Trump Is Risking War, Even with China, Over the Panama Canal

Trump Is Risking War, Even with China, Over the Panama Canal

“This is no issue to face the world on,” said Henry Kissinger to President Gerald Ford during a National Security Council meeting in May 1975. Kissinger argued that keeping the Panama Canal under American control “looks like pure colonialism” and that “internationally, failure to conclude a treaty is going to get us into a cause célèbre, with harassment, demonstrations, and bombing of embassies.”

In contrast to the somehow relatively more level-headed Kissinger, Donald Trump has made no secret that he wants to make his administration look like pure colonialism, demanding Canada become the 51st state while expanding manifest destiny to the frozen tundra of Greenland. As central to those two countries have been to Trump’s nascent imperialist desires, the country he named more than any other in his State of the Union was Panama.

In the State of the Union, Trump said that “China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we are taking it back!” Like 99.99999 percent of the things he says, this is not true. What makes it especially sinister is that China’s influence in Panama has risen in the last decade, and unlike his Canadian fentanyl delusions threatening to nuke the stock market to hell, Trump is demonstrating he knows he’s standing on firmer ground with Panama while still being unhinged and dangerous.

As much as this may seem like the made-up delusions of a sentient Facebook post in an ill-fitting suit, this line of attack demonstrates an understanding of the vulnerability in Jimmy Carter’s treaty with Panama that Kissinger helped lay the groundwork for. The United States returned the canal to Panama in 1977 under an agreement requiring that the waterway remain neutral. By asserting that there are “soldiers” operating it, Trump is attempting to undermine that key plank in the treaty, claiming that official agents of another state operate it, and therefore, the treaty giving the Panama Canal its independence is invalidated.

Lest you think this is just bluster to get China to sell its interests in Panama, NBC is now reporting that Trump’s White House has “asked the US military to develop options for the Panama Canal.” The administration is supposedly worried that in “the event of a conflict, they say, Beijing could shut down the canal to American shipping, including military ships.” Again, there is no evidence that this is a concern given how central the canal is to the American economy, plus, we have a longstanding military presence in the region stuck under the boot of our Monroe Doctrine. This is very dangerous stuff, and anyone suggesting that obvious lies which could march the United States towards war are nothing to worry about should brush up on their US history, specifically 2002 to 2003.

When Trump speaks about “taking back” Panama from “Chinese soldiers,” by his own words, he is talking about a potential war with China. There is no ambiguity here, and this request to the Pentagon to draw up military plans suggests he is serious about this threat. The Trumpers who think Donald the Dove is anything other than yet another lie they were suckered into believing will surely assert that this is about his peace through strength bullshit, assuming a show of force will somehow just make Panama give up its sovereignty while China will shrug its shoulders and go home. This is where it gets very dangerous, because like with Greenland, Trump may have more institutional support to confront China over Panama than it would seem at first glance.

While team Trump’s Canada obsession emanates from the delusions of Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro, their reaches for Greenland and Panama are rooted in very clear American foreign policy interests. As Arctic Pod’s Sergiy Slipchenko told Tiernan Cannon for Splinter, climate change has made Greenland prime territory for one of the 21st century’s great scrambles for power.

But the other thing that’s happening now is the Arctic is warming up. And, as that’s happening, the things that were previously inaccessible—like natural resources, sea routes—are now becoming much more accessible to all these countries. And they’re seeing the economic benefits, or, at least, the economic potential of exploiting the Arctic.

While taking Panama is like Greenland in that it’s a crazy idea rooted in nuggets of harsh truths, it is a different battle against a different geopolitical adversary with a different climate change dynamic shaping the battlefield. China is a classic frenemy, where despite the tension created by the two countries’ great power struggle, the world’s largest manufacturer and the world’s largest consumer need each other, and the world needs them. War with China is a synonym for a global depression, and risking it is insane for a million different reasons, to say nothing of risking it over “control” over a shipping lane where 75 percent of the traffic is American.

That said, El Niño created a drought that reduced traffic through the canal the past couple of years and demonstrated how vulnerable it is to climate change. The threat to the canal from climate change is so serious that shipping giant Maersk switched to rail transport to avoid it last year due to low projected water levels in Gatun Lake. Trump’s first trade war also reduced Chinese shipping through the canal, and like many tentpoles of 20th century American power these days, the world is trying to find ways to navigate around our self-suiting obsolescence unprepared for the challenges of the 21st.

Another complicating factor is that relative to ten years ago against China, the United States does have less influence in Panama, although Trump is finding success in reversing that trend so far. In 2017, Panama cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and began a new relationship with Beijing, joining their Belt and Road initiative to build infrastructure (and goodwill) across the globe, but this was the culmination of the rise of Chinese influence as much as it was the beginning of it. From 1997 to last week, Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison operated terminals on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the canal along with several other companies. While they are not some Chinese government front as Trump has tried to paint them, as they operate 53 ports in 24 different countries, it’s still safe to assume that they are vulnerable to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party, especially after the passage of the 2020 Hong Kong National Security Law. CK Hutchison announced last week that BlackRock will buy a 90 percent stake worth $23 billion in the business that controls the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal until 2047, while Panama said last month that they would not renew their Belt and Road agreement with China. These moves were a result of Trump’s jawboning, and if all this Panama nonsense ever amounts to is BlackRock owning even more of the world than they do now, then we should consider ourselves lucky.

But given that an alcoholic sex pest and segregationist warmonger is the head of the Department of Defense, and the Trump administration has asked him to draw up plans to place a military presence in Panama, nothing can be ruled out in this rapidly collapsing empire. There is no evidence for Trump’s claim that “Chinese soldiers” are in Panama, but given the state of global espionage in the 21st century, it’s safe to assume that everyone’s three letter agencies are everywhere, especially in areas they have proven interests in. History has plenty of examples of how shows of force can easily turn into exercises of it through a simple misunderstanding, and once the shooting starts, it’s very hard to get it to stop. This was part of Kissinger’s fear about creating an escalating state of unrest throughout Latin America over clear violations of Panama’s sovereignty. Trump is willing to risk repeating this classic historical mistake, all to combat a marginal decrease in American soft power over a port that will be economically dependent on us so long as it remains the central organ of our economy that it has always been. This is all just so impossibly stupid.

 
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