Operation Just Cause, code name for the invasion of Panama in December 1989, was the first serious exercise of military power by the United States during the post-Cold War era. It would prove to be everything that subsequent U.S. military operations were not: a rapid, decisive application of overwhelming might that removed a petty tyrant from power, left a lasting imprint on local and regional politics, and brought democracy to an oppressed people. Given the peculiar pattern of U.S. military operations since 1989 -- whereby military power has been employed in an increasingly halting and feckless manner, producing less and less of enduring political value -- one cannot help but wonder why the campaign has not been enshrined as a paradigm for the American way of war.
Just Cause proved to be a minor masterpiece in the art of high command. This is remarkable for two reasons: first, because American strategy and policy in Panama and, more broadly, in Central America have historically been reactive and short-sighted; and, second, because the architects of American military operations have moved cautiously, even timidly ever since. Even those in the Bush administration who oversaw the storming of Panama later lost their taste for boldness. As well as this, in the strictly military sense, Just Cause provided a revealing glimpse of the operational, tactical and technological prowess of the U.S. military. It was in Panama, after all, that the highly competent force, resurrected from the ashes of Vietnam, and trained and equipped through the Reagan build-up of the 1980s, first revealed itself.
