Gandásegui, Look at the history of US interests when looking at US-Panamanian relations

The crisis and the US invasion of Panama
by Marco A. Gandasegui, Jr.

In a report on Noriega’s present legal status and the US military invasion of Panama in 1989, the Council of Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) states, almost 20 years later (July 2008), that "President Bush's decision to intervene with military force in Panama was a direct result of the crisis created by Noriega's rise to power, largely as a result of Washington's backing."

The story seems coherent enough as it develops into the well known drug war scenario and bad guys, good guys. However, the whole report is biased due to the fact that COHA’s starting point is completely ideological and has no historical ground to stand on. The drug war has a political edge and the Cowboy-Indians saga has even lost its Hollywood luster.

FIRST: The crisis of the late 1980s in Panama was not created by Noriega. The permanent crisis in which Panama is imbedded is a result of US strategy in Latin America and the Caribbean (as well as on a global scale). Noriega --- as COHA says --- was a peon in US regional destabilization plans. Thus he was a creature of US military tactics from as far back (late 1950s) as when he was a cadet at Chorrillos Military Academy in Lima, Peru. With no real leverage or autonomy within the US National Security structure he could not have created any crisis at all.

The underpinnings of the “Noriega” crisis (1986-1989) was in the US strategy vis a vis Central America's civil strife as well as revolutionary rhetoric going on in that part of the world. The immediate causes of the Panamanian crisis (1989) was President Bush's need to find a pretext to flex his muscle in the “new world order” scenario of CNN television, as Bob Woodward demonstrates in his book "The Commanders."
SECOND: COHA misread completely the drug question. Noriega was a notch in the long chain of US drug trafficking operations and local cartels. It is ridiculous to believe anybody in the region can freely transport drugs without the approval of US agencies such as the CIA and the DEA.

Once COHA has these two issues straight it can prepare an analysis of the 1989 US military invasion of Panama. The military operation not only knocked the Panamanian Defense Forces out of business. It also neutralized the flourishing local "financial center" that scrambled to Miami.

You cannot find the key to the 1989 US military invasion trying to understand who Noriega was or is today. You have to look a little bit deeper into the Washington archives. At present the United States is rebuilding a security-type state in Panama that will only respond to its demands. US and Panamanian officers say that the National Police is arming a special elite corps with sophisticated weapons in order to intercept drug dealers and terrorists. Haven't we heard that story before? Does the Noriega name ring a bell?

The COHA report forgets the many conflicting interests in the country.
Unfortunately it's not a bad joke. It is reality.

COHA must start with a straightforward analysis of US interests in Panama and how it bullied its way into the Panamanian mix bribing with drug money the whole government apparatus. Then the rest of COHA’s story will not only be coherent but will also be closer to history.

The author is a professor at the University of Panama and a research associate at the Justo Arosemena Center for Latin American Studies (CELA)

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