Expediency Does What Principle Should : Panama: Our neighbors watch in wonder as Washington debates the coup debacle from every angle but the moral one.

As seen from Washington, the failed coup against Manuel Noriega was either a missed opportunity or a close call: Disaster awaited the imprudent or over-enthusiastic if they had prevailed in White House deliberations. The view from Latin America is--as could be expected--quite different. The incident in Panama and the ensuing debate in the United States have stirred up seemingly contradictory Latin American perceptions--first, of U.S. cynicism and traditional heavy-handed interventionism; then, of American paralysis and indecision.

The more information emerges from Washington regarding the extent of U.S. involvement, the more evident it becomes that reluctance to interfere in Panamanian affairs was of scant importance in determining Bush Administration policy. The moral, legal issue of whether the government of the United States should participate in a military coup in another country seems to have been virtually absent from consideration.

Some in Washington--and in the Administration itself, no doubt--obviously believe that the American forces were right in not intervening, but for reasons of expediency, not principle: It was too dangerous, too risky, too complicated--not wrong. We now know that the U.S. Southern Command had orders to act--troops in fact did move to block two access routes to the Panamanian Defense Forces headquarters--if such action were deemed viable and likely to succeed.

Many others in Washington are arguing that the Administration was wrong in not taking advantage of the chance to get rid of Noriega once and for all. But virtually nowhere in the debate do we hear any questioning of the premise that the United States has the right to determine who governs Panama. This is a sobering thought to those in Latin America who are always ready to discern a “historic” change in U.S. attitudes or policies toward the region.

But another, contradictory sentiment is also present. It surfaced during last week’s meeting in Peru of the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. On the one hand, the reasoning goes, the United States appears unable to overthrow Noriega with limited means (threats, sanctions, bungled coups), yet is unwilling to use overwhelming means (an invasion). On the other hand, the United States’ unrelenting campaign against Noriega is creating problems for many Latin American governments. Washington pressures them to recall ambassadors and suspend diplomatic and trade relations with Panama; it calls meetings of the Organization of American States at which foreign ministers are asked to support the U.S. stance and simply bear the domestic heat for doing so; it participates in highly publicized conspiracies against Noriega, forcing Latin American governments to take a stand on matters they would prefer to be silent about. The temptation to take matters into their own hands was evident at the meeting in Peru, particularly among those who by temperament or affinity with the United States are inclined to act in this fashion.

Beyond these conflicting reactions to U.S. policy in Panama lies an uncomfortable sensation. It derives from witnessing the United States’ helplessness and in-

action. The sensation is heightened by the awareness that the arguments being brandished in Washington for or against involvement in the coup, while immoral, are not unsound. There is some merit in the position that it makes no sense for the United States to call on the Panamanian military to overthrow Noriega and then, when they try, to refuse assistance that would ensure their success. There is also some merit in the argument that it makes little sense to risk American lives in an uncertain situation in the middle of the capital of a foreign country, in support of dubious allies.

When equally sound arguments surface on both sides of an issue, the result is often paralysis. More alarming, the tendency toward paralysis in U.S. foreign policy seems to be of a deep-rooted nature, due more to the weight of history than to personalities, circumstances or luck. If the Panama fiasco is any indication, U.S. policy toward Latin America may not be any less interventionist than before, but it certainly seems to be undergoing a significant change in the direction of inaction.