Secretary of State Marco Rubio Goes to Hotspot Panama

President Trump's foreign policy priority clear made clear with Rubio’s first international visit. 

By Dave Patterson Feb 3, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Military Affairs, Opinion

US foreign policy watchers put a lot of stock in who would be first on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s dance card. However, it’s no surprise Rubio would look to the south for his first outreach. Now that the United States has adopted a strong stance against the flow of illegal aliens coming through Central America and Mexico, Foggy Bottom is focusing attention there. Especially on Panama. President Donald Trump has made no secret he is dissatisfied with China managing the most important waterway in the Western Hemisphere.

First Diplomatic Trip for Rubio

After receiving a unanimous confirmation vote in the US Senate, Rubio took Trump’s unambiguous message to Panama on Sunday (Feb. 2). To foreshadow his meeting with the country’s President José Raúl Mulino and Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha, Rubio wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal heralding a new and more pinpointed foreign policy that attends to “our own neighborhood – the Western Hemisphere.” He made unmistakable his concern that malicious forces have been at work in the region over the past four years: “Illegitimate regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are intentionally amplifying the chaos.” He pointed out a main sticking point for the Trump administration, explaining, “All the while, the Chinese Communist Party uses diplomatic and economic leverage — such as at the Panama Canal — to oppose the U.S. and turn sovereign nations into vassal states.”

There is more significance to Rubio’s choice of a first diplomatic trip, which includes as well El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. As the Trump administration’s special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone, said in a State Department press briefing, this trip will be the first time a US secretary of state made his or her first official diplomatic visit to Latin America in more than a hundred years, the last time being 1912, “when Philander Chase Knox went to Panama … to oversee the conclusion of the Panama Canal’s construction.”

Adding to the significance of Rubio’s first stop in Panama, of course, was that the central topic of talks was Trump’s abiding dissatisfaction with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) management of the canal. The State Department’s take on the meeting was notably not weasel-worded diplo-speak:

“Secretary Rubio informed President Mulino and Minister Martínez-Acha that President Trump has made a preliminary determination that the current position of influence and control of the Chinese Communist Party over the Panama Canal area is a threat to the Canal and represents a violation of the Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal. Secretary Rubio made clear that this status quo is unacceptable and that absent immediate changes, it would require the United States to take measures necessary to protect its rights under the Treaty.”

After the meeting, Rubio thanked Mulino for reducing the number of illegal aliens transiting Panama and emphasized the US “dedication to making both nations safer, stronger, and more prosperous.” Straight talk works. “Panama’s president vowed Sunday to end a key development deal with China after meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and after complaints from President Donald Trump that the Latin American country had ceded control over its critical shipping canal to Beijing,” Fox News reported shortly after the bilateral discussions ended.

Panama will no longer be part of the Beijing Belt and Road hegemonic scheme it agreed to in 2017. For the long term, Mulino’s decision not to renew the memorandum of agreement with Beijing is a major shift in geopolitical alignment for the Central American country. Additionally, the Associated Press reported, “Despite Mulino’s rejection of any negotiation over ownership, some believe Panama may be open to a compromise under which canal operations on both sides are taken away from the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Ports company.”

National Security Threat

From a national security perspective, having a CCP state business controlling the two portals of the Panama Canal – on the Atlantic side at Colón and on the Pacific at the Bay of Panama — is perilous. Trump was clear in talking with reporters recently, “I can say this: we need them for economic security. The Panama Canal was built for our military,” according to RealClear Politics.

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The United States is the largest user of the crucial waterway. Estimates are that more than 70% of the Panama Canal traffic is destined there, and nearly 40% of all US container ship traffic moves through the canal, amounting to roughly $270 billion in goods. Furthermore, the waterway is critical for US Navy vessels transiting between the Atlantic and Pacific. A typical example is this US Virginia Class submarine, as seen in this rare YouTube video.

US submarines would be a vital strategic asset in a conflict with the People’s Liberation Army in the South China Sea and the Straits of Taiwan. Redeploying Atlantic Fleet attack submarines to the Pacific in a contingency would depend on the Panama Canal being available, which could be stymied by the CCP controlling entrance and exit. Shipping times for logistics transportation of weapons and ammunition to the Indo-Pacific in a conflict could be doubled. Trump is right to task Rubio with ensuring that this waterway remains unimpeded.

The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.

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‘We Dug It, We Own It’

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog  

In 1978, the Carter administration made a deal with General Omar Torrijos, the uniformed socialist strongman who had seized power in Panama, to abandon America’s crown jewel.

The Panama Canal had been built with over a decade of labor and half a billion of early twentieth century dollars by American engineers and visionaries who succeeded where the British and the French had failed, in the process they created a new country, Panama, and new trade routes.

Jimmy Carter had run for office promising to oppose a surrender of the canal. As with most of his policies, he turned out to have been lying. Even though the majority of Americans opposed the giveaway, Carter, Democrat Senate Majority Leader and KKK leader Robert Byrd, teamed up with GOP Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker, the worst RINO in Senate history, to conduct the surrender. This move would cost Baker his chances at a presidential nomination.

While Reagan’s election triumph tends to be credited to the economy, there is no doubt that his declaration, “we dug it, we own it” about the Panama Canal powered him to a primary win over Baker who was the favorite son of the D.C. establishment and Rockefeller Republicans.

Carter, the Klansman and the RINO managed to get the two Senate Republican votes they needed, including former Sen. Bob Packwood, and ensured the rise of Reagan and a conservative revolution. America lost the canal but it also bid goodbye to Jimmy Carter.

The Panama Canal treaty was similarly unpopular in Panama. Legal ratification of the treaty required a referendum. The leftist military dictatorship claimed to have carried one out in which a majority voted for the deal, but they did so at gunpoint. When Carter visited Panama in the summer of 1978, the leftist government had suppressed protests by shooting, killing and beating political opponents, making the treaty as illegitimate on Panama’s end as it was on America’s.

Since then the Panama Canal has always represented unfinished business.

The surrender of the Panama Canal had been based on worthless assurances that America would retain strategic control over it. These assurances were particularly worthless since Panama was under the boot of a Communist affiliated military dictator who, as Reagan rightly noted, is “there, not because he had the most votes, but because he had the most guns.”

Now China has effectively taken over the Panama Canal while America has done nothing.

Panama joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It recently renewed a contract with Hutchison Ports, a Hong Kong based company, to manage the canal. The ports around the canal are also controlled by Chinese companies. China has built four bridges over the canal and controls much of the construction projects and the vital infrastructure in Panama.

China for all intents and purposes controls the Panama Canal, the ports around it and the local infrastructure that makes international trade possible. The canal is essentially Chinese property.

The Biden administration had watched impotently as China dug its claws into the canal.

“We do not want to put Panama in a situation where they have to choose between the United States and the People’s Republic of China,” Ambassador Mari Carmen Aponte, who dates back to the Carter administration, whined.

President Trump took a very different approach, arguing that if the “principles” of the Neutrality Treaty aren’t followed,“then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly and without question.”

When President George H.W. Bush announced he was intervening militarily to remove General Noriega from power, he did it by invoking the “integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty.”

China’s dominance of the Panama Canal is a far graver threat to the treaty than Noreiga.

A former Joint Chiefs chair argued back in the 1990s that China’s control over the Panama Canal allows it to “control the order of ships” and has “the right to deny ships access to the ports and entrances of the canal if they are deemed to be interfering with Hutchison’s business” which is “in direct violation of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, which guarantees expeditious passage for the United States Navy.” Panama has been in violation of the Neutrality Treaty for a generation and the situation has only worsened with the expansion of China’s naval power.

America should reclaim one of its great achievements and protect its national security.

The wording of the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty stated that “the Republic of Panama grants to the United States in perpetuity, the use, occupation and control of a zone of land and land under water for the construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation and protection of said Canal.”

The Carter administration had argued that its Neutrality Treaty would allow America to give up physical control of the Panama Canal but still prevent the Soviet Union from taking it over.

Torrijos himself had stated that “we are agreeing to a treaty of neutrality which places us under the protection of the Pentagon.”

Now Communist China has all but taken over the Panama Canal.

The Neutrality Treaty was supposed to assure that American vessels would be able to rapidly move through the canal in the event of a war. Are we supposed to believe that Chinese companies, in the event of a war with China, would not interfere, obstruct or spy on the movement of US Navy ships?

Carter’s treaty, passed over the objections of most Americans, with a military dictator and his repressive regime, was never even legitimately ratified on Panama’s end and certainly was not upheld by that country. After a generation of violations that have never been remedied, President Trump is right to call on America to reclaim physical control over the canal.

It may be time to revert back to Teddy Roosevelt’s Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty and its promise of American control “in perpetuity,” over Carter’s failed promise of neutrality exploited by China.

The surrender of the Panama Canal had been a longtime project of State Department globalists in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations who had argued that maintaining control of the canal led to resentment against us in Latin America and the Third World. Despite their arguments, surrendering the canal did nothing to make America more popular, only weaker.

Panama was a country that President Teddy Roosevelt created using military force to make the canal possible. The idea that a province we turned into a country to enable us to build a canal has ‘sovereignty’ over something that we had created was absurd to begin with. It’s even more absurd now that Panama has become a Chinese puppet to talk about its sovereignty.

As Reagan said all those years ago, “we dug it, we own it”. China bought it from the people that Carter gave it away to in violation of the treaty that we signed with those people.

The Panama Canal is no longer in Panama’s hands and hasn’t been in a while. It’s in China’s hands. That gives us every reason we need to take what we built back from Communist China.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

   

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Next, You’ll Tell Me You Gave Away the Panama Canal

Is the Panama Canal just the first of Trump’s geographic mergers and acquisitions? 

By Dave Patterson Dec 27, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags:  Articles, Military Affairs, Opinion

Many believed that President Jimmy Carter’s relinquishing the Panama Canal was foolish. There is the old joke telling of Carter, unable to sleep, wandering through the White House gazing at the portraits of past US presidents when an apparition of Teddy Roosevelt appeared. “Why so glum?” Teddy asked. Carter then recounted all the mistakes he’d made, the failures in foreign policy, and the faux pas in decision-making during his administration. Teddy, attempting to console, tells Carter, “Not to worry. Being President of the US is a big job. You have to expect some setbacks. Whew! For a minute there, I thought you were going to tell me you gave away the Panama Canal.”

Panama Canal and China’s Growing Influence

As China gains greater influence and presence in Central and South America, the Panama Canal has become the focus of Beijing’s threat to easy transit for global commerce. Former Chairman of the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Michael Gallagher (R-WI) wrote in a Newsweek editorial: “In 2023, a visitor to the Panama Canal might think they were in China. Ports at both ends of the Canal are managed by companies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), while Huawei dominates the country’s telecoms system.” While the management and ownership of the Panama Canal has been out of America’s hands, the CCP has gained influence and management control of one of the most significant waterways in the world.

President-elect Donald Trump wants the Canal back. He told a Turning Point USA conference:

“We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like being ripped off everywhere else. A secure Panama Canal is crucial for secure commerce and rapid deployment of the Navy from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Pacific…The United States is the number one user of the Panama Canal with more than 72% of all transits heading to or from US ports.”

It should have come as no surprise that the president of Panama might have something to say on the subject. “Every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent area belongs to Panama and will continue to be so,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino responded, according to a Real Clear Defense reprint.

After former President Carter signed a treaty in 1977, a gradual handover of ownership of the Canal and adjacent land began, culminating in Panama gaining complete control in 2000. At the time, no one saw the potential for the Panama Canal to become a PRC enterprise.

(Photo by Yasin Demirci/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The history of Panama and the Canal after 150 years might spotlight some modest US claims of influence over the Canal. The US recognized and supported Panama’s becoming a sovereign country in 1903 following its separation from Columbia. After the French failed to complete the Canal, US President Teddy Roosevelt took up the project in 1904 and completed the waterway in 1914 for $15.2 billion (in 2023 dollars). America, having completed the Panama Canal with US taxpayer dollars and Yankee engineering, then signed a treaty with Panama, giving the US governance over a ten-mile-wide Canal Zone.

The Panama Canal has immense strategic value for the transit of US Navy vessels in countering CCP presence in the region. Additionally, reducing travel time by days or months to move military assets from the Atlantic to the Pacific if needed in order to meet an Indo-Pacific threat cannot be overstated. Seeing how President Trump accomplishes the assumption of control of the Canal will be worth the price of admission. However, Trump’s concern over America’s precarious geopolitical circumstances is not limited to Central America.

Could Greenland Be Next?

More than just hegemonic mergers and acquisitions hubris run amuck, President-elect Donald Trump has breathed life into his first-term initiative to buy Greenland. Trump believes that with the US ownership of Greenland and the corresponding freedom to create a formidable American-Arctic presence, Russian and Chinese designs in the North Pole region would be deterred. The US already has a large military base, Pituffik Space Force Base (Formerly Thule Air Base). Its mission is to support the regional Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site, which is used to spot any Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that Russia might fire at North America.

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With only 56,000 people living on the world’s largest island at 836,330 square miles, approximately 80% of the land mass is covered with ice and is an autonomous territory belonging to Denmark. It isn’t hard to see the geostrategic value of Greenland. With Alaska on the Arctic West and Greenland on the Arctic East, the US could control much of the Arctic Sea lanes and shipping should hostile forces attempt to exploit the area to attack NATO forces. “In 2019, then-President Trump floated his interest in buying Greenland, which abuts North Atlantic shipping lanes and hosts important radar and weather installations, but the idea was swiftly shot down by Danish and Greenlandic officials,” the New York Post reported. Trump went so far in his thinking that he looked into investment sources to get the project started.

Never one to be discouraged, Trump has again brought the purchase of Greenland into the public discourse. Trump sees the purchase as a win-win. The sale price will improve the economic condition of the Greenlanders while establishing a more formidable defense for NATO on the island. The obstacle in Trump’s way is, of course, as Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede explained succinctly and publicly, “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale.”

Whether by coincidence or by Denmark getting another message, “Denmark’s government announced a defense package for Greenland worth at least $1.5 billion after President-elect Donald Trump reiterated that he wanted the US to purchase the Arctic territory,” Business Insider reported. This may be his new tactic to get NATO, Allies, and friends to pay more for their own security. The incoming president will threaten to buy them. Today, Greenland, tomorrow, it could be France – Okay, maybe not France.

The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.

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Read More From Dave Patterson National Security Correspondent