1989 in review - 27 December 1989

When John Kennedy was inaugurated on a piercing cold day in January 1961, he said, "The torch has been passed to a new generation".

And looking on that boyish figure, we did seem to see a whole procession of western statesmen and generals, Churchill and Atlee and Macmillan and Truman and Atchison, and Eisenhower and Montgomery and MacArthur and the rest, all trooping off in good and most admired order into the history books.

Kennedy was the second youngest president in American history and, surely, now youth was at the helm. By the way, Mr Harold Wilson was, I believe, only eight months older than Kennedy, but nobody has moist eyes about the youth of Harold Wilson.

True, a young man had taken over the presidency, from a general 27 years older. But the ideology and the attitudes to Europe remain the same. The Soviet Union was, more than ever, the mighty potential enemy. Within the year, we dropped the word "potential". And when Kennedy stood before those 300,000 baying West Germans and shouted, "Ich bin ein Berliner", the old promise was renewed that the United States would leap to the defence of Europe if the Soviet Union, with or without any of its satellite armies across the Wall, should make a move westward.

During Kennedy's presidency, the American defence budget rose to 51 cents in the dollar. And nobody accused him of sabre-rattling. When Reagan came roaring in 20 years later and under him the defence budget was, as some wag observed, increased from 51 to 28 cents in the dollar, the comparative figure was overlooked and such was the force of Mr. Reagan's rhetoric that the United States seemed more militant than ever in its determination to build more missiles, strengthen the navy, keep the airborne divisions more on the alert and, in general, hold the suspected Soviets at bay.

And then came Mr. Gorbachev. And the various summits reduced the threat of intercontinental missiles and medium range and we all felt that the strain of the 40-year-old confrontation had been relieved, but certainly not abolished.

All of us onlookers – professional and amateur historians, politicians, students of Kremlinology – all went on arguing about how the balance of terror could best be preserved between the Nato alliance and the members of the Warsaw Pact. Mr. Gorbachev appeared as a uniquely benign figure and gave us hope. None of us had the slightest suspicion that in three months, in 1989, the armies of the Warsaw Pact would practically cease to exist as a united opposition, not from any negotiated agreement of the old gang, of the old negotiators, but because of wholly unanticipated revolutions, actual revolutions, in four of the Soviet's eastern allies, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania.

I think it's no exaggeration to say that the autumn of 1989, in any history book, will go down as a blazing period when all the settled enmities, the political assumptions, the whole structure of East-West conflict in the second half of the 20th Century, went up in smoke.

"Where", asked a wily old friend, "are you going to do your letter from this week?" A good question. For all the useful comment that American has to offer on the European revolutions, the letter might better come from Bucharest or Bonn, or Moscow. But, for the time being, Washington's thoughts and advice seem as irrelevant as they did when Washington was an onlooker, a non-playing team in the first two years of the Second World War.

And consequently, for the time being also, such topics as drugs, crime in the streets, Aids, the huge scandal of the thrifts – the savings and loans associations – though, of course, dire and disturbing, do seem like domestic preoccupations that, for the moment can arouse little interest in Europe, in Asia, in Australasia.

Luckily for us, for me, there is a topic that – but for the bloody fate of President Ceausescu and the beginning, I fear, of people's revolutionary tribunals – but for that, there is a topic that would certainly be monopolising your headlines, namely, the American coup, the invasion of Panama.

Incidentally, its the 40th or 41st time that the United States has had to intervene in what every American, north, south and central, knows is an American puppet state. By the time you hear this talk, no doubt most of you will have learned of the fate of General Noriega.

But, in retrospect and for the record, the steps leading up to it, indeed, the whole invasion exercise appeared more and more like a story written by Graham Greene and rewritten by Evelyn Waugh. When it happened, when it was announced, the nasty fact that it was yet another invasion was cloaked in marvellous Pentagonese, or federal prose.

It was to be a stabilising operation and the prisoners of war – since it wasn't a war, was it? – would be known as detainees. And presumably, following on the precedent established during the Second World War, wounded men would be known as ICPs, impaired combatant personnel. Dead men would be totted up as body count. Prince Charles, thou shouldst be reporting at this hour.

Now, as everybody knows, and as the White House and the Pentagon came to fudge, the first aim was to capture Noriega, fly him to Miami and have the attorney general's marshal recite his crimes and present him with the charges of criminal drug dealing and money laundering, before bringing him to trial in, I suppose, Washington. Maybe it had to be Miami – I don't know how the legal niceties would have had to decide.

But this prospect was blighted the very first day of the invasion, when the new President the United States had installed the winner in last May's election, which Noriega overturned, Mr Endara announced there was nothing in the Panamanian Constitution which allowed a Panamanian, charged with crimes in another country, to be extradited. Mr Endara said flatly he would not allow Noriega to be taken to the United States.

And here I thought I could hear a gusty sigh of relief coming from the White House, for Noriega, don't forget, was only five years ago Washington's man, whose fraudulent rigging of an election was approved, whose army was built up by the United States with a special force assigned to protect the canal.

The same Noriega who, when President Bush was Director Bush, head of the CIA, was a valued, paid, American agent in supposedly fighting the drug business he actually controlled. He, very recently, gave Washington what used to be called the heebie-jeebies, when he let be known he had a file of juicy evidence about his own connection with the Iran-Contra mess, which would be very damaging to President Bush who, as vice president, claimed to know nothing at all about the affair.

On the whole, I think the most satisfying thing to the White House about the invasion so far is the realisation that Noriega will not be brought to trial in the United States. There were devout members of the administration who must have prayed it was nothing but the truth, when they heard the rumour that General Noriega had escaped to Cuba, to Nicaragua, to Peru, to Spain.

For the first day or two, the Wednesday and Thursday, the commanding American officer in Panama kept throwing in at press conferences – and that's a novelty, televised, uncensored press conferences from the field of battle – he kept saying that of course the capture of Noriega was the primary aim but meanwhile the subduing of the so-called Dignity battalions was the business of the hour, since the main army, the Panamanian Defence Forces had been subdued.

"Why", somebody asked, "did you let Noriega's government radio keep broadcasting through the first 24 hours?" There were taped battle cries from Noriega himself. "Well", the general said, uncomfortably, "when you're trying to save lives, a radio station is a secondary objective" and that, in spite of the universal recognition that the first sign of a collapsed government is its radio going off the air.

The general said the great task ahead was to have his 24, now 26,000 soldiers search out and destroy the fearsome Dignity battalions. And how formidable were they? Well, six battalions, 300 men to a battalion. Figure it out for yourself, said the general. They did. Were 26,000 men going to try to destroy 1800 men? Yes, but these sly loyalists broke up into twos, threes, dozens, half-dozens and caused havoc by guerrilla raids and sniping eruptions. We believe that, by now, it has been done. Or nearly.

Meanwhile, the commanders kept on snapping, "We're closing in on the monster!" They had him staked out in several locations, actually in Panama, one of which was the home of his mistress, apparently he spent a night there. They closed in. He gave them the slip, by half an hour. He rode off and on the following night slept at three different places.

Then, arranged to meet either an agent of his good friend Monsignor Juan Laboa or the Monsignor himself, the papal nuncio, at an ice-cream parlour which evidently had not been staked out. And from there, they whisked him off to the papal mission, into the driveway – Good morning, General! – and into the haven, sanctuary, retreat, exile, place of rest or whatever the Vatican eventually decided it was to be legally and properly called. Then the American troops closed in and shot out the mission's lights.

The White House maintained its glorious prose style to the end, calling the arrival of General Noriega at the papal mission "inappropriate" – a word to be translated by the Vatican radio into 62 languages.

"Where all this will end", as Time magazine will have written once, "knows only God".

In the meantime, make the most of an incoming turbulent year and try, in your own home at least, to make it happy.

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