Is the United States going to use military force to take control of the Panama Canal? The question was posed to President-elect Donald Trump. The answer: maybe?
But Trump definitely did not rule it out. So, the question many might be asking is, why?
When talking about the canal, there are a lot of national security and economic interests for the United States. In fact, that’s why it was built in the first place.
In 1898, the USS Oregon was going from California to Cuba during the Spanish-American War and had to sail around South America to get there.
So, President Teddy Roosevelt worked with newly-independent Panama to order the canal’s construction. In 1914, it opened.
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“The Canal Zone was given to the United States in perpetuity,” said Sal Mercogliano, a college professor and shipping expert. “We paid the Panamanians $10 million and an annual stipend of $250,000. That was upped in two subsequent treaties, in 1936 and 1955.”
Mercogliano is also the host of the YouTube channel What is Going On With Shipping?
The U.S. military’s Southern Command was based there until 1999. That’s when the U.S. handed control of the canal over to the Panamanians thanks to a deal reached during President Jimmy Carter’s administration. But the U.S. still uses the canal –– a lot.
“The biggest single user of the canal, outshining everyone probably combined, is the United States,” Mercogliano said. “Now, it’s not U.S. ships so much going through, but it’s U.S. cargo going through. The second country that uses it the most is China.”
That all makes sense when you think about it. The U.S. and China are huge trade partners, which means lots of goods going back and forth to each other’s ports. The U.S. also sends a lot of goods to other Pacific nations from the East Coast, and from one side of the country to the other. It’s just a lot cheaper than trying to do it by rail.
Mercogliano said all of that China-linked trade also attracts Chinese investment in some of the canal’s ancillary functions, like port operations and water management.
“Which is very typical for what we see from China around the world,” Mercogliano explained. “They have influence in a lot of ports and a lot of infrastructure around the world. The concern that, obviously, the United States has is: should an instance occur that could prevent us from using the canal? This is vital for us.
“We have seen a time where the U.S. gets into a conflict where maybe our actions upset allies. Or maybe someone doesn’t want to be seen as, quote-unquote, supporting those allies. For example recently [in the conflict with] Israel-Gaza, [the United States] sent a ship through the Panama Canal from the West Coast that was carrying an Iron Dome system back to Israel. Recently, we also had a ship that was stopping in Spain and the Spanish authorities said that ship can’t dock in Spain.
“What if Panama decides to say, ‘Hey, because of what’s happening in this region, we’re not going to allow your ships to go through?’ That’s the fear that exists, that the Panamanians may sit there and say, ‘Listen, we don’t want to show complicity, or that we support your view in this action and therefore we’re not going to do it.’”
Mercogliano said there are also concerns about resource management and damage to the canal. The locks are fed by a freshwater lake, and if the lake runs low or dry, the canal can shut down. It is also fairly easy to damage the canal’s infrastructure. If ships can’t transit the 50-mile stretch of water connecting the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, then response times to, say, potential conflicts in the Pacific would be hampered.
And while U.S. aircraft carriers are still too big to fit through the canal, Mercogliano said destroyers, submarines and, most importantly, strategic sea lift vessels can.
“[Strategic sea left vessels are] the vessels we require to pick up the Army and drop them off,” Mercogliano said. “We have a third of our strategic sea lift on the East Coast, a third on the Gulf Coast, and a third on the Pacific Coast. If you run a scenario where we need to deploy forces across the Pacific, and China puts leverage against Panama and says, ‘Listen, Panama, don’t allow American military ships to come through,’ then two-thirds of our strategic sea lift are on the wrong side of the canal. And what that means is it’s just a longer deployment cycle to get ships there. Doesn’t mean we can’t get them there. There are alternatives. But the reason we built the canal in the first place back in 1914 was to have that shortcut.”
While no one is directly accusing China of making plans to prevent the U.S. from using the canal, people aren’t exactly waiting for it to happen before acting, either.
Some members of the U.S. Congress already introduced a bill to purchase the canal. And even if Panama’s president said it wasn’t for sale, Mercogliano said the fact we’re talking about this at all shows how focused the incoming Trump administration is on maritime issues; predicting a very busy four years ahead for the sector.
