The National Interest
Summer 2000

Extracts from
Lessons Unlearned

by Thomas Donnelly

 

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.

Just Cause was fought during the small hours of December 20, 1989, and the combat portion of the operation was essentially completed by noon, though it took until January 3, 1990 to seize Manuel Noriega, who had gone into hiding when the invasion began. The operation was a classic coup de main, an attempt to "take down" not only the Panamanian military but its political base in one swift blow. Success came at a comparatively low cost--26 American deaths (including 23 soldiers) and 500 to 600 Panamanian fatalities--especially given the fact that a substantial portion of the fighting took place in the crowded slums of Panama City. Yet the combat phase of the operation was but one part of the story. The majority of dead Panamanians were civilians, not soldiers, many lost to the indiscriminate fire of the Panamanian Defense Forces. Though the war lasted less than a day, it triggered widespread looting and arson in Panama City, leaving an estimated 10,000 Panamanians homeless, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The complete pacification of the country took several additional weeks

The campaign began with nearly simultaneous assaults on twenty-seven targets throughout Panama. Though many of these sites were clustered in and around Panama City and the canal zone, they included a substantial effort at Rio Hato, a Panamanian airfield and military base about seventy miles west of Panama City on the Pacific Coast. While the United States had substantial forces stationed in Panama prior to the invasion, many of these were performing various desk assignments at U.S. Southern Command. A sizeable portion of the combat forces were dispatched directly from the United States, including parachute assault teams from the army's 75th Ranger Regiment and 82nd Airborne Division. The bulk of the force was comprised of army light and mechanized infantry supported with helicopters. As well, Marines, Navy SEALs and a variety of other special operations forces played key supporting roles--along with the F-117 "Stealth" fighter, a large fleet of air force airlifters and tanker aircraft. In all, about 27,000 U.S. troops participated directly in Operation Just Cause, while thousands more supported it...

...The contrast with the subsequent employment of American military power is extraordinary. Since Just Cause, American forces have been used fitfully, cautiously and with only mixed results to show. In the two major military campaigns conducted since Panama--in the Persian Gulf and in southeastern Europe--the United States has pursued half-solutions and achieved incomplete victories. It has wielded just enough military force to prevent Saddam Hussein from controlling the majority of the world's oil supplies or Slobodan Milosevic from undermining stability in Europe, but no more.

Just eight months after eliminating what he termed his "Noriega problem", President Bush faced a much bigger "Saddam problem." Though conventional wisdom has it that the months leading up to Desert Storm amounted to a triumph of diplomacy and strategic planning, the record suggests otherwise. For one, the military received inconsistent and confusing guidance from senior administration officials. Indeed, at the final high-level conference prior to the launching of Desert Storm, Lieutenant-General Frederick Franks, commander of the U.S. VII Corps, which was to execute the campaign's main attack, plaintively asked Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, "How do I know what victory looks like?" This sort of confusion is even more remarkable when one considers that--except for Thurman and Stiner--most of the senior Bush administration team during Desert Storm was the same as during Just Cause. Yet the contrast between the two campaigns could not have been more striking

To begin with, the Bush administration was unable to make a principled case for the Gulf War. The president's efforts to portray Saddam as a modern Hitler, for example, were hardly in tune with Secretary of State James Baker's claim that the war was about "jobs, jobs, jobs." The Bush team regularly protested that its problem was not with "the Iraqi people", merely with Saddam and his henchmen. Yet a declared aim of the war was to restore the Kuwaiti monarchy, hardly a representative government and one whose leaders seemed content to fight for their country from London's finest hotels. Even Bush's initial reaction to the invasion appeared muddled: before famously declaring that the invasion "would not stand", he had to be admonished by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher not to "go all wobbly."

It is Desert Storm, not Just Cause, that has provided the template for recent U.S. military operations. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the conduct of last year's war against Serbia. While the full history of Operation Allied Force is still to be written, press accounts during the war and a remarkable series of articles by Dana Priest in the Washington Post last year revealed that the planning and conduct of the Kosovo campaign was very far removed from the Panama paradigm. Allied Force was conceived as an "air only" war, replete with Vietnam-like pauses for negotiation or strategy reassessment. Indeed, President Clinton pledged at the outset that he did "not intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war."

As during Desert Storm, the air war over Kosovo was a meticulously "phased", sequential campaign that first would neutralize Serb air defenses, then strike at sites south of Belgrade, and finally culminate in attacks on the capital itself, including "leadership" targets such as ministry buildings and communications towers. But unlike Desert Storm, Allied Force would begin with strikes on a mere fifty-three targets, mostly air defenses, and be sharply limited by concerns over civilian casualties and possible pilot losses. Initially, no attacks would be directed at industries that might support Serbia's military.

NATO Commander General Wesley Clark faced opposition from his own senior advisers and in particular from General Michael Short, head of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. Short, realizing that attacking Serb ground units in Kosovo would prove a difficult and frustrating task, chafed at Clark's orders to strike Serb forces in the field, deriding them as "tank-plinking", air force slang for attacking mechanized forces one by one. In a postwar interview in Air Force magazine, Short complained that "the massive and laborious tank-plinking effort in Kosovo was in many ways a waste of airpower since it did little to achieve NATO's stated goals." According to the Washington Post, these differences eventually prompted this exchange, when in a video conference Short expressed satisfaction that his aircraft would be allowed to strike Serb police headquarters in downtown Belgrade:

'This is the jewel in the crown', said Short. 'To me, the jewel in the crown is when the B-52s rumble across Kosovo', answered Clark. 'You and I have known for weeks that we have different jewelers', said Short. 'My jeweler outranks yours', concluded Clark

It is difficult to imagine Stiner or Thurman engaging in a similar set-to with one of their subordinates. And it is ironic that Clark, widely reviled in the military as a "political" general thought to be too cozy with President Clinton and senior administration officials, had to fight his war under restrictions with which the Just Cause commanders never had to contend. These limitations help to explain the unsatisfying nature of the "victory" in Kosovo, if indeed one can call it that. They persisted through the end of the war and to this very day--from the Russian race to the Pristina airport to the compromised role of French troops in Mitrovica, Clark has fared no better in stability operations than he did in waging the war itself. Uncertainty of purpose still handicaps NATO and U.S. operations in Kosovo and the Balkans. In fact, the "post-combat" phase of operations in Kosovo appears far more daunting than the bombing campaign itself.

When confronted with the Just Cause to Allied Force evolution of U.S. military operations, it is tempting to conclude that each conflict is sui generis and that drawing general lessons from specific campaigns is folly. Delivering the keynote address at a conference marking the tenth anniversary of the Panama invasion, no less an authority than Bush administration National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft warned against drawing overly broad conclusions from the 1989 campaign. Still, the current paradigm--waging limited war with limited force in a halting fashion--has yet to produce lasting results

Pursuing a "Panama paradigm" is not beyond the capacity of American armed forces. While "taking down" an entire country in eight hours may be a difficult standard to meet, in hindsight it is clear that both Desert Storm and Allied Force could have been concluded more rapidly and more decisively, as there were no tactical or operational reasons that precluded a bolder approach. The failure to pursue one proved to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Both in the Persian Gulf and in the Balkans, U.S. and NATO forces currently face open-ended commitments with no satisfactory "end state" in sight

Yet the Pentagon continues to move farther away from the Panama template. Defense Secretary William Cohen has produced a preliminary review of the Kosovo campaign to coincide with his new budget request. The air force is trumpeting Kosovo (as it did the Gulf War) as the first war won by air power alone. The army has plans to acquire lighter combat vehicles, allegedly to improve its strategic mobility. Enthusiasts for the "revolution in military affairs" speak glowingly of America's increasing ability to conduct long-range precision strikes. At the same time, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Hugh Shelton argues for a reduction of U.S. forces stationed in the Balkans. The Defense Department is more than willing to punish opponents from a distance, but unwilling to do much more

But for a global superpower--animated by universal political principles, favored with rich and powerful allies, and fielding dominant military forces--there ought to be a strong disposition to act decisively in war. This is not to argue that the United States should not be prudent in deciding whether to go to war in the first place, but rather to argue that when America does go to war it should do so in a certain manner. It should act in accordance with American political principles. It should seek, whenever possible, a lasting political outcome and fashion its military strategy accordingly. It should seek to achieve victory rapidly, to employ ample force for that purpose, striving for simultaneous rather than sequential operations. And it should recognize that, having taken such a fateful step, it bears a certain responsibility to clean up the mess it leaves behind.