U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s public threats to retake the Panama Canal, by force if necessary, have already done meaningful damage to U.S. standing in Latin America. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino responded immediately: no way. Other Latin American states, including Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, were quick to offer their solidarity to Panama.
United States began building the Panama Canal during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who once advised, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Trump is speaking very loudly—and may well provoke the United States’ neighbors to gather sticks of their own.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s public threats to retake the Panama Canal, by force if necessary, have already done meaningful damage to U.S. standing in Latin America. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino responded immediately: no way. Other Latin American states, including Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, were quick to offer their solidarity to Panama.
United States began building the Panama Canal during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who once advised, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Trump is speaking very loudly—and may well provoke the United States’ neighbors to gather sticks of their own.
Americans may be tempted dismiss Trump’s antics as a joke. But, for Panama, there is little funny about the prospect of a U.S. invasion. The last such invasion, in 1989, remains a sensitive topic in the country. Many Panamanians believe the civilian death toll was far higher than official estimates, and recent years have seen both exhumation efforts to identify Panamanian victims of the war and the establishment of a national day of mourning on Dec. 20, the date the invasion began (it was unfortunately just one day later, on Dec. 21, 2024, that the Trump started posting about Panama).
More generally, Latin Americans have sought—time and time again in their region’s history—partnerships with extra-hemispheric rivals to the United States, from the Mexican conservatives who invited the French into Mexico in 1862 to the Cuban communists who invited the Soviets into Cuba a century later. It’s a pattern in U.S. history: Overeager enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine has often encouraged more serious violations, as Latin American countries look for a counterbalance to a neighbor they cannot hope to deter on their own.
This was the logic of President Franklin Roosevelt’s conciliatory Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America during World War II—and the logic that led the United States, decades later, to give up the Panama Canal in the first place. Panamanians never accepted U.S. control of the canal or the racially segregated U.S. colony that came with it. Given the stark inequality and segregation Panamanians faced in their own country, it is little wonder that they revolted against U.S. rule in the Canal Zone, most infamously culminating in the Jan. 9, 1964, clashes between U.S. troops and Panamanian student protesters that left at least four Americans and 20 Panamanians dead. This day is now commemorated in the country as Martyrs’ Day, perhaps the most important date in Panamanian national identity.
These clashes—and the regional and global condemnation that followed—are what forced the United States to begin the process of negotiating the Panama Canal’s ownership. Over the next decade, the United States and Panama negotiated terms amid significant tension until the President Jimmy Carter’s administration finally secured a deal. Throughout the negotiations, Panamanian sovereignty over the canal was a top priority for every Latin American country—even the right-wing military dictatorships that were Washington’s closest regional allies. When the Panama Canal Treaty was finally ratified in 1977, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and Argentine dictator Rafael Videla were among the 26 heads of state and foreign ministers who attended the signing ceremony.
This Latin American unity behind Panama’s position explains why, despite vocally opposing the treaty during his campaign, President Ronald Reagan did nothing to undo the treaty once in office. Even as Reagan took many actions that alienated public opinion across Latin America, such as supporting Britain during the Falklands War, basic Cold War logic demanded keeping most of Latin America on the United States’ side, and the Panama Canal was not worth alienating the region. This is no less true in the 21st century. As the United States enters a dangerous age of intense great-power competition around the world, it has every incentive to ensure its own neighborhood is quiet. And a quiet neighborhood can only be ensured by being good neighbors.
Trump’s threat to reclaim the Panama Canal, if carried out, would immediately put the United States in a position of regional isolation that the Canal Treaty was designed to avoid. Even if his threats secure some marginally better policy regarding the canal, such as a lower rate for U.S. warships, the long-term effect is likely to be a more anti-American sentiment and a more militarized region.
Consider the impact already of Trump’s threats on Colombian and Panamanian politics. Leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro and conservative Mulino see eye to eye on very little. On Jan. 8, Mulino hosted Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González in Panama, recognizing him as Venezuela’s legitimate president. Meanwhile, Colombia has taken a much more conciliatory approach, refusing to break diplomatic relations or intervene in “internal affairs.” But on the question of the Panama Canal, these ideologically different neighboring leaders are in lockstep. Petro dramatically pledged to defend Panama’s sovereignty “until the last consequences.” Trump’s threats are effectively uniting an ideologically divided region around shared opposition to U.S. intervention.
Trump is essentially doing the U.S. version of “wolf warrior” diplomacy, with his threats doing to Latin Americans what China’s own reckless rhetoric and aggressive public diplomacy did to its neighbors: alienate them, remilitarize them, and push them into the arms of its great-power rival. Just as Vietnam and India’s worries about territorial conflict with China have pushed them closer to the United States, so might Mexico or Panama’s territorial worries push them closer to China. It is inevitable that the moment any powerful state puts military force credibly on the table against its neighbors, those neighbors will want security guarantees and deterrent ability of their own.
There has not been an armed confrontation between the United States and any Latin American country since the 1989 invasion of Panama. Yet thanks to Trump, every country in the region must consider the contingency of a conflict with the United States. The United States already sits on significant amounts of Latin American territory. Puerto Rico is a U.S. controlled territory in Latin America, an issue that has not become a bigger regional conflict only because the Puerto Rican independence movement is currently dormant. A solid third of the mainland United States is former Mexican territory, a fact which still smarts. Now, Trump has threatened military intervention in Mexico and to seize sovereign Panamanian territory. Latin American strategists cannot ignore this reality.
Latin American solidarity is real, if currently weak. Most Latin American countries have issued statements of support for Panama but don’t actually have the capacity to defend themselves or their neighbors, precisely because they did not believe it would be necessary in the 21st century. If that assumption changes—if territorial disputes and military means of conflict resolution are reintroduced to the Western Hemisphere—the region will adjust in ways the United States will not welcome. With the U.S.-led Rio Treaty already effectively dead, Latin America is lacking any meaningful collective security mechanism. A Latin American security architecture designed to deter the United States, in partnership with one or more of its great-power rivals would be the obvious way to respond. Should Trump continue to antagonize the region and threaten, let alone actually use, military force against a Latin American country, these questions will become unavoidable.
In the end, alienating Latin America—and the Panamanian people—would negate any advantage from actually acquiring control of the canal. As Carter was informed in the lead-up to the treaty, it would take up to 100,000 U.S. troops to defend the canal in the event of a large-scale uprising in Panama. A U.S. military effort to seize the canal today would likely see it rendered inoperable, either by Panamanian sabotage or by subsequent unrest and resistance. Unlike in 1989, the United States would not get to launch an invasion already holding the Canal Zone, and as the 2021 blockage of the Suez Canal showed, it does not take much to shut down the arteries of global commerce. Under any scenario, occupying Panama against its will would draw U.S. manpower and resources away from the decisive theaters in Europe and Asia—a fact as obvious to China and Russia today as the advantage of a Mexican alliance was to Germany’s Arthur Zimmermann over 100 years ago. Invade Panama, and U.S. carriers would have to go around Cape Horn anyway.
For now, this much is clear: The prospect of Trump attempting to take Latin American territory by force is not remote. International rules like national sovereignty and the prohibition of seizing territory by force mean nothing to him. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have already reopened the door to land grabs returning as a feature of the international system, and Trump sympathizes with both. The United Nations has proven incapable of resisting any aggression conducted by, or with the backing of, a permanent member of the Security Council. If the United States is to get back into the territorial aggrandizement game itself, Latin America will have no choice but to prepare to respond. In such a scenario, China and Russia would surely be all too happy to get involved, undermining the United States’ greatest geopolitical blessing: good relations with its neighbors.
Throughout his Panama fantasy, Trump has been eagerly channeling Theodore Roosevelt. He would be wiser to listen to Franklin Roosevelt and learn to be a good neighbor—before he turns the entire neighborhood against him.
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