Gordon Carrera

They might also be strategically important assets like the territory of Greenland because of its critical minerals and its position in the world in terms of missile defense and national security.

And I mean, what I found interesting was just how, you know, we were talking about the different reasons and motives for this operation, but how explicit they were.

You had the legal justification, which is drugs, but that was also, you know, clearly a kind of relatively shallow.

Then they said the oil bit, the quiet part out loud, you know, this is partly about oil, but they were also, you know, very explicit.

about the fact that this fits into this wider strategy.

I mean, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, said in the big press conference after the operation was first announced, this will re-establish American deterrence and dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

This is America first.

It's a very explicit strategy.

And I think that's what, when you look at the parallels for this, as I said, there are parallels in terms of things like Guatemala and Chile, but they tended to be quite covert.

I mean, the only one that kind of sits a bit closer is Panama when they went after Noriega in 1989.

And I mean, this is a really interesting story because on one level, it does look quite similar, doesn't it?

Because you've got an operation to go after General Noriega, who is then running Panama, and to remove him and bring him to a U.S.

court.

But it's also got some differences.

I mean, I hadn't realised that Noriega had been a CIA asset, David, at one point and been used by the US to kind of go after leftist groups and then decides he's going to get big in the drug trade and kind of take over the country.

And then they, it's different to some extent because Panama is obviously much smaller as a country and they have a US military base there because of the Panama Canal.

And so in some ways it's easier to do, but it's still a pretty violent operation, which takes a few weeks, claims, I think, 26 American lives, a few hundred Panamanians dead.

And then eventually Noriega flees.

to I think it's the Vatican embassy, the Vatican mission in Panama where he's holed up for days and they play rock music loudly at him over speakers to try and get him out.

If you go on Spotify, you can actually find the Spotify playlist