There Is No Military Option on Panama

By separating U.S. compliance with the Panama Canal treaties from the issue of Gen. Manuel A. Noriega’s hijacking of Panamanian politics, by consulting the rest of Latin America and by affirming U.S. support for democracy and civilian rule, President Bush has gone most of the way toward establishing the basis for a successful U.S. policy on Panama. The required next step is to cast aside the so-called military option.

This is one of those things that Presidents are never supposed to do. Even liberals like Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) or John Kerry (D-Mass.), insist that we must “never rule out” the military option. If the United States had any military options in Panama that were worth the costs that would be paid in exercising them, reserving the right to unilateral military action might make sense. But the scenarios for the successful use of U.S. military power in Panama are hard to imagine, let alone execute.

The Pentagon is among the first to recognize this. Despite orders from then-President Reagan to draw down the number of dependents who might be in harm’s way in Panama, there are more families of service personnel in and around U.S. bases today than during the last crisis point 14 months ago. Many believe that this is not a bureaucratic snafu, but the Pentagon’s way of complicating an option it doesn’t believe should be carried out.

The Pentagon is thinking long-term. After Noriega, there will still be a Panamanian Defense Force and the need for joint U.S.-Panamanian defense of the canal until 1999. Noriega’s is neither a personal nor a purely military dictatorship. It is a curious, and now perverted, alliance, forged years ago by the late Gen. Omar Torrijos, between a modernizing military and a segment of the professional class. The only surgical removal of Noriega possible is one by his fellow officers. Any U.S. action would almost certainly take the lives of people who favor Noriega’s ouster--other officers and enlisted members of the PDF and some of their civilian supporters.

The Pentagon is also thinking about the precedent to be set if U.S. bases, granted by treaty right to be in a foreign country, are used to mount an attack on that country’s de facto if not de jure government. Already politically difficult situations in Spain, Greece and the Philippines would be made immensely more complicated by the use of U.S. bases in Panama to attempt to remove Noriega.

The rattling of the military option undercuts attempts to persuade our friends in Latin America to take stronger public positions against Noriega. Some may believe that the other democratic governments will be prodded into action by our implicit threat to go it alone if they do not take up the case against Noriega in the Organization of American States or some other forum. The opposite is the case. Latin Americans have two centuries of experience with U.S. unilateralism and are ever vigilant for the first sign of a new offensive. If we wish them to be partners in reinforcing democratic aspirations in Panama, they must believe that the United States is willing to treat them as juridical equals--to consider their counsel and accept the restraint on unilateral action that consultation implies.

Editorialists and other pundits are starting to draw grave analogies between U.S. performance in this crisis and in Nicaragua’s elections scheduled for early next year. If we don’t act tough in Panama, they pronounce, the Sandinistas will conclude that they can get away with fraud or other electoral abuse.

It is not U.S. machismo but our common sense that is being tested in Panama. Unilateral military options to remove Noriega at acceptable costs to U.S. and Latin American interests do not exist. The chances for a successful outcome to the crisis in Panama would be increased, not diminished, by recognizing this simple fact.