Frustration Over a Thug

Now that the U.S. effort to dislodge Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega through negotiations has failed, Washington’s remaining options are limited and generally unpromising: using military force against him, backing a military coup against his iron rule, or letting the Organization of American States and Panama’s domestic opposition forces take the lead.

The great danger is that the United States, frustrated by three long months of haggling with an accused drug trafficker who has thumbed his nose at a great power, will surrender to the impulse to give him a good thumping. Early in the negotiations both Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams argued for a range of military actions, including deploying U.S. troops in Panama and kidnaping Noriega. Fortunately, their proposals were resisted by Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci and CIA Director William H. Webster, who warned that military force was unlikely to work and would expose U.S. service personnel in Panama to retaliation from Panama’s Defense Forces.

Now, anonymous State Department officials are talking again to the press about taking some unspecified “drastic action,” and Shultz refuses to rule out the use of force. Intervention may look tempting as a way to salvage U.S. pride battered by the battle of wits with the general, but we hope that wiser heads will again prevail within the Administration. U.S. military force hasn’t achieved the desired result for this Administration anywhere except Grenada; in Panama such a move would alienate the U.S. allies in the region and the Panamanians opposed to Noriega. Latin Americans, perennially sensitive about Yankee meddling, don’t want the Marines to land again.

As for the possibility of a U.S.-backed coup, that technique has already failed once. It took Noriega less than half a day to quell the earlier attempt, and he since has purged the upper ranks of the Defense Forces of everyone whose loyalty he suspects. U.S. prosecutors believe that so many officers in the Defense Forces have been corrupted by drug-trafficking and money-laundering that they are unlikely to turn on him.

It is still dimly possible that Panamanians themselves will supply the solution; after all, Noriega is, first and foremost, their problem. If the business-oriented Civic Crusade were ever able to expand its influence beyond Panama’s elite, it might be able to rally the growing popular opposition to Noriega and put forth a viable candidate in next year’s presidential election. That, like the belated consultations about Noriega that the Reagan Administration is finally undertaking with other leaders in the Western Hemisphere, is a slow process, to be sure. But it is the only course of action that we think offers any hope at all that the region will ever be rid of this thug.