Original illustration: F. Stop Fitzgerald, Pillartopost.org
Raid that ousted Noriega 36 years ago offers clue what US will do with Venezuela?
GUEST BLOG / By Chris Kenning, USA TODAY--The Trump administration’s Jan. 3 capture of President Nicolás Maduro bore some familiar echoes to the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama that ousted military strongman Manuel Noriega — and marked the most direct U.S. intervention in Latin America since.
But experts say that despite some similarities, the two key moments in America’s long and checkered history of interventions differ in major ways that could make achieving U.S. goals more challenging this time following a raid that has revived regional anxiety.
President Donald Trump said Jan. 3 that his administration will “run the country” for a time and described an apparent nation-building effort. He said it would be funded by Venezuela’s vast oil reserves to be tapped by American oil companies, some of which were forced out in the 2000s.
While many in Panama view Noriega’s ouster as setting it on a path to become a growing and stable democracy, despite the deaths and trauma, that result is far less certain in a much bigger and complex nation beset by poverty, crime and lingering resistance, experts said.
Shaping a post-invasion future was a much easier task in relatively tiny Panama, in part because existing American troops linked to the Panama Canal were present before and after the invasion, said Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
While details remain scant, Freeman said he doubts the U.S. will field a full Iraq-style occupation force.
“This is not going to be so simple in Venezuela,” he said. “One, it's not even likely that we get to democracy. And two, many of the problems that were there with Maduro are going to remain.”
Trump’s announcement of the raid came 36 years after the U.S. took Manuel Noriega into custody.
The famously acne-pocked military strongman was once a U.S. ally who had been recruited by the CIA to stanch the spread of communism. But he drew increasing U.S. ire for growing hostility and actions such as annulling an election and cracking down violently on opposition.
In 1989, President George H.W. Bush, citing authoritarian rule, concerns about the security of the Panama Canal and U.S. drug trafficking and money laundering charges, ordered “Operation Just Cause.” It tapped more than 20,000 U.S. troops, many already in Panama, to seize control of military and infrastructure sites. A new president was sworn in soon after.
Maduro’s capture also stems from a history of conflict with the United States. Maduro came to power as the successor to President Hugo Chávez, a socialist leader who gained leadership in the late 1990s. The nation has since faced a mix of authoritarianism and skyrocketing poverty, crime and inflation.
Like Noriega, Maduro was indicted by U.S. prosecutors in 2020 on drug trafficking charges. But he was a less significant figure in drugs than Noriega or Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who Trump recently pardoned, said Michael Shifter, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Pressure to oust Maduro gained steam since Trump’s reelection last year. And in recent months, U.S. military buildup in the region included the deployment of aircraft carriers and fatal military strikes on small boats alleged to be carrying drugs.
Air Force Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. authorities spent time tracking Maduro’s daily routines and moves before the military raid in which Maduro was captured by U.S. Special forces at his compound.
As U.S. forces cut power and descended on Maduro, the military encountered some resistance, including a helicopter struck by a bullet, and returned fire. Maduro did not make it to a reinforced steel safe room he was trying to reach, Caine said. Images and video showed explosions, burning vehicles, plumes of smoke rising over the capital city of Caracas, and a swarm of low-flying helicopters.
By that night, Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in New York, where he stands accused of trafficking in cocaine during a 25-year career in public posts.
More than three decades earlier, Noriega also tried to slip away, driving through the streets to evade capture and eventually hiding in the Vatican embassy on Dec. 24.
Surrounded by U.S. forces, who couldn’t storm the site, the U.S. military blasted constant music by Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath on loudspeakers, according to official accounts. He surrendered on Jan. 3, 1990.
Noriega was convicted, spending the rest of his life in U.S., French and Panamanian prisons before dying in 2017.
Interventions bring criticism and challenges
Both attacks were part of a century-long history of U.S. intervention – directly and indirectly – in the politics of Latin American countries such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
In the 1950s for example, the U.S. sought to remove Guatemala's democratically elected president amid land reforms that were affecting the U.S.-based United Fruit Company's exploitative labor practices. The U.S. helped install a military dictatorship whose policies eventually triggered a civil war and led to mass human rights abuses during which more than 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or forcibly disappeared.
During the Panama invasion, at least 514 Panamanian soldiers and civilians were killed. However, some local reports have put the figure at double that. Twenty-three U.S. military personnel were killed. And the event was viewed by critics as yet another example of the U.S. ignoring sovereignty.
At that time, the U.S. sought to have a relatively quick intervention at a time when leaders were keen to avoid a quagmire, said Eduardo Gamarra, a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University.
In contrast, the Trump administration has turned away from the post-Cold War international order in actions and policies that have also drawn comparison to President Theodore Roosevelt’s take on the Monroe Doctrine that the U.S. should "exercise international police power" to end what Roosevelt called "chronic unrest or wrongdoing" in the hemisphere.
And it comes as some countries in Latin America have made a move to right-leaning governments. More were heading away from authoritarian leadership during the time of the Panama invasion, Gamarra said.
Trump has criticized Venezuela, which nationalized its oil industry in the 1970s, for added expropriations and other changes in the 2000s that forced many major U.S. oil companies out and led to legal battles over compensation. While Trump said his administration plans to oversee Venezuela, U.S. forces have no control over the country itself, Reuters reported, though Trump didn’t rule out having some “boots on the ground.”
"We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition," Trump said during a Jan. 3 press conference.
While Trump said Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez had no choice but to be cooperative, Rodriguez appeared on Venezuelan television Saturday afternoon with other top officials to decry what she called a kidnapping. Those efforts will face complexities not present in Panama decades ago, such as the presence of large oil reserves and security challenges from criminal groups to illegal mining interests, Shifter said.
Uncertainty also stems from mixed reactions – some celebrating hopes for new freedom and others saying a line had been crossed – in a region where the military action revived anxieties about past U.S. interventions.
In Panama, which has drawn the spotlight of the Trump administration over immigration and canal oversight, Panama's president, José Raúl Mulino, weighed in on social media that included support of the "democratic process and the acceptance of the legitimate wishes of the Venezuelan people."
While the invasion of Panama 36 years ago wasn’t widely seen as a precursor to other interventions, Trump’s rhetoric aimed at Colombia, Mexico and Cuba over various issues including illegal drugs has left some countries on edge.
“U.S. military intervention in the region has not always had a very happy record. And so I think that creates a lot of anxiety and a lot of apprehension,” Shifter said. “If there are no limits and no rules, you know, why can't Trump do the same to them?”
Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard of USA TODAY, Reuters
