Word: civilian
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Triumph in the short run by no means guarantees that the U.S. will be able to bequeath Panama a stable, democratic civilian government. Endara has not even finished naming a full Cabinet, and in other ways he is all too obviously dependent on his American protectors. In fact, Endara suffered from telling, if unintentional, slights. His first television address to the nation was preceded onscreen by a U.S. Defense Department logo. When Americans accepted the surrender of Del Cid, they flew him to the U.S. for trial on drug charges without so much as a by-your-leave...
...fact, such a development might produce stability of a distinctly unwelcome variety. Many times previously, the interaction of a weak civilian leadership and a strong military has plunged Panama -- and other U.S. client states in Central America -- into dictatorship. A week after the military triumph against Noriega, the U.S. was discovering again that it is much easier to depose a dictator than to establish a democracy...
Soldiers are given to cautioning their civilian bosses to judge the enemy by his capabilities, not by his stated intentions. He can deceive about his intentions, or his intentions can change from one year to the next. Capabilities, by contrast, are more constant; they can be gauged objectively; they are harder to change and mask, and once they have truly changed, they are harder to reverse...
...forces then focused on the plight of hostages who had been seized by Noriega's men. At the Marriott a foreign journalist was approached at about 12:25 a.m. Wednesday by three gunmen in ski masks and civilian clothes. They ordered her to join eleven other guests, including seven Americans being held hostage in the hotel by thugs toting AK-47s. They were marched into a van, driven to a house and held in a kitchen for three hours. "You're bombing our children; you're bombing our people," one told the Americans. "If we were in another country...
...knows that resorting to force would probably provoke even greater resistance to Moscow's rule and would certainly spell the end of his liberal reform program as a whole. A crackdown could also revive the cold war and end his plans to transfer resources from the military to the civilian sector...