Reticence on Failed Coup Spared Us a Bigger Mess : Panama: Much of Washington is hell-bent on embroiling us more deeply in schemes against Noriega, but more important objectives are served by staying out.

After eight years of bloated rhetoric and inept intervention schemes against Nicaragua, the United States is applying the same sure recipe for failure in Panama, an equally unworthy target for the tightly leashed fury of the world’s foremost power.

This time, it is not the highly ideological and hyper-zealous Reagan Administration that is showing the way to foreign-policy frustration. Much of the foreign-policy community, on a bipartisan basis, seems hell-bent to replace the Nicaragua obsession with a new but equally distorted focus on Panama. The Bush Administration, pragmatic and phlegmatic (if not passive), has not led this determined march into another international cul-de-sac, but it has been tempted to do so.

The terms of the latest Washington debate on Panama are striking. President Bush and his senior advisers are being vilified for failing to act decisively enough to ensure a change of government in Panama. Specifically, they are criticized for failing to authorize the use of U.S. forces, stationed in Panama to protect the canal, to kidnap Panama’s undeniably unattractive strongman, Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, or to ensure that a Panamanian military coup could succeed. It was widely reported that the President was “distracted” by scheduled meetings with the Soviet defense minister and the president of Mexico, and therefore did not focus in a timely way on the opportunity to oust Noriega.

President Bush and his aides counter that they never had a clear opportunity to intervene effectively, and/or, that, under the circumstances, intervention would have put American lives at risk.

Critics, in turn, suggest that better intelligence and more skillful “crisis management” might well have enabled the Administration to recognize, or else to create, the opportunity it claims it wanted and apparently still seeks. And many point out, with compelling logic within the widely accepted framework that depicts Noriega as U.S. Public Enemy No. 1, that we have armed forces precisely because some national objectives do warrant putting American lives at risk.

In the general clamor to damn Manuel Noriega and to criticize George Bush for failing to have him ousted, it may be worth underlining some simple points.

An attempt by some officers in Panama’s military Establishment to overthrow their commander is no doubt a crisis for the Panamanian armed forces, but it is not, or at least should not be, a major concern for the government of the United States. On any reasonable list of our country’s foreign-policy priorities, having a somewhat more attractive military dictator in Panama--which probably would have been the outcome of a successful coup there--should not rank very high.

However humiliating the Panama episode was for George Bush, this unpleasant moment will pass. Much more serious and durable problems would have been created had U.S. troops been successfully deployed to oust Noriega. The use of U.S. troops in the Canal Zone to change the government of Panama would have created strong pressure within Panama--a predictably irresistible pressure for the next democratically elected government there--to remove U.S. troops from the zone in order to preserve Panama’s sovereignty against future U.S. interventions. The ultimate result of a “successful” U.S.-engineered coup against Noriega might well have been a reduction in our ability to secure our prime objective in the region--continued access to the canal.

Finally, it is myopic to contend that Bush was “distracted” from the vital events of Panama by his meetings with the Soviet minister of defense and the president of Mexico. On the contrary, this juxtaposition suggests that we may have lucked into an Administration that has its basic priorities just about right. There are few, if any, more important foreign-policy issues for the United States today than to agree with the Soviet Union on mutually acceptable and verified reductions in arms expenditures on terms that protect our military security and enhance our national solvency. Nor are there many questions more significant than learning how to manage our intricately complex relationship with Mexico.

While the Panama debate was swirling in Washington, Mexico’s Carlos Salinas de Gortari was making his first state visit to Washington, a capstone event in his first precedent-shattering year in office. In a series of speeches and interviews, including an address to a joint session of Congress, Salinas outlined new approaches to the United States that are far more significant for our country than how long Manuel Noriega clings to power in Panama.

Rather than move from obsession to obsession in Central America, the Washington policy community and the media should be focusing much more attention on Mexico, where what happens in the economy, society and politics will affect us directly. Panama is a distraction; Mexico is a serious concern.