In many ways, the appearance of this article underscores Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin's adaptation of the "Zhirinovsky Doctrine", which states the US holds sway over the Americas in the western hemisphere without interference from Russia, while Russia holds away over south Asia, again without opposition from the US and NATO.
by Artemy Sharapov
[REGNUM] In his “throne speech,” US President Donald Trump repeated his frequent promise to make the Panama Canal American again—to return the main artery of the Western Hemisphere to the ownership of the United States.
Trump said that the authorities of the Republic of Panama (under whose sovereign control the canal, previously owned by the United States, has been since 1999) are not fulfilling their management responsibilities. Therefore, the United States must return what is its own, the newly elected owner of the White House is sure.
It is significant that Trump is sending his newly appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his first foreign trip to Panama.
"The most important thing is that China controls the canal. We didn't give the canal to China, we gave it to Panama, and we're giving it back," Trump said.
Newly appointed Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, nicknamed "The Crusader," clarified on January 30 that the United States is prepared to use force to "ensure freedom" of navigation through the canal. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino has issued more than one "decisive response" to threats from Washington. But it is ironic that Mulino did so on the X social network owned by Elon Musk, who recently astonished the world with an ambiguous gesture. If it was a "Roman salute," then it is quite consistent with the neo-imperial sentiments of the creators of the "new golden age of the United States": with plans to absorb Canada, Greenland, and take back the Panama Canal.
However, the question of ownership of this 80-kilometer sea route has been a “sore subject” for the American administration over the past 150 years, so Trump is not original in his attempts to resolve this issue by force.
By a curious coincidence, today, January 31, marks exactly 35 years since the last (at least, for now, the last) attempt to resolve the Panama issue by armed means.
But before we recall in detail Operation Right Cause (which is what the American intervention of 1989 was called, without a hint of irony), let us recall the stage on which this action unfolded.
THE CHANNEL AND THE SCANDAL
Plans to build a canal through the narrow Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean (so that ships would not have to travel thousands of miles around Cape Horn), were first developed during the years of Spanish colonial rule in South America - but at that time such a project was practically impossible to implement.
The benefits of building a waterway were obvious to everyone in Europe and the New World. As early as 1827, none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe predicted, “I shall be surprised if the United States does not take up such an undertaking.”
But the French were the first to take up the matter.
Colombia, which had owned the Isthmus of Panama since the 1830s, brought the Panama Canal Company, founded in Paris, into the project in the late 1870s. Construction dragged on for a decade. And as a result, the word panama entered the French language, and then all the languages of the world, meaning “a large and brazen scam.”
The company, having "given a bribe" to ministers and hundreds of deputies, received permission to collect money from citizens under a winning loan, and then... went bankrupt. It turned out that half of the 1.3 billion francs invested in the project "disappeared".
It was after this that the United States took over the initiative.
The prediction of the author of "Faust" came true in 1903, when Theodore Roosevelt (also known as Teddy and Rough Rider) was president. The United States, rapidly gaining economic and military power, was actively expanding throughout Latin America - from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn. They were quite capable of implementing a project that promised to shorten the route from New York to San Francisco from 23 thousand to 9.5 thousand km.
In 1903, a deal was made whereby the United States leased a strip of territory ten kilometers wide from Columbia for a period of 100 years.
However, the process of ratifying the deal in the Colombian parliament stalled. The country had just ended another civil war (its events formed the basis for Gabriel García Márquez's novella "Nobody Writes to the Colonel"). The winners and losers were unable to reach a compromise on the canal issue, so the US decided to move on to plan "B" - separating the department of Panama from the Republic of Colombia by force.
SEPARATION AND REVOLUTION
In the fall of 1903, unrest and demonstrations began in Panama demanding independence for the region. Attempts by the Colombian authorities to suppress the protests were stopped by direct intervention by the United States. Teddy Roosevelt called this the Big Stick Policy, that is, “resolving conflicts” with the help of American military power. Trump clearly likes this approach as well.
The Republic of Panama was proclaimed on November 3, and 10 days later the new state was recognized by the United States, after which the act of transferring the territory of the future canal to American control was ratified. After the completion of construction in 1914, the States established a de facto monopoly on its use.
The state of Panama was essentially an American protectorate. In particular, local authorities were prohibited from having their own armed forces for fear that the strategic maritime trade route would be captured. Over time, the United States decided to create the Panama National Guard, whose tasks included fighting communist rebels. This decision played a cruel joke on Washington.
In 1969, a group of National Guard soldiers, who had by then become a real force, overthrew the country's government. Colonel Omar Efraim Torrijos came to power, promoted himself to brigadier general and proclaimed himself the leader of the revolution.
The junta led by Torrijos began to put pressure on the United States, demanding that it transfer control of the canal to the Panamanian Republic.
In 1977, Líder Máximo de la Revolución - Supreme Leader of the Revolution Torrijos and US President Jimmy Carter signed an agreement on the neutrality of the canal territory and its subsequent transfer to Panama's control. However, on July 31, 1981, the Supreme Leader's plane crashed under unclear circumstances, and Torrijos himself died.
But the process of nationalization continued under his successor.
The new head of the republic was Colonel Manuel Antonio Noriega, one of the commanders of the National Guard of Panama. Coming from the lower classes, Noriega received the nickname "Pineapple Face" due to the consequences of smallpox he suffered. As an officer of the National Guard, he acted together with American intelligence services in the fight against Marxist movements. In this field, he earned the status of "Our Son of a Bitch" and could lead Panama without fear.
Some may ask why the United States even entered into negotiations with some juntas and ceded the Panama Canal, which was so important to them.
However, there is nothing surprising about this. By the early 1980s, the United States seemed to be losing ground around the world, losing its status as a superpower. The defeat in Vietnam in 1975, the anti-American revolution in Iran with the seizure of the American embassy hit the country's image very hard.
The situation is somewhat similar to the situation in the United States today: an incompetent democratic government, failures in key areas of domestic and foreign policy, and a despondent mood in the White House. It seemed that the United States was close to defeat in the Cold War.
AN EXEMPLARY FLOGGING IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY
In this environment, a new administration came to power, led by Republican Ronald Reagan.
The future president went to the elections with a set of slogans that were repeated in our time by another eccentric leader - Donald Trump. In fact, the slogan "Make America Great Again" was put forward specifically for Reagan's election campaign. The new president announced the beginning of a "Crusade" against communists.
In 1983, for the first time since Vietnam, the United States decided to undertake a large-scale intervention.
In late October, the United States launched a military operation in Grenada, overthrowing the country's leftist government, which was oriented toward the USSR and Cuba. "We could not allow the specter of Vietnam to hang over the country forever and prevent us from protecting our legitimate national security interests... We did not ask anyone's permission, but did what we thought was right," Reagan later wrote in his memoirs.
However, the Noriega regime in Panama seemed to be under no threat so far.
"Colonel Pineapple Face" remained in good standing in Washington and was considered an ally in the crusade against the "Reds." For a while, the United States even turned a blind eye to Panama's involvement in the Colombian drug trade, which by the mid-1980s had reached unprecedented proportions. However, Noriega committed a more "grave sin" in Washington's eyes.
He was caught collaborating with the left.
In 1988, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) accidentally discovered that Noriega's regime had colluded with the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua, which also had a stake in the Colombian drug trade. Once this became known in Washington, Panama's fate was effectively sealed.
In January 1989, Reagan was replaced as US President by another Republican, George H.W. Bush.
Bush, not distinguished by the odiousness of his predecessor, continued Reagan's policy, but used a fundamentally new strategy. In April 1989, the United States imposed tough economic sanctions against Panama. A month later, the country held presidential elections, which were won by the opposition candidate. Noriega did not recognize the election results.
After that, the CIA organized an attempted coup in the country, which, however, was suppressed. Thus, the US tried out a model for changing undesirable regimes: economic pressure, attempts at an internal coup, and if that didn’t work, a direct military invasion.
After the CIA's involvement in the coup was revealed, Noriega demanded that the US withdraw its troops from Panama. The next day, a provocative incident occurred: Panamanian National Guard soldiers killed an American soldier and raped his wife. The US government sanctioned the military operation "Operation Just Cause", which was to become a "show flogging".
It was during the preparation of military actions in Panama that the United States first conducted an information campaign, justifying its actions by the need to “protect human rights” and “restore democracy.” This model was subsequently used to justify aggression against Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, and a number of other countries.
HARD ROCK FOR A DICTATOR
A contingent of 26,000 people was formed to carry out the operation — mainly special forces fighters, supported by 100 armored vehicles and more than 200 military aircraft and helicopters. At the same time, there were only 11,000 people in the ranks of the Panamanian self-defense forces. The national guard had virtually no air defense, aviation, or armored vehicles at its disposal.
On the night of December 19-20, 1989, the United States launched a massive air strike on Panama. The targets of the attacks were the bases of the self-defense forces, most of the military did not even have time to take up organized defense. After that, 84 transport aircraft dropped a large landing force of the 75th Special Forces Regiment in Panama, which captured military and civilian airfields. After that, planes landed with personnel and armored vehicles of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Security forces loyal to the Noriega regime attempted to organize pockets of resistance, taking up defensive positions in government buildings and hastily constructed firing positions. However, the forces were initially unequal. By the end of the first day of the operation, the American military had captured the headquarters of the National Defense Forces, after which any organized resistance ceased.
During the fighting, the American special forces lost 23 people killed and about 300 wounded. As a result of the aggression, 500 Panamanian citizens died, including 50 self-defense forces. Noriega tried to hide in the Vatican embassy, but the American military installed powerful speakers around the building playing heavy rock music. Three days later, the former dictator left the embassy and was arrested. Noriega subsequently died in a Panamanian prison, having served time in the United States and France.
The out-of-control "son of a bitch" was punished - and this decision by Ronald Reagan, from the point of view of the current US administration, was correct. But - alas - Reagan did not reverse the decision, which Trump did not hesitate to call "stupid". The Torrijos-Carter Treaty remained in force, from 1979 to 1999 the Panama Canal Zone was under joint administration by the US and the Republic of Panama, with the prospect of being handed over to the Panamanians.
This is what happened in 2000, when the United States handed over control of the canal to the country's government, concluding an agreement on the neutrality of the waterway.
DREAMS OF REVENGE
Trump also addressed the issue of “returning Panama” during his first presidential term – even then he was concerned about the contacts of the small but strategically important Central American state with China, with which Trump was waging trade wars.
However, it is precisely now that the new president’s threats should be taken seriously. As in the late 1980s, the United States is experiencing an internal crisis associated with a loss of direction and failures in foreign policy. In this regard, the populism of Trump, who managed to win the election under the slogans of returning to “former greatness,” is becoming dangerous for its neighbors.
During Trump's last term, the slogan "Make America Great Again" was discredited because it was not backed up by real action.
So the US may well go for a small, demonstrative military operation to prove to other countries and to itself: we are still strong and ready to achieve our goals.
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