"The U.S. invasion of Panama was not unlike the Russian invasion of Ukraine: an act of military aggression as part of a larger strategy to extend a nation-state’s geopolitical power regionally and globally."

Hardly. Dictator Manuel Noriega rulled Panama with brute force and terror. He was also an international drug dealer and money launderer. The USA was in the process of turning the Panama Canal over to the Panamanian people in a treaty brokered by Jimmy Carter, and Carter denounced Noriega after the farcical election of 1989 whose results the Maximum Leader refused to release. According to a CBS poll, 92% of Panamanians supported the invasion, and 76% wished the USA had invaded immediately after a coup that had tried to unseat Noriega had failed the previous year.

After he was tried and convicted for racketeering, drug smuggling, and money laundering, Noriega spent 17 years as a guest of the US Government, and then was released early for good behavior, but he was immediately extradited to stand trial in France for similar charges. Eventually he died in pison in Panama, which has fully controlled the strategically important Panama Canal since 1999. President Zelenskyy is unlikely to ever see the inside of Russian courtroom or prison if they can find out where he is, and that is the difference.

The US military is the most respected institution in the country, possibly because they do have a tendency to go after dictators and terrorists like Noriega, Saddam, the Taliban, Milosevic, bin Laden, and ISIL. The political elites we end up with who command this powerful force are there because they were willing to run for office, or work for elected officials who ran. Dr. Bacevich is not in that number, so he can only cast aspersions on them from Boston College.