Time Essay: Mythologizing the Panama Canal

Getting the first Panama Canal treaty through the Senate last month was roughly the equivalent of putting a big tanker through the waterway: there was no room to spare. The second treaty, providing for the gradual transfer of authority to Panama by the year 2000, is expected to have an equally narrow passage when it comes up for a vote on April 18. Opponents of the treaty have intensified their pressure on wavering Senators, and a defeat of the second treaty would force renegotiation of the entire agreement, with potentially explosive consequences. Seldom, in fact, has a project that is so clearly in the national interest faced such a desperate fight for approval.

The opposition to the treaty is a curious mixture of cynicism and conviction. After a period of many setbacks overseas. Americans have been in no mood to accept what seemed to be another reversal. Moreover, the canal is fixed in the popular imagination as a memorable achievement of American vigor and know-how. Why, people asked, should it be given away under any circumstances? There were reasonable answers to such a question, but they were not provided by the superpatriots of the hardcore right wing, who thought they had a sure-fire issue and promptly started paganda barrage has often made a hash of the facts. Many people have been led to believe that the treaty constitutes some kind of massive giveaway that will leave the esteemed and still vital waterway in the clutches of rapacious crypto-Communists who will thereupon thumb their noses at the helpless giant to their north. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The pact profoundly commits the U.S. to the defense of the canal from here to eternity. Until 2000, the U.S. maintains control of the waterway; at the turn of the century, Panama takes over, but the U.S. has the right to keep the canal open and functioning. Indeed this provision has been strengthened because of the doubts among treaty opponents. Responding to their pressure, the White House accepted two reservations that clearly state that the U.S. can send troops into Panama to protect the canal if it is shut down for virtually any reason.

The treaty, in fact, gives the sanction of law to U.S. intervention if the need arises. This provision has been made so explicit by the reservations that Panama now has sent a letter to other Latin American nations suggesting that it may not be able to accept the treaty in its present form. Rather tolerant through all the tumultuous and sometimes insulting Senate debate, Panamanians have been pushed close to their limits; and there are, after all, two parties to the treaty.

The second Senate vote does not come at the best of times. The Soviet Union is rapidly building up its armaments and brazenly sending its Cuban allies into Africa to stir up trouble and challenge American interests. Many treaty supporters, including Senator Henry Jackson, are understandably concerned that a ceding of the canal may be interpreted as another American retreat. But the U.S. is hardly backing down from a Soviet threat; it is rising to the occasion of settling a dispute with an ally. If it is a sign of weakness to capitulate to an enemy, it may well be an indication of strength to make timely concessions to a friend.