - Central America. This December, he plans a "Peace Grand Prix" in Costa Rica, to be attended by a large cast of celebrities and hosted by Mario Andretti. Arias is also banking on the Costa Rican women's swim team to pick up some gold medals at the Seoul Olympics to help draw world attention to Central America. By elevating the region's standing in the world, he hopes to make superpower meddling by East or West henceforth unrespectable. But he doesn't have long: his term is up in 1990 and he cannot be re-elected.

The growing cloud over Arias's dream is the persistent problem of drug trafficking. Whereas the menace in Latin America used to be Marxism, today it is narcoticism, a non-ideological plague. And what makes this plague nearly ineradicable is the power of hard currency. Narcotics provide a sturdy export crop in a continent where exports-coffee, bananas, timber - have always been the source of wealth. If Noriega gets away with an empire built on narcotics, others will follow suit. Unlike other exports with fluctuating prices, narcotics guarantee a steady flow of earnings, because of the continuing demand from the developed countries. In the long run, the corruption the drug trade brings may well deprive Arias of his dream of making Central America look good. However, with the drug issue rising prominently in American presidential politics, U.S. policy toward the region is moving from anti-Communism to anti-narcoticism, or so many politicians in Washington are concluding. That is why Central Americans are watching anxiously to see whether the U.S. will force Noriega out, and what it will do if he goes.

From Guatemala in the north to Panama in the south, the region is at a crossroads. If Noriega outlasts Reagan, the effect will be colossal. Central American leaders will conclude that the Reagan Doctrine failed in ousting both the Sandinistas and the drug peddler. The result will be a headlong rush toward geopolitical neutrality and domestic corruption, plus an historic loss of U.S. regional influence.

PHOTO : "I sailed beyond my depth."