A Hemisphere Feels Invaded : Latin America: Unilateral military action is horrifying to nations that have seen the U.S. fist before. A chill is settling on the Americas’ political climate.

It was not unexpected that the Organization of American States would call for the withdrawal of American forces from Panama, declaring, as it did Friday, that its members “deeply regretted” the U.S. military action. As could be expected, only the United States voted against the resolution.

One may also expect that very limited attention will be paid by President Bush to the O.A.S. request. After all, in the course of Thursday’s press conference, Bush expressed his gratitude for Latin America’s support, just hours after clear and open disapproval had been expressed by the leaders of such normally friendly governments as Brazil and Mexico, and Peru had recalled its ambassador.

Many in Washington seem to hold the view that unilateral U.S. action was made almost inevitable by the inability of those same Latin American countries to “solve the Panamanian problem” through multilateral channels. This will not make it any easier for Latin American opinion to cut through the wave of domestic support that follows immediately after a “decisive action” is undertaken by the U.S. (or almost any other nation’s) government.

In this case, the lack of historical awareness and sensitivity that Latin Americans have come to identify with their northern neighbor seems compounded by an apparent tendency in Washington to deal with the implications of present U.S actions as if they were limited to an isolated issue--one in which the whole hemisphere has found good reason for agreement. The invasion’s impact on inter-American relations will certainly endure beyond this specific action.

During the last decade, U.S. ability to both dominate and lead the hemisphere has been caught in a paradox. On the one hand, events in Central America, particularly in El Salvador and Nicaragua, provided ample proof of the United States’ limitations, even in cases that it defined as priorities. But it is also hard to remember another moment in which as many Latin American governments and political forces shared U.S. preferences regarding such crucial topics as basic economic policies or a common commitment to liberal democracy.

The way in which Latin American nations dealt with the “Panama problem” shows both the potential and the limits of that increased agreement, in crucial matters of regional security.

Two different principles have been at play: the aforementioned commitment to democracy and the region’s defense of non-intervention. So Gen. Manuel Noriega had few defenders, but many Latin Americans were not happy with simply following the the U.S. lead in identifying the one non-democratic government that was to be subject to open pressure. There have been authoritarians aplenty, both past and present, toward whom the United States has proven remarkably tolerant. There was also a general unease with a perceived U.S. tendency to “put to the democratic test” only those governments with which it has other reasons to disagree.

In the case of Noriega, many observers wondered how the same corrupt authoritarian who had once been a close friend and ally could suddenly become so unpalatable. Some even came to the conclusion that promoting democracy in Panama was really second in Washington’s strategic calculations to the need to have a “predictable” and “understanding” government in place before time runs out on the Panama Canal’s transfer to Panamanian authority.

Several Latin American governments have been, up to this very week, willing to go along with basic U.S. preferences. But even before the invasion, public disclosures of U.S. actions in Panama increasingly tested such willingness and provoked muted disagreement. First came the acknowledgement of the sizable (in relation to Panama’s size) amount of dollars spent by the U.S. government in order to influence the last electoral campaign. Then, the knowledge of covert operations directed at destabilizing Panama’s government. Now it is direct unilateral military action. Even Venezuela’s flexible interpretations of the principle of non-intervention in relation to democracy do not go that far.

It is hard for U.S. observers to appreciate the hold that non-intervention has on most Latin American minds. After all, U.S. tradition does not either oppose or favor intervention in principle. A “just cause” (as defined by North American perceptions) and above all, success in an endeavor, seem to make all the difference between “good” and “bad” interventions.

Things look quite different from the perspective of those countries that have suffered foreign military interventions, which most of the time have come not from extra-hemispheric powers but from our hemisphere’s leading country. Any such U.S. action is necessarily seen as part of a well-known and recurring pattern--one that many in the region had hoped to see disappear as a result of global changes.

By invading Panama, the U.S. government has provided common ground for diverse governments and political forces in the region that are unwilling to condone unilateral military action by a superpower--even against a government that most of them do not hold dear. Not since the Malvinas/Falklands conflict between Britain and Argentina have the basic assumptions of the inter-American system been put to such a test.

U.S. actions violate the letter and the spirit of the key documents that are supposed to guide relations in the hemisphere. Even the usual appeals to “collective self-defense” are absent. In contrast to the case of Grenada, we are not even offered the fig leaf of a request by Panama’s neighbors. Not even a post-facto, pro-forma attempt to attain multilateral acquiescence has been made--as was the case in the Dominican Republic in 1965.

In the case of Panama, the entirely unilateral nature of U.S. action stands there naked, for all to see. The ultimate paradox of this action may be to transform Noriega--a character that very few in Latin America are willing to touch without a long pole--into a credible symbol not only of Panamanian but even of Latin nationalism.