The Panama Canal and the Firing Line Debate
The Panama Canal is back in the news. President-elect Donald Trump, a few days before Christmas, suggested that he might try to regain control of the Panama Canal, saying that it was “foolishly” ceded to Panama by President Jimmy Carter.
Writing in the National Interest, Alexander Gray, who served on the National Security staff in the first Trump administration, agrees that the Canal should be under American control because it “serves essential military purposes for the United States.” Gray argues that “the preponderance of U.S. naval power in a crisis from the East Coast to West Coasts and eventually into the Pacific Theater itself will require unobstructed access to the canal.” The canal today is “on the front lines” of our geopolitical rivalry with China (which has acquired ports on both ends of the canal), and U.S. control of the canal is directly related to the continuing legitimacy of the Monroe Doctrine. (RELATED: Rejuvenating the Monroe Doctrine)
Gray, in his article, mentions a fascinating debate over ratification of the Panama Canal Treaties that was aired on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line in January 1978. It is worthwhile watching that debate (on YouTube courtesy of the Hoover Institution) when judging whether Trump and Gray have a point. The participants in the debate make the program educational and entertaining.
The main debaters were William F. Buckley Jr., who led the team that favored ratification of the treaties that would eventually surrender control of the canal to Panama, and then-former California Governor Ronald Reagan (two years before he won the presidency) who argued for U.S. retention of the canal.
Buckley’s team included the great James Burnham (Buckley’s colleague at National Review and the author of seminal books on U.S. foreign policy), George Will (conservative syndicated columnist), and retired Admiral Elmo Zumwalt (former chief of naval operations). (RELATED: James Burnham: the Sage of Kent, Connecticut)
Reagan’s team included Patrick J. Buchanan (columnist and former speechwriter for President Nixon), Roger Fontaine (an academic expert on Latin American affairs), and retired Admiral John McCain (former commander-in-chief of Pacific Command). The American diplomat Elsworth Bunker, who negotiated the treaties for the United States, also participated.
It was a lively and informative debate that took place at the University of South Carolina and was moderated by Senator Sam Ervin of Watergate fame. Buckley and Reagan gave opening statements, then were questioned by Burnham, Will, Buchanan, and Fontaine. Admirals Zumwalt and McCain provided opposing views from a naval perspective.
Reagan stressed both U.S. commercial and vital military interests that were served by American control of the canal. Admiral McCain seconded that argument. Buckley emphasized, seconded by Admiral Zumwalt, that the treaties preserved American commercial and military interests and would generate goodwill towards America by the Panamanian people. Reagan countered that the dictator of Panama who signed the treaties did not necessarily represent the will of the Panamanian people and that many Panamanians who lived and worked in the canal zone opposed the treaties and the loss of American control.
Pat Buchanan noted that under the treaties Panama would have control over both ends of the canal in 1980 when Jimmy Carter would still be president, and suggested that Carter would shrink from sending in the Marines to protect U.S. interests if Panama decided to close the canal to U.S. commercial or naval ships. Buckley retorted that Carter would send in the Marines, if necessary. James Burnham noted that five American presidents had participated in negotiations with Panama, and suggested that this showed a bipartisan consensus that the canal should eventually be given to Panama.
In closing remarks, Reagan emphasized that only American control could guarantee that the canal would remain open to all commercial traffic and, more importantly, would continue to enable our country to protect its security interests in the Western Hemisphere — a clear reference to the continuing validity of the Monroe Doctrine. Reagan also argued that surrendering the canal to Panama would constitute yet another strategic retreat on the part of the United States that would concern our allies and embolden our adversaries.
Buckley, on the other hand, made legal arguments on behalf of Panama’s sovereignty over its territory, including the canal, and raised the specter of American colonialism in defiance of American ideals.
None of the participants in the debate invoked Alfred Thayer Mahan, but those opposing the treaties should have. Mahan was a historian, naval strategist, and America’s chief geopolitical thinker in the late 19th and early 20th century. As Mahan biographer Robert Seager II noted, Mahan “had long agitated for an isthmian canal, one that would be completely under American control.”
In June 1893, he wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly titled “The Isthmus and Sea Power.” Mahan called the Central American isthmus a “natural center, towards which … the current of intercourse between East and West inevitably must tend.” “Control of the Central American isthmus,” he explained, “means naval control, naval predominance.” America’s interest in an isthmian canal, he wrote, was “both commercial and political.” Geographically, U.S. control of the canal would “bring our Pacific coast nearer … to our Atlantic seaboard.” And U.S. control of the canal would provide our predominant influence over the Central American/Caribbean Sea region. It would also mean “freedom of interoceanic transit.”
But if foreign nations exercised that control or achieved the ability to interfere with our control of the canal, Mahan believed, we would endanger our national security by placing the Monroe Doctrine at the mercy of a foreign power. Mahan had a friend and admirer in President Theodore Roosevelt, who made it American policy to construct and control a canal through the Central American isthmus. (READ MORE: The Continuing Relevance of Mahan)
In Mahan’s day, the foreign powers that caused concern were Great Britain, Germany, and a rising Japan. Today, the foreign power that causes concern is China, which, as Alexander Gray points out, is using economic and political power to “gain coercive economic and political control” of the canal. China controls ports at both ends of the Panama Canal and is increasing its economic and political footprint throughout the Western Hemisphere. As Gray notes, “It would be the height of naivete to assume Beijing’s interest in Panama and the canal has nothing to do with the strategic significance of the waterway for U.S. national defense.”
Reagan and his team had the better argument in the 1978 Firing Line debate held 47 years ago this month. Trump and Alexander Gray have the better argument now.
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