Opinion | Why the Trump administration has its eyes on Panama
By Tom Fowdy
Earlier this week incoming US President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Chinese soldiers had been stationed in the Panama Canal. For those who don't know what that is, the Panama Canal is the most strategic waterway in the Americas, cutting through the country of the same name which defines the narrowest point in Central America and providing a gateway between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. The canal essentially allows ships to avoid the very long, inconvenient, and hazardous journey around Cape Horn, in a similar way the Suez Canal does with Africa, therefore meaning whosoever controls it procedurally and militarily has great strategic power in that region.
It was, of course, the construction of the canal itself in 1904, overseen and funded by the United States, as essentially why the country came into being in the first place having attained independence from Colombia. The construction of the Panama Canal was part of the US's bid to sustain absolute hegemony over the western hemisphere in a policy known as "The Monroe Doctrine" which has long sought to assure that no rival powers are allowed a foothold in the region to challenge American dominance, and likewise any hostile states, whether it be Cuba or Venezuela, are subject to stringent containment measures. Although derived from US President James Monroe, the principle has been a general stable of US foreign policy ever since.
While the Biden administration did not focus a great deal on Latin America, the previous Trump administration did so very aggressively, having torn up Obama's Cuba normalization deal and, with John Bolton pulling the strings, pursued a botched coup attempt in Venezuela. In addition to this, Trump also sought to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and lock its other major players, Canada and Mexico, into anti-China commitments. Essentially, Trump and his administration subscribe to the viewpoint that America should economically dominate the entire region and it must revolve entirely around US preferences, thus creating the largest reassertion of the "Monroe" policy since the Cold War.
We should expect the new Trump administration to be essentially the same, if not more hard-line, key to understanding this is the appointment of Macro Rubio as Secretary of State. Not only is Rubio a NeoConservative, although he has moderated his views slightly for this position, but he is also a Cuban American who is one of the biggest advocates for American interventionism in the region, especially against his ancestral country and of course, Venezuela too. These two are a given and are not really of any strategic consequence given the US has been at them for years. Likewise, Trump has repeatedly invoked rhetoric in the run-up to returning to office treating other states in Latin America as vassals or even provinces, having repeatedly mocked Justin Trudeau of Canada as a "governor" and then said he wants to buy Greenland.
This has led to an explosion in memes of US expansionism across the continent. Given this emerging frame of mind, Trump's raising of Panama as an issue is worth paying attention to. First of all, although the claim of Chinese troops being stationed on the canal is a total falsehood, the invocation of the theme of China in this matter at all shows how Trump is linking issues in Latin America with Beijing, where China's presence is seen as a critically emerging dynamic of competition with the United States. Panama established diplomatic relations with China in 2017, having disregarded ties with Taiwan. Latin America in general is one of the last holdout "strongholds" of Taipei due to the strength of the United States diplomatically and militarily. Although Beijing has also recently opened diplomatic ties with El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, Belize and Guatemala remain holdouts, as well as Paraguay in South America.
However, all of these are relatively small and poor countries, with Panama being the most important strategically due to its role in hosting the canal and being an investment hub. Thus, Trump has accused Panama of ripping off the US to the tune of "billions of dollars" and essentially demanded the US take control of the canal again, thus using it to more strictly enforce American shipping and economic interests as it were before. Based on this, and on precedent, we should strongly expect the Trump administration to attempt to lockstep Latin American countries into making anti-China commitments and use a classic "it's either us or them" binary. This will be very explicit in the field of supply chains, strategic minerals and goods alike, with aggressive tariffs being used as incentives to push countries into negotiations towards accepting American terms. Thus, US-China competition is absolutely coming to the Americas, while that does not necessarily guarantee any success, what it does mean is that Trump will make life for these countries difficult and will pursue a hardline foreign policy reliant upon coercive measures.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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