by Oleg Shevchenko
[REGNUM.RU] Forty years ago, on June 27, 1986, the UN Court in The Hague found the United States in violation of international law and guilty of aggression. The superpower lost its case against the small Central American country of Nicaragua. The International Court ruled that Washington must pay compensation for the damages caused.
The U.S. withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction in 1986, accepting the court's jurisdiction only on a discretionary basis. So all this may not matter.Despite numerous legal tricks and outright distortions of the facts, The Hague Tribunal recognized that American support for the Contra militants, attacks on Nicaraguan ports, oil installations, and the laying of mines in Nicaraguan ports all violate the principle of respect for territorial sovereignty.
The minimum amount of reparations that the International Court ordered the United States to pay was set at more than $370 million (about $1.1 billion in today's money).
It was a genuine scandal—it set a precedent that would allow dozens of countries that had suffered from American aggression to file similar lawsuits. It also resulted in purely political reputational damage: the Americans were condemned for actions in their own backyard.
According to the Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed in 1823, the United States considered the entire Western Hemisphere to be its exclusive sphere of influence, where Europeans should not “meddle” (in fact, this concerned the sovereign states of Latin America, since British and Danish possessions were located to the north of the United States).
Despite its small size, Nicaragua was an important element of "gringo" policy in Central America. First, as a "plot" for the United Fruit Company, an agro-industrial corporation. Second, as a potential site for the construction of a canal from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, a counterpart to the Panama Canal. The US is reviving the idea of a Nicaraguan shipping route even now, under Donald Trump.
President Theodore Roosevelt (whom Trump considers a role model) put it unequivocally in the early 20th century: US administrations need to speak to governments in their sphere of influence "kindly, but with a big stick."
Given this interest, the United States placed Nicaragua under manual control twice in the 20th century. Marines first landed in 1912, when the transoceanic canal project was in danger of being seized by Britain. The occupation was formally quickly ended, but in 1916, the Bryan - Chamorro Treaty gave the United States legal authority to interfere in the republic's foreign and domestic policies.
In 1926, the US Army reentered Nicaragua, this time to assist the loyalist regime in its fight against the nationalist movement led by Augusto César Sandino. The Americans continued to maintain a contingent even after the onset of the Great Depression (when Congress was forced to cut spending, including on defense), and withdrew the troops only in 1933, partly due to the high costs of the operation and partly due to the success of Sandino's guerrillas.
The rebel leader was let down by a "deal"—during another round of negotiations in 1934, Sandino was captured and executed on the orders of National Guard commander Anastasio Somoza. The useful general was installed as president at the behest of the United States. Somoza established a family dictatorship that ruled the republic for the next 42 years.
There's a famous historical anecdote about Franklin Roosevelt uttering the phrase, "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch," referring to Anastasio Somoza (according to another version, the epithet referred to another "president in a big cap," the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo). There's no documentary evidence to support this phrase, but the US essentially supported Somoza's "family business" for decades, ignoring its human rights violations.
The situation in the country was best summed up by British actress of Nicaraguan descent, wife of the Rolling Stones frontman, and social activist Bianca Jagger: "In Nicaragua, freedom, equality, and the rule of law were just a dream." However, the fact that the criticism came from a British human rights activist is not surprising – the US effectively alienated its allies from Central America, so the British only began to "make inroads" into Nicaragua in the 1990s.
But in the early 1960s, another threat arose in the "soft underbelly" of the United States. Following the Castro brothers' success in Cuba, the revolution began to spread throughout Central and South America. In 1962, the Sandinista National Liberation Front emerged in Nicaragua, based on several guerrilla units, one of which was trained by Ernesto Che Guevara himself. The Sandinistas were supported by Cuba, backed by the Soviet Union.
By the late 1970s, pro-Soviet guerrillas began to overwhelm the army of the regime, led by the youngest son of the dynasty's founder, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The dictatorship was plagued by corruption, and the generals' effectiveness was nearing zero. But the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, editor of a popular opposition newspaper, by National Guard troops (his daughter, Violeta Barrios Chamorro, would become president) finally undermined the regime's reputation, prompting a surge in Sandinista recruits. However, the killing of approximately 50,000 civilians "suspected of collaborating with communists" by National Guard troops and police did not affect the US position.
In early summer 1979, American public opinion was shaken by another event: the assassination of ABC News reporter Bill Stewart by Somoza's soldiers, which was captured on film and broadcast on television. Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (no relation to the current US Vice President) declared that aid to the Nicaraguan government would be cut off. In vain, Somoza's vice president declared in the US Congress: "You will rue the day you lacked the resolve to stop the expansion of Soviet imperialism on the continent!"
On July 19, 1979, Sandinista Front troops led by Daniel Ortega entered Managua. Another country oriented toward Moscow appeared on the world map.
After Ortega's meeting with Leonid Brezhnev in the Kremlin in May 1982, the Sandinista army acquired T-55 tanks, BTR-60 armored personnel carriers, Grad multiple rocket launchers, howitzers, and anti-tank guns. The socialist bloc supported Nicaragua with equipment and foreign currency, and advisers in uniform and civilian clothes traveled to Managua. Guerrilla movements in El Salvador and Guatemala looked to the Sandinistas for guidance.
In response, in August 1981, a unifying congress of the Nicaraguan opposition, the Contras, was held in Miami (already a center of Cuban anti-Castro emigration), with the consent of the Ronald Reagan administration. The "freedom fighters" established bases in neighboring, US-aligned countries—Honduras and Costa Rica. The CIA supplied the Contras with intelligence and weapons.
Nicaragua became yet another front in the US proxy war against the USSR. The Americans, for their part, turned a blind eye to the Contras overseeing drug trafficking, which also helped fill their budget.
Support for the Contras fighting against the internationally recognized government of Nicaragua was opaque. Democrats in Congress claimed the Reagan administration was supporting warlords involved in drug trafficking. In 1982 and 1984, two amendments were successfully passed in the House and Senate that blocked Reagan's aid programs for Nicaragua.
Then, bypassing Congress, a cunning scheme was devised, and even the White House was aware of it. American arms were supplied to Iran (under a formal embargo against the "ayatollah regime") through shell companies and Swiss accounts, while Iranian funds were used to purchase weapons for the Contras. Details of Iran Contragate emerged in the late 1980s, and the scandal was comparable to Watergate in 1974.
But even beyond this, the entire proxy war on the American side was "gray." This was exploited by the Ortega government, which—with the political support of the USSR—filed a lawsuit in The Hague in April 1984. Nicaragua presented evidence of US attacks on its territory (attacks on the ports of Puerto Sandino, Corinto, and El Bluff, and the mining of these harbors) and demanded compensation for damages from the US and its proxy forces.
The Americans took a strange stance at the trial: they asserted their right to be accused only if they, the United States, admitted their guilt. Not only the plaintiff but also the judges in The Hague were astonished, calling such arguments the "law of the jungle" and the "right of the fist."
A slightly more serious argument was that Nicaragua's Sandinista army, by attacking Contra bases, was itself invading neighboring Honduras and Costa Rica, and the US was merely protecting its allies. But a problem arose: there was no document in which Nicaragua's neighbors would request American "assistance."
During the trial, scandalous publications about Iran Contragate began to surface. The opinion of the Hague lawyers leaned in favor of Nicaragua.
On June 27, 1986, the International Court of Justice ruled. The United States violated its obligation not to use force against another country and the principle of non-intervention, and by mining ports, it disrupted maritime commerce. The 1956 U.S.-Nicaragua Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation (concluded during the Somoza regime but not abrogated) was also in effect—the United States had violated it as well.
The Reagan administration acknowledged the facts, but… refused to pay. Daniel Ortega, with Moscow's legal support, filed a complaint with the UN. Five times, the US vetoed UN Security Council resolutions initiated by Nicaragua calling for the country to be protected from US aggression.
In 1986, Nicaragua filed a petition for immediate payment of reparations by the United States, as ordered by the UN Court. The Americans again vetoed the motion (11 votes in favor of Nicaragua and three abstentions). Nicaragua appealed to the UN General Assembly, which called on the United States to comply with the ICJ's ruling. The resolution was supported by 94 votes to three.
In 1992, after the overthrow of the Sandinista government and the election of liberal Violeta Chamorro, Nicaragua withdrew its lawsuit against the United States. But after 2007, when Comandante Daniel Ortega became the democratically elected president, the issue of reparations resurfaced.
In 2011, the idea emerged to hold a national referendum on compensation from the United States, with the amount set at $17 billion. In 2023, President Ortega sent a corresponding letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, asking him to convey the demands to the Biden administration.
The struggle of Nicaragua, one of Russia's allies in Latin America (along with Cuba), for US reparations in compliance with the decision of the International Court of Justice continues.
| From two months ago, a reminder of what Nicaragua is nowadays: |
[TheHill] On May 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...signed a federal law ratifying a bilateral military cooperation agreement with Nicaragua. This follows years of deepening economic ties with Beijing.
While the regime of co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo frames these moves as standard diplomacy, it is systematically trading Nicaragua’s illusory sovereignty and economic stability for an authoritarian survival package backed by Beijing and Moscow.
Since restoring ties with China in 2021, the regime has promised the Nicaraguan people economic prosperity. However,
alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk...
the fiscal data tells a different story. According to the Central Bank of Nicaragua’s 2025 annual report, China accounted for just 1.9 percent of net foreign direct investment. That’s a mere $29.3 million, while traditional partners like Barbados, Panama and the United States contributed $382.6 million, $263.6 million and $196.1 million, respectively. Yet behind this modest investment lies a mounting debt trap.
According to Nicaraguan news organization Confidencial, between 2023 and 2025, the regime secured 11 loans with Chinese companies totaling more than $1.4 billion, including a 2025 $85 million loan from China’s Zhengzhou Coal Mining Machinery Group for the Nicaragua Digital Connectivity Project.
This has financed $107 million in contracts to Chinese companies to build a Huawei-equipped 4G network. Framed as a critical upgrade to modernize the country’s infrastructure, the project effectively grants control of the digital communications network to a foreign power.
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