TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/010190/01019003.000

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 17KB | 292 lines

NATION, Page 20

Showing Muscle

With the invasion of Panama, a bolder -- and riskier Bush foreign

policy emerges

By George J. Church


    All afternoon George Bush acted the gracious host to 50 old
friends and family members at a White House Christmas party,
singing carols and taking groups of children on the ultimate guided
tour (only the presidential bedroom was off limits). As the guests
were leaving, a group of men slipped from behind the security
screens on the ground floor and headed for the elevator to the
family living quarters. But their timing was slightly off. They ran
into the last departing guest, a woman who recognized them: Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Dick
Cheney, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and White House
spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. "Oh, oh," the woman remarked. "Business
as usual."

    Not quite. The group was on its way to plan the biggest U.S.
military operation since Viet Nam: the invasion of Panama, launched
two nights later. But perhaps she was not totally mistaken. If war
preparations are scarcely usual in the Bush White House, they are
not as stunningly out of character as they would have seemed only
a few months ago. The Panama invasion marks the latest, but far
from the first, stage in a monumental transformation of George
Bush: from a President whose overriding imperative during his
initial months in office was to avoid doing "something dumb," to
a self-confident chief mapping a bold and individual -- if not
always prudent -- foreign policy that he is quite willing to back
with military force.

    Nor does Bush hesitate these days to take long risks. The
Panama invasion was supposed to accomplish three goals: 1) swiftly
rout resistance; 2) capture the country's dictator, Manuel Antonio
Noriega, and bring him to trial in the U.S. on drug-running
charges; 3) install a stable, democratic government headed by
politicians who had apparently won May elections, which Noriega
later overruled.

    But if the invasion turned out to be less than fully
successful, the Administration would be running grave dangers. At
the extreme, it could bog down in a Viet Nam-style guerrilla war
directed by a fugitive Noriega in the jungles. The Panamanian
government that the U.S. installed may be regarded as American
puppets; President Guillermo Endara was sworn in by a Panamanian
judge, but on an American military base at about the time the
attack started. A drawn-out crisis could sour U.S. relations with
other Latin American nations, eternally nervous about Yanqui
intervention against however noxious a government.

    It was impossible to tell whether the invasion would end up
more like Viet Nam or more like Grenada. Some 24,000 U.S. troops
had quickly taken command of most of Panama and overwhelmed
organized resistance by the Panama Defense Forces, Noriega's
combination army and police. But Noriega got away and was thought
to be hiding in the forests or even in the sprawling capital city;
the U.S. offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his
capture.

    American troops faced a tough battle to restore order in Panama
City, where looters, some reportedly shouting, "Viva Bush!"
ransacked stores and homes and where Noriega's misnamed Dignity
Battalions, a paramilitary force, were putting up a
street-to-street fight. Noriega's loyalists, apparently at his
direction, staged hit-and-run attacks. On Friday, two days after
American military commanders began declaring victory, they fired
shells at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command. The
Pentagon admitted that its forces had encountered stiffer
resistance than expected, and Bush ordered an additional 2,000
troops to Panama as reinforcements. Meanwhile, Endara and his Vice
Presidents were still unable to exert much authority or start
acting like a government, and some U.S. officials were worried
about whether they had the leadership ability to do so.

    On the other hand, most of the world signaled its willingness
to adapt to the U.S. action -- presuming it was successful. At home
both parties in Congress generally applauded the effort to get rid
of the egregious Noriega. "At last," said Wisconsin Democrat Les
Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Latin
American nations issued formal condemnations of the intervention,
but one did not have to read very far between the lines to detect
a sigh of relief that the brutal Panamanian dictator had got his
comeuppance. The 32-member Organization of American States
"regretted," but did not quite condemn, the invasion. In recent
months many Latin leaders had privately expressed their revulsion
toward Noriega. Nonetheless, no Latin nation would immediately
recognize the Endara government, and Peru recalled its Ambassador
to Washington in protest. The Soviet Union denounced the invasion
as a violation of international law but hastily added that it saw
no reason why that should damage East-West relations. The unspoken
message seemed to be that Moscow would recognize a sphere of
influence in which the U.S. could operate with a free hand so long
as Washington returned the favor.

    Much could change, however, if the U.S. is unable to bring home
quickly the 11,000 extra troops it dispatched for the invasion
(13,000 were already on hand at permanent bases in Panama). After
the far smaller invasion of Grenada, U.S. forces remained for six
weeks; the Marines who invaded the Dominican Republic to thwart a
leftist coup in 1965 were not completely withdrawn for 18 months.

    At minimum Washington will have to rebuild a Panamanian economy
that American sanctions against Noriega have shattered.
Unemployment in Panama has passed 20% and the banking system is a
shambles, scarcely an environment conducive to stable democracy.
Rebuilding could take years and put a new strain on a U.S. budget
already heavily in deficit.

    None of which fazed George Bush in the slightest. At a news
conference Thursday the usually reserved President seemed almost
cocky. American casualties in the Panama operation -- more than a
score dead and 200 wounded at week's end -- were heartbreaking but
nevertheless "worth it," said Bush. He closed with a note of
defiant self-confidence: "I have an obligation as President to
conduct the foreign policy of this country the way I see fit ...
if the American people don't like it, I expect they'll get somebody
else to take my job, but I'm going to keep doing it."

    That did not sound much like the President who was roundly
denounced as a wimp as recently as October, when the U.S. stood
aside as a Panamanian coup against Noriega failed and the dictator
executed its leaders. But the October episode aside, Bush has been
displaying a new vigor and assurance in foreign policy for months
now. The Panama invasion only pointed it up. "I think there are an
awful lot of people out there who may have had some erroneous
impressions of the President who had them dramatically changed in
the last several weeks or so," says House Republican leader Robert
Michel. A White House official adds that the President is delighted
to have put to rest the frequent stories from the 1988 campaign
"about how George Bush is run by his handlers and can't do anything
on his own."

    Bush began acting very much on his own last May, when he put
together U.S. proposals for sweeping cuts in conventional forces
in Europe that pleased the NATO allies and intrigued the Soviets.
In July he followed up by secretly inviting Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev to the summit off Malta. Bush had insisted that
it would be a get-acquainted session without an agenda, but at
their meeting in early December he handed Gorbachev a list of 21
American proposals that drew a generally favorable response.
Simultaneously, the President authorized  U.S. aircraft to go into
action in the Philippines, helping squelch an attempted coup
against President Corazon Aquino by flying "cover" over rebel air
bases and preventing mutineer pilots from taking off.

    Not all Bush's initiatives have come across as wise. The
President seemed to be toadying to the communist Chinese rulers who
massacred pro-democracy demonstrators last June. He made a mockery
of his sanctions against Beijing -- which called for, among other
things, a ban on high-level political exchanges -- by twice sending
Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to the
Chinese capital; their first visit, in July, came to light only
last week. Beijing has yet to reciprocate with any significant
concession, and last week expressed "utmost shock and strong
condemnation" of the Panama invasion. But the U.S. moves furthered
a bold and individual policy. Bush, who was once envoy to China,
believes the strategic relationship with the Middle Kingdom to be
all important and is willing to nurture it at whatever cost in
criticism.

    Bush still has what ballplayers call "rabbit ears," which pick
up even the smallest criticism. Administration officials
acknowledge that all his initiatives (other than China) were in
part responses to carping, real or potential. Early on, the
President was assailed for being too cautious in dealing with arms
control and Gorbachev. Had he let a coup topple Aquino, he would
have been denounced for losing a democratically elected ally in the
Philippines.

    The President, at minimum, seems to have decided that it is
better to be criticized for action than for dithering. His growing
self-confidence has been helped along, aides assert, by his
well-developed personal relations with other world leaders, whom
he incessantly writes and telephones. (Bush and Vice President Dan
Quayle were busy until 3 o'clock the night of the Panama invasion,
calling foreign leaders to inform them of the President's
decision.) These contacts, aides say, have given Bush a feel for
how the world will react to any particular U.S. move -- or, in
other words, for what he can and cannot get away with.

    A less attractive aspect of the President's new decisiveness
is his obsession with secrecy. There is an aura of scary smugness
about Bush these days, a schoolboyish delight in saying, as he did
to reporters about the Malta summit, "I knew something you didn't."
Secrecy obviously is necessary in planning something like a Panama
invasion. But Bush and his confidants have on occasion carried it
to the point of deliberately misleading Congress and the public --
not to mention ranking members of their own Administration -- as
with the supposed ban on high-level political talks with the
Chinese.

    The Panama decision in particular was held within a small
circle; Joint Chiefs spokesman Colonel William Smullen asserts that
"there were a handful, really a small number, of people in this
entire building ((the Pentagon)) who knew this operation was going
to happen." In retrospect, though, the invasion looks inevitable.
The U.S. through two Administrations built Noriega into a menacing
monster -- instead of what he was, the tin-pot dictator of a not
very important country -- and put its credibility on the line in
declaring that he had to go. But everything Washington tried --
propaganda, economic sanctions, attempts to foment a coup --
failed. The Pentagon prepared fresh contingency plans for an
invasion at least as early as last spring; they were the subject
of one of the first briefings Defense Secretary Cheney received
when he took over. The plans were updated in the summer, and much
more intensively by Joint Chiefs Chairman Powell after the
unsuccessful Oct. 3 coup. Stung by the derisive criticism about his
inaction then, Bush appeared to be waiting eagerly for some
justification to send in the troops.

    Noriega obligingly provided it. The dictator had his
rubber-stamp People's Assembly name him "Maximum Leader" and
declare that American provocations created a "state of war" between
the two countries. That coincided with attacks on U.S. servicemen
in Panama. There had previously been hundreds of similar incidents
and not all one-sided; in an altercation outside a laundry in
Panama City, a U.S. officer, who was not supposed to be carrying
a gun, shot and wounded a Panamanian. It is possible too that
Washington took Noriega's declaration of "war" more seriously than
it was intended. Nonetheless, the President and his aides feared
that Noriega had finally succumbed to hubris and lost all
restraint.

    The Sunday, Dec. 17, meeting in the White House following the
Christmas party "started as an in-depth briefing" of Bush by his
senior aides, says a participant. The President was especially
infuriated to hear details of the incident in which an American
Navy lieutenant was pulled out of a car and beaten by Panama
Defense Forces soldiers while his wife was threatened with gang
rape. "Enough is enough," said Bush. "This guy (Noriega) is not
going to lay off. It will only get worse."

    The meeting turned to a consideration of options. One was a
"surgical" paramilitary attempt to capture Noriega. It was rejected
as too iffy and risky (probably wisely, in view of the later
inability of American forces to snatch the dictator during the
invasion). Powell outlined the plan for a full invasion,
forthrightly telling Bush that "there is no way this operation is
not going to result in casualties" among both U.S. servicemen and
Panamanian civilians. Bush listened and then simply said, "Let's
do it" -- by far the most fateful three words of his presidency to
date.

    Among other reasons, the invasion was notable as perhaps the
biggest U.S. foreign policy venture in 40 years that had nothing
to do with containment of communism. Nobody ever pretended to find
reds among Noriega's entourage or voiced any fear that Panama would
go communist. Communism also was only a peripheral issue in the
Philippines intervention. One reason the Philippine military
dislikes Aquino is that it feels she has not been vigorous enough
in suppressing communist guerrillas. But the main issue for Bush
was simply the survival of a democratically elected government that
Washington had helped to install in place of the late dictator
Ferdinand Marcos. In fact, Bush has militarily intervened for the
most part where communism was not an issue. Where it is, his record
is mixed: military aid to anticommunist forces in Afghanistan and
El Salvador but attempts to find a political solution in Cambodia
and Nicaragua.

    Does this suggest a new post-cold-war foreign policy that casts
the U.S. as a different kind of world policeman, acting to save
democracy rather than to stop Soviet expansionism? Administration
officials vehemently deny any attempt to proclaim a Bush Doctrine
of once a democracy always a democracy -- a mirror image of the now
discredited Brezhnev Doctrine of once communist ever communist.

    White House aides point out that Bush's policies, notably the
cozying up to China, are not always pro-democracy. The Philippines
and Panama were special cases in which the U.S. had historic ties
with the countries involved, major assets to protect -- the Panama
Canal and sea and air bases in the Philippines -- and strong
military forces on the scene and ready for action. Says a senior
Administration official: "It's always nice, of course, when you can
intervene on behalf of democrats, but that's not always possible."

    On the other hand, officials affirm that Bush is showing a new
willingness to use American military power to further U.S.
interests that have little or nothing to do with communism --
suppressing drug traffic or terrorism, for example. U.S. helicopter
pilots have been supporting drug-eradication efforts in Peru and
Guatemala, though Peru last week called a halt to joint antidrug
action in protest against the Panama invasion. The Washington Post
has quoted Joint Chiefs Chairman Powell as telling colleagues that
"we have to put a shingle outside our door saying SUPERPOWER LIVES
HERE, no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from
Eastern Europe." That may be a better summary of the reasoning
behind the Panama invasion than any other.

    But all that comes with a gigantic if: it assumes the operation
in Panama will succeed quickly at a relatively light cost. Of all
the lessons of foreign policy, the one that seems to apply most
directly to Panama is that a fait accompli will be accepted by
domestic and world opinion -- but that few setbacks are as damaging
as a fait accompli that is not quite accompli.