Remember Panama? (1991)

Book Review from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Panama: Made in the USA. By John Weeks and Phil Goodman. Latin America Bureau. £4.99.

This is a timely reminder of President Bush’s hypocrisy in denouncing Saddam Hussein for “violating international law” with his invasion of Kuwait. The previous such violation had occurred in December 1989—when Bush ordered 24,000 US troops to invade Panama, capture its dictator and install a friendly puppet regime.

Panama, in fact, has in common with Kuwait the fact of being artificially created by an imperialist power in pursuit of its economic and strategic interests. Just as Kuwait was set up by Britain in 1899, so Panama was created by the US in 1903 as a breakaway from Colombia to provide a client state that would allow it to build—and then completely control—the Panama Canal. Ever since, as described in this booklet, the US has done what it liked there.

Blogger's Note:

An unsigned book review - which is annoying - but there's an outside chance it was written by Philip Bentley, who was known to review books published by the Latin American Bureau. 

The total spending chart (see above) appeared directly below the review in the original Standard, so I'm presuming it was in some way connected to the book review. 'Presuming' is a bit of a stretch.