TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010190/01019003.000

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 16.5 KB | 311 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.