It’s Precarious

The events are continuing that may in the end push Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega from power in Panama. But it looks as if his departure will be neither swift nor easy, especially if he has anything to say about it.

That President Eric Arturo Delvalle’s courageous attempt to fire Noriega as head of the armed forces, and actual ruler of the country, ended in failure may be due to miscalculation, ineptitude or plain bad luck, in proportions yet unknown. No other military officer rose from the ranks to challenge Noriega, and the initial support for Delvalle from other Latin American nations was at best tepid.

The U.S. role was accurately if inadvertently disclosed by White House spokesman Martin Fitzwater. “We have a precarious role,” he said. “We want to be careful not to unduly intrude upon the affairs of Panama.” To intrude, but not unduly, is what the United States, hoping to ease or push Noriega out, has been trying to do for some months, but he has refused to go, even when threatened with drug-running indictments recently handed down in Florida.

The very word Panama seems to excite the jingo in some U.S. politicians. Vice President George Bush said that he would “reserve the right to do whatever is necessary, including military force, to protect America’s sacred interest in that part of the world.” But, as Bush himself added, the history of U.S. intervention in Latin American affairs is “what’s hurting us in some areas now.” It may not be too much to hope that eventually the Panamanian opposition to Noriega, the country’s economic plight and pressure from the United States and, you can hope, other Latin American nations will get Noriega out. In the meantime the watchword for the United States should be: Keep cool.