Showing Muscle

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

All afternoon George Bush acted the gracious host to 50 old friends and family members at a White House Christmas party, singing carols and taking groups of children on the ultimate guided tour (only the presidential bedroom was off limits). As the guests were leaving, a group of men slipped from behind the security screens on the ground floor and headed for the elevator to the family living quarters. But their timing was slightly off. They ran into the last departing guest, a woman who recognized them: Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. "Oh, oh," the woman remarked. "Business as usual."

Not quite. The group was on its way to plan the biggest U.S. military operation since Viet Nam: the invasion of Panama, launched two nights later. But perhaps she was not totally mistaken. If war preparations are scarcely usual in the Bush White House, they are not as stunningly out of character as they would have seemed only a few months ago. The Panama invasion marks the latest, but far from the first, stage in a monumental transformation of George Bush: from a President whose overriding imperative during his initial months in office was to avoid doing "something dumb," to a self-confident chief mapping a bold and individual -- if not always prudent -- foreign policy that he is quite willing to back with military force.

Nor does Bush hesitate these days to take long risks. The Panama invasion was supposed to accomplish three goals: 1) swiftly rout resistance; 2) capture the country's dictator, Manuel Antonio Noriega, and bring him to trial in the U.S. on drug-running charges; 3) install a stable, democratic government headed by politicians who had apparently won May elections, which Noriega later overruled.

But if the invasion turned out to be less than fully successful, the Administration would be running grave dangers. At the extreme, it could bog down in a Viet Nam-style guerrilla war directed by a fugitive Noriega in the jungles. The Panamanian government that the U.S. installed may be regarded as American puppets; President Guillermo Endara was sworn in by a Panamanian judge, but on an American military base at about the time the attack started. A drawn-out crisis could sour U.S. relations with other Latin American nations, eternally nervous about Yanqui intervention against however noxious a government.

It was impossible to tell whether the invasion would end up more like Viet Nam or more like Grenada. Some 24,000 U.S. troops had quickly taken command of most of Panama and overwhelmed organized resistance by the Panama Defense Forces, Noriega's combination army and police. But Noriega got away and was thought to be hiding in the forests or even in the sprawling capital city; the U.S. offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture.

American troops faced a tough battle to restore order in Panama City, where looters, some reportedly shouting, "Viva Bush!" ransacked stores and homes and where Noriega's misnamed Dignity Battalions, a paramilitary force, were putting up a street-to-street fight. Noriega's loyalists, apparently at his direction, staged hit-and-run attacks. On Friday, two days after American military commanders began declaring victory, they fired shells at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command. The Pentagon admitted that its forces had encountered stiffer resistance than expected, and Bush ordered an additional 2,000 troops to Panama as reinforcements. Meanwhile, Endara and his Vice Presidents were still unable to exert much authority or start acting like a government, and some U.S. officials were worried about whether they had the leadership ability to do so.

On the other hand, most of the world signaled its willingness to adapt to the U.S. action -- presuming it was successful. At home both parties in Congress generally applauded the effort to get rid of the egregious Noriega. "At last," said Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Latin American nations issued formal condemnations of the intervention, but one did not have to read very far between the lines to detect a sigh of relief that the brutal Panamanian dictator had got his comeuppance. The 32-member Organization of American States "regretted," but did not quite condemn, the invasion. In recent months many Latin leaders had privately expressed their revulsion toward Noriega. Nonetheless, no Latin nation would immediately recognize the Endara government, and Peru recalled its Ambassador to Washington in protest. The Soviet Union denounced the invasion as a violation of international law but hastily added that it saw no reason why that should damage East-West relations. The unspoken message seemed to be that Moscow would recognize a sphere of influence in which the U.S. could operate with a free hand so long as Washington returned the favor.

Much could change, however, if the U.S. is unable to bring home quickly the 11,000 extra troops it dispatched for the invasion (13,000 were already on hand at permanent bases in Panama). After the far smaller invasion of Grenada, U.S. forces remained for six weeks; the Marines who invaded the Dominican Republic to thwart a leftist coup in 1965 were not completely withdrawn for 18 months.

At minimum Washington will have to rebuild a Panamanian economy that American sanctions against Noriega have shattered. Unemployment in Panama has passed 20% and the banking system is a shambles, scarcely an environment conducive to stable democracy. Rebuilding could take years and put a new strain on a U.S. budget already heavily in deficit.

None of which fazed George Bush in the slightest. At a news conference Thursday the usually reserved President seemed almost cocky. American casualties in the Panama operation -- more than a score dead and 200 wounded at week's end -- were heartbreaking but nevertheless "worth it," said Bush. He closed with a note of defiant self-confidence: "I have an obligation as President to conduct the foreign policy of this country the way I see fit . . . if the American people don't like it, I expect they'll get somebody else to take my job, but I'm going to keep doing it."

That did not sound much like the President who was roundly denounced as a wimp as recently as October, when the U.S. stood aside as a Panamanian coup against Noriega failed and the dictator executed its leaders. But the October episode aside, Bush has been displaying a new vigor and assurance in foreign policy for months now. The Panama invasion only pointed it up. "I think there are an awful lot of people out there who may have had some erroneous impressions of the President who had them dramatically changed in the last several weeks or so," says House Republican leader Robert Michel. A White House official adds that the President is delighted to have put to rest the frequent stories from the 1988 campaign "about how George Bush is run by his handlers and can't do anything on his own."

Bush began acting very much on his own last May, when he put together U.S. proposals for sweeping cuts in conventional forces in Europe that pleased the NATO allies and intrigued the Soviets. In July he followed up by secretly inviting Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to the summit off Malta. Bush had insisted that it would be a get-acquainted session without an agenda, but at their meeting in early December he handed Gorbachev a list of 21 American proposals that drew a generally favorable response. Simultaneously, the President authorized U.S. aircraft to go into action in the Philippines, helping squelch an attempted coup against President Corazon Aquino by flying "cover" over rebel air bases and preventing mutineer pilots from taking off.

Not all Bush's initiatives have come across as wise. The President seemed to be toadying to the communist Chinese rulers who massacred pro-democracy demonstrators last June. He made a mockery of his sanctions against Beijing -- which called for, among other things, a ban on high-level political exchanges -- by twice sending Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to the Chinese capital; their first visit, in July, came to light only last week. Beijing has yet to reciprocate with any significant concession, and last week expressed "utmost shock and strong condemnation" of the Panama invasion. But the U.S. moves furthered a bold and individual policy. Bush, who was once envoy to China, believes the strategic relationship with the Middle Kingdom to be all important and is willing to nurture it at whatever cost in criticism.

Bush still has what ballplayers call "rabbit ears," which pick up even the smallest criticism. Administration officials acknowledge that all his initiatives (other than China) were in part responses to carping, real or potential. Early on, the President was assailed for being too cautious in dealing with arms control and Gorbachev. Had he let a coup topple Aquino, he would have been denounced for losing a democratically elected ally in the Philippines.

The President, at minimum, seems to have decided that it is better to be criticized for action than for dithering. His growing self-confidence has been helped along, aides assert, by his well-developed personal relations with other world leaders, whom he incessantly writes and telephones. (Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle were busy until 3 o'clock the night of the Panama invasion, calling foreign leaders to inform them of the President's decision.) These contacts, aides say, have given Bush a feel for how the world will react to any particular U.S. move -- or, in other words, for what he can and cannot get away with.

A less attractive aspect of the President's new decisiveness is his obsession with secrecy. There is an aura of scary smugness about Bush these days, a schoolboyish delight in saying, as he did to reporters about the Malta summit, "I knew something you didn't." Secrecy obviously is necessary in planning something like a Panama invasion. But Bush and his confidants have on occasion carried it to the point of deliberately misleading Congress and the public -- not to mention ranking members of their own Administration -- as with the supposed ban on high-level political talks with the Chinese.

The Panama decision in particular was held within a small circle; Joint Chiefs spokesman Colonel William Smullen asserts that "there were a handful, really a small number, of people in this entire building ((the Pentagon)) who knew this operation was going to happen." In retrospect, though, the invasion looks inevitable. The U.S. through two Administrations built Noriega into a menacing monster -- instead of what he was, the tin-pot dictator of a not very important country -- and put its credibility on the line in declaring that he had to go. But everything Washington tried -- propaganda, economic sanctions, attempts to foment a coup -- failed. The Pentagon prepared fresh contingency plans for an invasion at least as early as last spring; they were the subject of one of the first briefings Defense Secretary Cheney received when he took over. The plans were updated in the summer, and much more intensively by Joint Chiefs Chairman Powell after the unsuccessful Oct. 3 coup. Stung by the derisive criticism about his inaction then, Bush appeared to be waiting eagerly for some justification to send in the troops.

Noriega obligingly provided it. The dictator had his rubber-stamp People's Assembly name him "Maximum Leader" and declare that American provocations created a "state of war" between the two countries. That coincided with attacks on U.S. servicemen in Panama. There had previously been hundreds of . similar incidents and not all one-sided; in an altercation outside a laundry in Panama City, a U.S. officer, who was not supposed to be carrying a gun, shot and wounded a Panamanian. It is possible too that Washington took Noriega's declaration of "war" more seriously than it was intended. Nonetheless, the President and his aides feared that Noriega had finally succumbed to hubris and lost all restraint.

The Sunday, Dec. 17, meeting in the White House following the Christmas party "started as an in-depth briefing" of Bush by his senior aides, says a participant. The President was especially infuriated to hear details of the incident in which an American Navy lieutenant was pulled out of a car and beaten by Panama Defense Forces soldiers while his wife was threatened with gang rape. "Enough is enough," said Bush. "This guy ((Noriega)) is not going to lay off. It will only get worse."

The meeting turned to a consideration of options. One was a "surgical" paramilitary attempt to capture Noriega. It was rejected as too iffy and risky (probably wisely, in view of the later inability of American forces to snatch the dictator during the invasion). Powell outlined the plan for a full invasion, forthrightly telling Bush that "there is no way this operation is not going to result in casualties" among both U.S. servicemen and Panamanian civilians. Bush listened and then simply said, "Let's do it" -- by far the most fateful three words of his presidency to date.

Among other reasons, the invasion was notable as perhaps the biggest U.S. foreign policy venture in 40 years that had nothing to do with containment of communism. Nobody ever pretended to find reds among Noriega's entourage or voiced any fear that Panama would go communist. Communism also was only a peripheral issue in the Philippines intervention. One reason the Philippine military dislikes Aquino is that it feels she has not been vigorous enough in suppressing communist guerrillas. But the main issue for Bush was simply the survival of a democratically elected government that Washington had helped to install in place of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In fact, Bush has militarily intervened for the most part where communism was not an issue. Where it is, his record is mixed: military aid to anticommunist forces in Afghanistan and El Salvador but attempts to find a political solution in Cambodia and Nicaragua.

Does this suggest a new post-cold-war foreign policy that casts the U.S. as % a different kind of world policeman, acting to save democracy rather than to stop Soviet expansionism? Administration officials vehemently deny any attempt to proclaim a Bush Doctrine of once a democracy always a democracy -- a mirror image of the now discredited Brezhnev Doctrine of once communist ever communist.

White House aides point out that Bush's policies, notably the cozying up to China, are not always pro-democracy. The Philippines and Panama were special cases in which the U.S. had historic ties with the countries involved, major assets to protect -- the Panama Canal and sea and air bases in the Philippines -- and strong military forces on the scene and ready for action. Says a senior Administration official: "It's always nice, of course, when you can intervene on behalf of democrats, but that's not always possible."

On the other hand, officials affirm that Bush is showing a new willingness to use American military power to further U.S. interests that have little or nothing to do with communism -- suppressing drug traffic or terrorism, for example. U.S. helicopter pilots have been supporting drug-eradication efforts in Peru and Guatemala, though Peru last week called a halt to joint antidrug action in protest against the Panama invasion. The Washington Post has quoted Joint Chiefs Chairman Powell as telling colleagues that "we have to put a shingle outside our door saying SUPERPOWER LIVES HERE, no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe." That may be a better summary of the reasoning behind the Panama invasion than any other.

But all that comes with a gigantic if: it assumes the operation in Panama will succeed quickly at a relatively light cost. Of all the lessons of foreign policy, the one that seems to apply most directly to Panama is that a fait accompli will be accepted by domestic and world opinion -- but that few setbacks are as damaging as a fait accompli that is not quite accompli.

With reporting by Dan Goodgame, Christopher Ogden and Jay Peterzell/ Washingto n