Messrs. van den Haag and Farer are the co-authors of U.S. Ends and Means in

Central America: A Debate and they know their stuff--although, as their book title

suggests, they disagree on what those ends and means should be. Mr. Farer takes a laid-

back, laissez-faire view of the Soviets' potential installation of missiles in Latin America

("We have the means to act directly and immediately to deal with it, which ... makes it

very unlikely that it would be attempted"), Mr. van den Haag takes a more pre-emptive

view ("It may not be a reasonable thing for the Soviet Union to place nuclear arms in

Cuba, but they did it. And I see no reason to believe they may not act equally irrationally

in some Central American republic.... We should be ready"), and Mr. Buckley keeps

them on track ("One can't reasonably assume that the Soviet Union is going to invest a

billion dollars a year in Nicaragua, which I am told has been done for the last four years,

unless they intend to do something other than to Bolshevize the bananas").