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

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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


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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


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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