The Contra War was a U.S.-backed campaign against Nicaragua that combined armed attacks with economic pressure and, in the account presented here, deliberate assaults on civilian targets. Its significance lies not only in its human and national cost, but in the contrast between Nicaragua’s resort to international law and the United States’ rejection of the resulting judgment. The episode becomes a test of whether the terms used to condemn terrorism apply consistently when a powerful state is responsible.

Background and Character of the Campaign

In the 1980s, the United States attacked Nicaragua in a campaign described as international terrorism and accompanied by a devastating economic war. Nicaragua was a small country isolated by a superpower; the historian Thomas Walker is cited among those who documented the effects. The account says the country suffered tens of thousands of deaths and was nearly destroyed, with its recovery uncertain.

The campaign’s targets and methods are presented as part of a policy rather than incidental consequences of combat. U.S.-backed forces were instructed to attack weak targets—civilian sites unable to defend themselves, including peasant cooperatives and clinics—instead of confronting the Nicaraguan army directly. They could carry out these attacks with U.S. control of Nicaraguan airspace and sophisticated communications equipment supplied by their protectors. The distinction between attacks on military forces and assaults on vulnerable civilians is central to the book’s characterization of the war.

The campaign also appears in a broader argument about official definitions. The book sets the United States’ definition of terrorism—calculated violence or its threat for political, religious, or ideological aims—beside the official doctrine of low-intensity warfare. It argues that the definitions substantially overlap, so that practices described as state policy can meet the same criteria as acts condemned when committed by non-state groups. The Contra War is offered as a particularly well-documented case for examining that claim.

Legal Challenge and U.S. Response

Nicaragua did not answer the attacks by bombing Washington. It brought its case to the International Court of Justice, which ruled in its favor, ordered the United States to cease its actions, and required substantial reparations. The judgment identified the U.S. conduct as an unlawful use of force for political purposes. Rather than comply, the United States dismissed the ruling and intensified its campaign.

Nicaragua then turned to the United Nations Security Council, where a resolution calling on states to respect international law was proposed. The United States alone vetoed it. Nicaragua subsequently took the case to the United Nations General Assembly, which adopted a similar resolution by majority vote. The United States and Israel voted against such resolutions for two consecutive years; El Salvador joined them on one occasion. In the account’s telling, the sequence makes the war an example not only of violence but of a powerful state resisting both judicial judgment and multilateral censure.

The legal route is presented as a model for responding to atrocities: identify those responsible, establish the evidence, and pursue accountability through legal institutions rather than retaliatory violence. The book adds that, had Nicaragua possessed sufficient power, it might have sought a special criminal tribunal. That possibility underscores the asymmetry in the case: Nicaragua could pursue remedies, but it could not compel the United States to accept them.

Civilian Targets and Political Support

The attacks on civilian sites are described in the U.S. government’s own policy language as operations against weak targets. The examples given are peasant cooperatives and clinics, places whose occupants could not defend themselves. This direction of force away from direct engagement with the Nicaraguan army and toward vulnerable civilians gives the campaign its particular place in the book’s comparison of state and non-state violence.

The account also stresses that the policy had defenders within U.S. public debate. Michael Kinsley, described as a prominent commentator on the liberal edge of the mainstream, argued that the State Department’s case for attacks on weak targets should not be dismissed without considering costs and returns. The proposed calculation weighed increased bloodshed and misery against the probability that democracy would eventually emerge, with democracy understood in the U.S. sense. The example shows how civilian suffering could be acknowledged within an argument that still treated the policy as potentially justified.

The political climate is further illustrated by the treatment of Nicaragua’s right to defend itself. Across the conventional U.S. political spectrum, that right was regarded as scandalous, while the United States pressed allies to stop supplying Nicaragua with arms. The account says the pressure was intended to leave Russia as the alternative supplier, a development useful to U.S. propaganda. The Reagan administration also allowed rumors to circulate that Nicaragua was receiving Russian fighter aircraft to defend its airspace against U.S. attacks. The rumors were false; nevertheless, some critics of the administration said that if they proved true, the United States should bomb Nicaragua because it would pose a security threat. The book reads the scarcity of discussion about Nicaragua’s right to self-defense as evidence of a deeply rooted political culture that normalized such reasoning.

Consequences and Wider Significance

The Contra War is placed among U.S. wars of terror in Central America during the 1980s. Together, these conflicts are said to have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and left four countries in ruins. Nicaragua is thus both a specific case, with a ruling from the International Court of Justice, and part of a larger regional pattern.

Its principal contrast is between two possible responses to political violence. Nicaragua pursued litigation, reparations, and international resolutions; the United States rejected the court’s judgment, vetoed a Security Council resolution, and intensified the attacks. The account does not treat legal recourse as proof that the conflict was resolved. Instead, the failure to secure compliance exposes the limits of international institutions when a powerful state refuses their authority.

That contrast also anchors the book’s wider critique of the language of terrorism. If terrorism is defined by the calculated use or threat of violence to achieve political ends, then the identity of the actor should not determine whether the definition applies. The Contra War makes that question concrete: civilian targets, state policy, judicial findings, and rejected remedies appear together, challenging the division between terrorism attributed to enemies and violence described as legitimate when carried out by a state.