Panama

Operation Just Cause: The Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Panama - Ronald Cole, Joint History Office. Written shortly after the completion of Operation JUST CAUSE, this monograph traces the involvement of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff in planning and directing combat operations in Panama. The study begins with the initial development of contingency plans in February l988 and concludes with General Manuel Noriega’s surrender to U.S. officials on 3 January l990. Relying primarily upon Joint Staff files and interviews with key participants, the author, Dr. Ronald Cole, provides an account of the parts played by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Staff, and the Commander in Chief of U.S. Southern Command in planning for operations in Panama and their roles in the combat operations that followed.

Operation Just Cause: Panama 1989-1990 - US Army Center for Military History. The files contained in this directory represent raw data compiled during the course of the operation by MAJ Robert K. Wright, Jr., the XVIII Airborne Corps Historian who deployed as the Joint Task Force SOUTH Historian, and Ms. Dolores De Mena, the Command Historian for United States Army, South. Additional information continued to be collected in the months after the conclusion of the operation by those individuals, Mr. William Stacy (Command Historian, United States Army Forces Command), and the 44th, 130th, and 320th Military History Detachments.

Operations “Just Cause” and “Promote Liberty” The Implications Of Military Operations Other Than War. - Major William Conley Jr., USMC. US Marine Corps Command and Staff College thesis, 2001. The U.S. has faced a number of new issues and challenges since the end of the cold war. The Department of Defense was involved in numerous Military Operations Other Than War (MOOTW) during the 1990s. Operation Just Cause and Promote Liberty in Panama were the first of such operations. I examined the situation that led up to the intervention in Panama and the complexity of the issues that influenced the actions of the U.S. military and government. Operation Just Cause, proved to be an extremely successful operation for the United States. Its success can be attributed to clear direction from the National Command Authority, a unified command structure, joint synergy and the ability of the commanders at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of war to apply complementary operational concepts. The follow-on operation, Promote Liberty, was not as successful for the opposite reasons; the objectives were not as clearly defined, the planning was restricted and somewhat inadequate, the command structure was disjointed, and the overall environment was awkward and muddled to the military.

Planning: Operation Just Cause, December 1989 - Dr. Lawrence A. Yates. US Army Command and Staff College Press article, 1992. The defense of the Panama Canal has been a mission of the U.S. military since the waterway's completion in 1914. Under the Carter- Torrijos treaties of 1978, defense of the canal also became the legal rationale for the continued presence of U.S. forces in Panama under the commander in chief, U.S. Southern Command (CINCSO, SOUTHCOM), a unified command activated in 1963 and headquartered at Quarry Heights, Panama, overlooking Panama City. Every two years, SOUTHCOM updates its operations plan (OPLAN) for the defense of the canal. In mid-1987, the existing plan, CINCSO OPLAN 6000-86, postulated either combined operations with the friendly Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) or, in the event the PDF remained neutral in the face of a threat to the canal, joint U.S. operations. What the plan did not anticipate was a threat to the canal from the Panamanian military itself. Yet from June 1987 on the prospects of a hostile PDF move against strategic U.S. interests in Panama could not be disregarded.

Operation Just Cause: Oral History Interview - Center for Military History transcript of oral history interview of Lieutenant General Carmen Cavezza, USA, Division Commander, 7th Infantry Division.

Operation Just Cause: Oral History Interview - Center for Military History transcript of oral history interview of Major General William Matz Jr., USA, Assistant Division Commander for for Support, 7th Infantry Division.

Operation Just Cause: Oral History Interviews - Center for Military History transcripts of XVIII Airborne Corps oral history interviews of participants in Operation Just Cause.

The Panama Invasion Revisited: Lessons for the Use of Force in the Post Cold War Era - Eytan Gilboa. Political Science Quarterly article, 1995. The 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama was the first American use of force since 1945 that was unrelated to the cold war. It was also the first large-scale use of American troops abroad since Vietnam and the most violent event in Panamanian history. It ended with the unusual capture of Manuel Antonio Noriega, Panama's head of state, who was then brought to the United States and tried for criminal drug operations. Despite the end of the cold war, dictators such as Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Serbian leaders Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic will continue to exist and to challenge the international order. How should the United States, the only remaining superpower, deal with these kinds of authoritarian leaders? What lessons can we learn from the Noriega challenge and the means employed by the United States to handle him?

Marines In Panama: 1988 - 1990 - Major Robert Neller, USMC. US Marine Corps Command and Staff College research paper, 1991. Little has been written about the experiences of Marines who served as part of Marine Forces Panama during the Panama crisis. Numbering approximately 650 personnel during the course of their deployment, MARFOR, as it was known, was organized as a contingency Marine Air Ground Task Force. The performance of MARFOR Panama displayed the utility and flexibility of Marine forces in low intensity conflict The initial mission of MARFOR was to protect American lives and property. This remained their constant operational focus throughout the deployment. However, the tactical evolutions of MARFOR took many forms.

Claiming the Night: Operation Just Cause, 1989-1990 - Dr. Thomas Huber. US Army Command and Staff College Press article, 1992. The last decade has witnessed more frequent employment of night operations by U.S. armed forces than in the past. With the introduction of sophisticated night-vision devices, fighting after dark has become a standard part of the American way of war. As senior U.S. officers proclaimed during Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989, "We own the night."

The Rock 'n' Roll Assault on Noriega: U.S. SOUTHCOM Public Affairs After Action Report Supplement, Operation Just Cause - US Southern Command, 1990. Posted by George Washington University, National Security Archive, 1996.