Havana
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A Latin American strongman accused of drug trafficking and election fraud has openly defied the White House despite threats of military action.
It was 1989, and Panama’s then-military dictator Manuel Noriega, much like today’s Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, had become Washington’s public enemy number one amid allegations that he had accepted millions of dollars to allow drug cartels to operate in his country.
The US invasion of Panama captured Noriega and restored democracy to the Central American country.
To some advocates of military action against Maduro, the invasion of Panama appears to be a model, however imperfect, of what the United States is trying to accomplish in Venezuela.
“Bush 41 ousted Panamanian leader Noriega in similar circumstances,” Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) posted on Thursday X.
“We have a narco-caliphate in our backyard, including Venezuela, Colombia, and Cuba, and I am very pleased that President Trump is dedicated to ending this reign of terror,” he added.
Officials in all three countries denied any link to human trafficking.
Unlike Maduro, a committed socialist who has long been troubled by U.S. foreign policy goals in the region, Noriega presented himself, at least initially, as an ally of the United States.
Throughout his bloody rise to power in Panama, a small but geopolitically important country with a canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Noriega became a CIA operative and helped eradicate the spread of leftist governments in Latin America.
But when CIA weapons were flowing into Panama to support anti-communist rebels in Central America, Noriega had a secret. It also allowed large quantities of cocaine to flow north into the United States.
Noriega’s fungible loyalty led former U.S. ambassador to Panama Ambler Moss to declare of Panamanian dictator, “You can’t buy him, but you can just as surely rent him.”
By 1989, Noriega’s double dealing and brutal crackdown on civil society led Washington to issue an ultimatum: “Exile or else.”
Like today’s President Maduro, who vehemently denies U.S. drug trafficking allegations, Noriega had to choose between fleeing or facing a far superior military.
Retired Panamanian General Rubén Dario Paredes initially told CNN that Noriega had chosen to defect.
“He started preparing to take over command according to his rank, but he had a moment of weakness,” Paredes said. “When many of the group that was picked up started thinking about their fate, right? They got picked off and they made a common cause and convinced Noriega that he was the supreme authority and there was no going back. And Noriega stepped back and that’s when the invasion happened.”
Faced with Noriega’s growing defiance and repression, U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama (codenamed Operation Just Cause) in December 1989, claiming that Noriega’s rule posed a threat to American life and security.
More than 20,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Panama, and Noriega took refuge in the Vatican embassy in Panama City for 10 days. US troops surrounded the compound with loudspeakers and blasted deafening heavy metal music into his hideout all night.
Noriega finally surrendered to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials on January 3, 1990.
His 1991 trial was dubbed the “Trial of the Century” by the DEA, and he was ultimately found guilty on eight charges and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Overthrowing repressive leaders with ties to drug cartels (President Maduro also faces U.S. prosecution for human trafficking) appears similar to the U.S. goal in Venezuela, but there are important differences.
Panama’s population was just 2.5 million in 1989, the year of the U.S. invasion, while Venezuela’s population now exceeds 28 million.
Venezuela is more than 10 times the size of Panama and was home to a US military base at the time of the invasion.
Moreover, as with Noriega considering defection, many of Maduro’s inner circle face multimillion-dollar bounties for human trafficking allegations and arrests by the United States, and it is unlikely that they will see him leave power without a fight.
Finally, if U.S. forces were to take action in Venezuela, they would likely have to contend with the country’s impenetrable jungles and dense slums. Gang members are so heavily armed that even the Venezuelan military rarely enters there.
Frank Mora, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.S. state organization OAS who has studied how a potential U.S. invasion would unfold and the hurdles the U.S. military would face in removing Maduro, said the U.S. could easily overthrow Venezuela’s leader, but maintaining peace was another matter.
“The issue of Venezuela’s military capabilities is not a serious one,” Mora said. “It’s not something that can sustain a U.S. invasion, but what I’m always concerned about is not just the time it takes to bring down a regime, but the day after, and how do you maintain order in a country that is essentially broken.”
While it remains unclear whether the United States will take any action or even carry out an attack in Venezuela, it appears increasingly likely that the United States will not be able to count on the support of many allies in the region.
Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, who publicly opposed Noriega’s dictatorship before the US invasion, said at a press conference on Thursday that his country would not accept US troops who might take part in military action against Venezuela.
“We have nothing to do with Venezuela,” Mulino said. “Panama does not lend territory to any hostilities against Venezuela or any other country in the world.”
