https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/17/opinion/trump-venezuela-maduro-panama-noriega/
Let’s hope history doesn’t tempt Trump to invade Venezuela
The last time a defiant Latin American dictator was accused of being a drug dealer, the US went in to arrest him.
By Stephen Kinzer – Boston Globe - September 17, 2025
American warships carrying thousands of troops are poised off the coast of Venezuela. President Trump has accused the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, of being a drug kingpin and put a $50 million bounty on his head. How crazy is it to imagine that a president of the United States would order the invasion of a Latin American country on the grounds that its leader is a drug dealer? Not crazy at all — in fact, it’s been done before.
At the end of 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered an invasion of Panama. One of his justifications was that the Panamanian strongman, Manuel Noriega, was a drug smuggler. With more than 25,000 troops and 300 aircraft, the invasion was a quick success. Noriega wound up in jail and the new regime was pro-American.
It could be Trump’s dream scenario for Venezuela. An invasion this time, however, would be more easily imagined than accomplished.
Maduro has much in common with Noriega, who died in 2017 after more than 20 years of imprisonment. Both rose from poverty to power and ruled as authoritarian populists. Both embraced a form of nationalism that, as is common in Latin America, had a distinctly anti-Yanqui tone.
Noriega’s defiance of the United States represented a sharp break, because he had been on the CIA payroll for years. Maduro, in contrast, has never been anything other than a flaming anti-imperialist. Both of them landed on Washington’s enemy list.
Drugs also tie them together. Noriega was part of the Medellín cocaine cartel. Congress held public hearings at which his drug dealing was described. It was the subject of a front-page New York Times exposé written by Seymour Hersh. In 1988, prosecutors in Miami secured an indictment charging Noriega with large-scale drug trafficking. That gave a legal patina to the following year’s invasion.
The Trump administration says it has evidence tying Maduro to the drug trade. If it follows the Panama model, it will publicize the evidence and then secure a criminal indictment. That would allow Trump to frame an invasion as the execution of an arrest warrant.
Outrage at a dictator who smuggles drugs was not the only reason the United States invaded Panama. If Noriega had remained a submissive American client, his misdeeds might have been tolerated. Instead, he promoted a peace plan for Central America that the United States strongly opposed.
Maduro is comparably defiant. Whether or not he is a drug trafficker, he is outspokenly anti-American. That is at least part of the reason he is now in Washington’s crosshairs.
The Panama invasion was easy because the United States had thousands of troops at bases in the Panama Canal Zone. In Venezuela there are no comparable American assets.
Venezuela’s military is said to have up to 100,000 active-duty soldiers. Many of them, along with some civilians, might relish the chance to fight invading Americans — seeing it as a chance to tie themselves to the glory of past anti-gringo resistance forces. An invasion would trigger eruptions of protest around the hemisphere and beyond. Trump might calculate, however, that many would quietly welcome Maduro’s overthrow.
Noriega had a chance to save himself. In 1998 Bush quietly offered to leave him alone and make the drug indictments disappear if he would leave office and retire. He declined. Apparently he feared that since he knew so much about the Medellín cartel, its leaders would order him killed as soon as he lost the protection of office.
Fighting in Panama lasted only a few days, but finding Noriega proved difficult. He disappeared into his network of military comrades, girlfriends, and Santería practitioners. Finally he turned himself in to the papal nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador to Panama, and took refuge in the embassy. The American commander ordered giant loudspeakers placed around the Vatican embassy as a way to force him out. They blared carefully chosen rock songs at top volume, including “You’re No Good,” “Wanted Dead or Alive,” and “Nowhere to Run.” The nuncio demanded that the loudspeakers be removed. Finally, after 11 days in the embassy, Noriega dressed in his uniform and stepped outside. American soldiers grabbed him, put him in an orange jumpsuit, and flew him to the United States for trial, conviction, and imprisonment.
Capturing Maduro in a country 10 times the size of Panama could be more difficult. The American force now patrolling Venezuela’s coast — about 4,500 troops in seven warships — is nowhere near large enough to mount a full-scale invasion. Its presence may temporarily reduce the flow of drugs across one part of the Caribbean, but these deployments are hugely expensive and cannot be maintained indefinitely. Studies suggest that interdiction is not an effective antidrug strategy as long as demand in the United States creates a profitable market.
Trump’s recollection of the Panama invasion and arrest of Noriega could lure him into trying to do the same in Venezuela. That would be a dangerous miscalculation. Intervening in Venezuela would not bring a quick victory over either a dictatorship or drug dealing. It would open a new war front at a time when the United States already has too many.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson School for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.