Noriega and Maduro

One of these things is not like the other

(Nicolas Maduro aboard the USS Iwo Jima after his capture)

By Robert A. Strong

The Trump administration’s military intervention in Venezuela and the arrest of Nicolas Maduro is understandably being compared to the 1989 invasion of Panama under President George H. W. Bush and the arrest of Manuel Noriega. Though the two events have much in common, the differences between them are also significant.

Many Americans understood the threat posed by Noriega, agreed that it needed to be addressed, and were angered by the killing of an off-duty American officer in Panama City. They were not surprised by the Bush decision to use military force in December of 1989. The recent events in Venezuela are harder to understand.

A United America

In 1989, the American people were united in opposition to Panama’s dictator. Seymour Hersh, the accomplished investigative journalist, had published an expose of Noriega’s involvement in the murder of his political opponents and flagrant violations of human rights. Congress was full of Noriega critics. Two senators on opposite sides of the aisle—Democrat John Kerry and Republican Jesse Helms—worked together to block American aid to Panama because Noriega’s nation was clearly involved in the shipment of illicit drugs to the United States. Two separate American grand juries indicted Noriega for money laundering and drug trafficking.

In the winding down of the Cold War, tolerance for dictatorial foreign leaders who helped in the fight against Soviet communism was waning. And Bush in his inaugural address had declared that the “day of the dictator is over.”

The American people were already moving on to a new foreign policy agenda. They told pollsters in the 1988 presidential campaign that the biggest international threat to the United States was the drug trade. In that campaign, George Bush—Ronald Reagan’s unfailingly loyal vice president—publicly criticized the Reagan State Department for considering an immunity offer to Noriega if he agreed to step down and leave the country. Both the American people and the newly elected president in 1989 wanted Noriega punished.

That opposition to Noriega rose when former President Jimmy Carter and other international election watchers called out fraud in Panamanian voting in the spring of 1989. Noriega’s thugs attacked one of the opposition candidates just after the election and the image of his bloody face was seen in news coverage across America and around the world—a photograph that went viral before things going viral was a common experience.

Noriega had declining support in Panama, no real allies in Latin America, and an American public fully aware of his crimes.

A Just Cause

Serious planning for a possible U.S. intervention in Panama began in the summer of 1989 after a coup attempt against Noriega ended in an embarrassing failure. By this time, the United States had tried almost all the instruments in its foreign policy toolbox: aid cutoffs, diplomatic criticism, economic sanctions (including the suspension of payments for use of the Panama Canal), monitored elections, UN resolutions, and clandestine support for coup plotters. Nothing worked. U.S. officials therefore considered the use of military action.

Bush rejected plans for a possible commando raid that would capture Noriega and bring him to the United States to stand trial. He also rejected plans for a small-scale intervention in the capital city that would ensure the capture of Noriega even if he went into hiding. Instead, the Bush administration planned a large intervention that would both capture Noriega and dismantle the military forces that were the source of his power and the primary institutional impediment to Panamanian democracy. That mission would require a significant military force—more than 20,000 US troops—and would be the largest U.S. combat operation since the Vietnam War.

The virtue of the large intervention was that it would prevent the replacement of Noriega by one of his henchmen and make possible a positive regime change. The military planners called their proposed operation “Just Cause.”

A Triggering Event

The planning for an American intervention in Panama did not necessarily mean that it would take place. The decision to execute the plan was made in response to actions taken by Noriega. In the months after the fraudulent election and failed coup, Noriega became more erratic. He declared himself to be the “Maximum Leader” of Panama, whatever that might mean, and said that Panama was in a state of war with the United States. His forces took harsher action against the Americans still managing and protecting the Panama Canal prior to its treaty-obligated transfer back to Panama at the end of the century.

On December 16, 1989, Panamanian military personnel at a roadblock in Panama City opened fire on a group of off-duty American servicemen driving away from their barrier. One serviceman was killed, another wounded. A naval officer and his wife who witnessed the roadblock shooting were taken into custody; the officer was beaten, his wife harassed. When the details of these events reached the president at a weekend White House meeting, Bush ordered the execution of the Just Cause intervention.

American interventions in Latin America have a long history and are never welcome among America’s neighbors in the hemisphere. But the international and Latin American criticism of the Bush intervention in Panama was milder than might have been expected. This might have been because the military operation was over in a matter of days and put in office a new Panamanian government led by those who had won the national election in the spring. The U.S. resumed aid to Panama after the intervention, ended sanctions, and helped in the training of new security forces for the nation.

The Bush administration operation in Panama was big news for a very short time. The much bigger issues involving Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War took center stage following the first meeting between Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta at the end of 1989. And the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990 led to a war in the Persian Gulf that was much larger and more consequential than the brief one in Panama. The capture and conviction of Noriega was a relatively minor foreign policy event in an administration better known for its responses to major issues in Europe and the Middle East.

A Final Comparison

In many ways, President Donald Trump’s intervention in Venezuela is different from the Bush intervention in Panama.

The American military forces in Venezuela captured and removed a dictator, succeeding in the type of modest mission that Bush rejected in the planning for Panama in 1989. The Bush plan to fully defeat Panama’s military forces in an operation that would be over in a matter of days would simply not be possible for the U.S. to accomplish in Venezuela today.

Panama is roughly the size of South Carolina and had a population of less than three million in 1989. America had a long and controversial connection to Panama because of the Canal and American forces stationed in the Canal Zone.

Venezuela is twice the size of California with a population of roughly 30 million and modest economic ties to the United States. Those are big differences in the fundamentals of the two situations.

The politics are also different. The American people understood what Bush was doing in Panama. In the 1988 campaign, he clearly criticized Noriega, supported the indictments against him, and declared the drug trade to be a major issue for the United States. After the fraudulent Panamanian election and the failed coup attempt, Bush tightened the screws of U.S. sanctions on Panama. A conflict between the two nations seemed likely.

Since September 2025, the Trump administration has raised tensions with Venezuela and destroyed small boats off its coast. Why? The claims that the U.S. must fight narco-terrorism with sophisticated drone and missile attacks against tiny shipments of cocaine never made much sense. Putting significant naval forces near Venezuela to support a military operation to capture and extract its national leader does.

But is the intervention in Venezuela about drugs, or about democracy, or about oil? Arresting one Latin American drug-dealing head of state just after pardoning another (the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted drug dealer, whom Trump pardoned on December 1, 2025) confuses the message on drugs. Working with Maduro’s vice president instead of the opposition leaders who won the recent Venezuelan election confuses the message on democracy. Constant comments about oil confuse everything. The Bush administration intervention in Panama in 1989 was controversial, but it was never as confusing as the Trump intervention in Venezuela.

Readers interested in the George H. W. Bush presidency and decision making about Panama will find important information in the Miller Center oral history interviews with Dick Cheney, Robert Gates, Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft. The Scowcroft interview is particularly helpful for understanding how the issue rose to prominence at the end of 1989.

Robert A. Strong, emeritus professor at Washington and Lee University, is a Miller Center nonresident faculty senior fellow.