Trump and the Panama Canal

So, The Donald has the press in fits over his comment about "retaking" the Panama Canal. Sounds like the usual embarrassing Trumpian bullshit blast, right?

Well...maybe not. Back when President Carter agreed to return the Canal Zone to Panamanian control, this young Navy Officer (yours truly) wonder what would the U.S. do if some unfriendly foreign power gained significant control of the Canal? Lo and behold; Trump's bluster does not come out of nowhere.

I haven't found out the details but it seems that the Government of Panama has granted/is granting some sort of concessions over the exits to the Canal to a Hong Kong based Chinese company. Now that there's doubt about how independent an HK company can be from PRC control, this issue seems to have materialized.

Stay tuned.

 

I was being generous. Point is, does this arrangement, if it's for real, present a significant threat to national security? The answer will be complex but my first thought is "No" unless the PRC uses its presence to establish a military presence.

 

The Panama Canal isn't particularly strategic anymore.

Controlling it, like we did with the Canal Zone, would be incredibly expensive (not to mention the cost of taking it from the rightful owners). It's not just the Canal, it's also all the territory and infrastructure surrounding it. Not to mention all the Panamanians.

Again, it doesn't really have much strategic value anymore with the global nature of our operations (and the fact that it cannot even accommodate our largest ships). But if there are security concerns, I'm sure something could be arranged with Panama to bump up security without the ham-handed threats to Panamanian sovereignty that lunatic is employing.

(I thought he was still hung up on Greenland?)

Who voted for this nonsense?

 

A big part of the reason Trump won reelection is that overwhelmingly the people that don't stay informed voted for him. So, that means the people that voted for him don't know about all the nonsense and chaos that is associated with him. They remain blissful and happy in their ignorance.

 

Oh, he's still demanding Greenland. All those Sudeten-Americans living there, being oppressed and all...

Does the Panama Canal still matter...hm. And if it does, could the Chinese really affect our use of it? Here is where my knowledge is antique and probably obsolete. Although a major reason for building it was to allow the U.S. to concentrate Naval forces quickly on one coast or the other, as we were signally unable to do during the Spanish American War, that's not its primary purpose, then or now. Movement of cargo, military and civilian, between the coasts counted for more. Our highly efficient transcontinental railway and highway infrastructure haven't made the canal obsolete. Trucking offers far less capacity than rail and rail pales next to seaborne commerce. (For bulk cargo, aviation hardly appears on the chart. You don't fly grain or coal if you can possibly help it.) So during the Bush Wars, much material went from the West Coast through the canal to the Middle East. It still would. An awful lot of the world's cargo and tank ships are still Panamax or smaller.

Having said that, Panamax ships are small by modern standards and it is not at all unusual for huge ships to simply "sail the other way." But if something like, oh, say, a gigantic container ship were to block the Suez Canal for a week or so, much traffic would have to sail via the notorious Cape of Good Hope. "Three weeks and more by any road you steer" as Kipling's MacAndrew says, not to mention filthy weather.

No, even now, I have to disagree. The Panama Canal DOES still have logistical significance. What is more, for the conspiracy theorists out there, could China be expanding her control of sea lanes beyond the South China Sea? Her goal plainly is to challenge the current U.S. dominance of the world's sea lanes.

 

Ah! But as for "taking the canal back", that IS Trumpian bullshit. If the Chinese become difficult, I'm quite certain we would find subtler, less disruptive means of dealing with that.

 

He's so embarrassing.

 

Yup.

 

That's an excellent summary of Trump!

 

The Berlin Airlift supplied a million or so people by air in the face of a Soviet blockade and they DID ship coal and flour and such bulk commodities, but the flights were short and the turn around very brief.

 

With whom are you disagreeing? Certainly not me. I know I didn't say it wasn't significant. I said it was no longer strategic. Huge difference.

The canal still matters. But it matters little to the U.S. militarily. And either way, if it did need to be better secured, I'd like to think we could do it without hegemony at the tip of a bayonet. You know, like how we obtained it in the first place.

 

And expensive. It cost about $2B (in today's dollars) for 18 months of emergency supplies. And that was to supply just 2 million people.

 

The aircraft carriers can't go through the Panama canal anyway. Although other navy ships do use the canal. I'm sure that the canal is no where near the importance it used to be for navy ships. We just have many more ships now.

A quick Google search says,

quote:
The Panama Canal is a vital link between the US Navy's Pacific and Atlantic Fleets, and the US Navy uses the canal regularly. The Naval Base Panama Canal Zone is the only base that supports both fleets.
The Panama Canal is also the largest user of the canal, with about 40% of US container traffic passing through it annually. In 2021, over 73% of ships that passed through the canal were headed to or from US

 

Putin invades Ukrane and wants more of Europe. China wants Taiwan and threatnes to invade. Now our dictator threatens to invade Panama, wants to buy Greenland (although Denmark says not for sale) and
thinks we own Canada.

 

Vice president-elect Trump's Christmas message was even more unhinged than his Thanksgiving message. President-elect Muskrat better get him in line.

 

"Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics."-unknown.

The Panama Canal is about logistics.

Unfortunately, we have a long history of imposing our will upon the Central American republics. If Trump sends troops into what used to be the Canal Zone, he won't be doing anything new.

As for our Neighbor to the North, the original Articles of Confederation anticipated Canada joining us so that's not new, either. When I was a young man and the Quebec Secession Movement seemed to be making headway, there was a significant fraction of the population of Western Canada that favored, or at least, did not disfavor, joining the U.S. Canada didn't break up back then and I don't suppose she will break apart now but really, the two peoples have far more in common than not. At some point some sort of consolidation could happen.

I don't think either thing is likely. Donald Trump will spend the next two years "embrangled" with a House that cannot govern. After 2026, the House and Senate may work better but be more hostile to his imperialist ambitions.

Important thing to remember. Trump reenters the White House as a lame duck. He's done in four years. Defiance is already growing among the GOP back benchers.

 

I resent the implication. I'm no amateur when it comes to national security. And I value strategy far more than logistics because logistics exists to support strategy. Yes, an army marches on its belly, but it would help if they knew where they were going.

The Panama Canal is already secure, and it meets the needs of the U.S. as best it can. But that old grey mare ain't what she used to be, which is why we stopped occupying it. (We still have a small military presence there to this day, however.)

 

With Trump, it’s often unclear whether he genuinely intends to act on his statements or if he’s simply using them to apply pressure on a specific target. For example, his remarks about NATO members fairly contributing and paying their share illustrate this ambiguity. In this case, I think he is pressuring against the Chinese involvement and activity in the Panama Canal.

Not saying is right or wrong, just how I read the statements.