America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

It is only natural that a red-blooded American who has repeatedly been called a wimp should derive a certain satisfaction from the sudden accusation that he is actually a bully. Hence the strutting, how-do-you-like-them-apples? comments coming from the White House just after the invasion of Panama.

But the Bush Administration soon adopted a more seemly tone -- restrained, conciliatory, even a tad remorseful about the earlier chest pounding. Legal experts warned that official American name calling might jeopardize the prosecution's case against Manuel Noriega. But there was another reason for George Bush's eagerness to put away the big stick and start talking softly again. He believes in that AT&T advertising slogan, "Reach out and touch someone" -- not with the 82nd Airborne but with a telephone call. Starting in the early hours of Operation Just Cause, he talked to more than a dozen foreign leaders, many of them in Latin America. They were polite, in some cases even supportive, but in virtually all cases cautionary. Here was the U.S. occupying a neighboring country just when the Soviet Union finally seemed to be getting out of that business. The Kremlin did some remonstrating of its own. At their Malta meeting, Mikhail Gorbachev had complained to Bush about the U.S.'s military muscle flexing during the attempted coup in the Philippines; now here was Uncle Sam in Panama, again seeming to relegitimize the use of force.

Then there was another awkward feature of the operation: maybe it was a just cause, but it was hardly a fair fight. The ratio of the U.S.'s population to Panama's is 100 to 1. Factor in the overwhelming superiority of the American military, and it might as well be 1,000 to 1. Similar odds prevailed during Ronald Reagan's conquest of Grenada in 1983 and his eleven-minutes-over-Libya bombing raid against Muammar Gaddafi in 1986. A none-too-edifying pattern is emerging in the late 20th century. Since conflicts between nuclear-armed big boys may lead to Armageddon, being a superpower has come to mean roaring at mice -- picking on someone emphatically not your own size. Presidents claim, and usually get, domestic credit for standing tall against pygmies. But they cannot expect enthusiastic cheers from the rest of the world.

Bush was receptive to the overseas reaction. In general, he is a good listener, unusually so for a politician. He is also very much a foreign policy President. He savors and nurtures his personal relationships with other leaders. A number of those he consulted said that whatever the provocation and even justification for attacking Panama, there would be a price to pay abroad. That message meant at least as much to Bush as the gloating of his political advisers over the payoff at home. To his credit, he seemed genuinely embarrassed when the bumptious Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater rushed to treat Noriega like Willie Horton, the murderer and rapist whose mug shot figured so prominently in the 1988 campaign -- a bad guy that good Americans love to hate.

Last week, when planeloads of U.S. soldiers began returning from Panama, Bush and his top aides were clearly relieved. They realized that getting out was every bit as important as going in. The spin from the White House and the State Department was all in the direction of disclaimers. No, the invasion was not a precedent. No, it did not represent a "Bush Doctrine," whereby the President reserves the right to send in a 9,500-member SWAT team to arrest an entire country. Instead, the Panama invasion was a last resort, an exception that will, over time, prove the rule of America's respect for diplomacy and law. That is the best that can be said for the episode, and it is the most that the Administration ought to claim.