Current Affairs

Donald Trump’s combat efforts in Panama


The most obvious gates on the Panama channel are many brutal gates – thick seven feet and width more than a hundred feet – slowly swinging, like French doors. Glamor with dark green algae. Iron nails point gates like jewelry. There are many gates in each of the three locks that raise ships from sea level on the Atlantic Ocean, reaching eighty -five feet in Lake Gaton, then returning to the sea level on the Pacific Ocean. The locks were geometric marvel when the channel opened a hundred and ten years ago. They are still. The channel project, which was seized by the United States after a tremendous French failure, eradicated the villages of the indigenous population and consumed large areas of rainforest to create fifty -one miles between North and South America. Ships can usually navigate the channel within eight to ten hours, shave weeks and millions of dollars of time and cost required to move on the entire continent. Last month, I was on a French ship with about one hundred and eighty passengers, which paid a hundred thousand dollars as fees to pass through the channel.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump Panama and its channel made a test issue for two of his biggest priorities: stopping illegal immigration across Central America to the United States and confronting the growing influence of China. Regarding immigration, Trump issued ten comprehensive executive orders to “repel” “the invasion of people” without visas, and even those looking for asylum. He ordered the American forces to the border with Mexico and returned expensive plans for a wall. Last year, more than three hundred thousand treacherous forest migrants, swamps and Daryen mountains in Panama crossed the only land bridge among American continents. (In 2023, the number was forty percent higher – more than half a million people passed through the gap.) The puzzle is how to stop the tide. Panama canceled her army after the invasion of the United States in 1989, which toppled General Manuel Norgo. It only has the police. “What will they do? I draw their weapons and say that you have to start walking?” Will Freeman, a colleague of Latin American studies in the Council of Foreign Relations. Then they shot if they did not do? The Colombian side of Darién GAP is controlled by Gaitanistas, the largest organized criminal gang in the country, which dominates drug trafficking, human trafficking, and other speculators along the border.

Trump was also increasingly following the seizure of the Panama channel – permanently, if necessary. It is a strange obsession, or a battle first to choose, given that Panama was democratic, and a strategic ally, since 1989. In December, “Happy Birthday to All, including the wonderful soldiers in China, who are loving, but illegally, Panama channel run. “His threats escalated during his opening speech. Trump described the treaties, signed in 1977, which gave Panama the control of the channel by 2000 – as long as it pledged to neutralize global charging and operate the designated waterway – “a foolish gift”. The purpose of deals and the spirit of deals was broken, and accused the president. “China runs the Panama channel, and we did not present it to China,” he said. “We presented it to Panama, and we return it.” He also claimed that the American ships, including the American naval ships, were “excessive shipping”.

Diabayb was slapped from the future regional conquest. Jose Raul Mulino, President of Panama. “Nonsense,” he said. “There is no one Chinese soldier in the channel, for the love of God.” He added that there is a “possibility” to discuss a discount on the drawings of the United States, because the treaties have pledged “no discrimination against any nation, its citizens or its citizens, regarding the conditions or concerns of transportation, for any other reason.” Mulino pointed out that the fees “were not placed in the president’s whim or [canal] The official said.

In 2016, Panama opened a new set of locks in a third lane for giant container ships. Traffic through the channel has multiplied since then. The United States is the largest user of the channel, although foreign transport companies, including Israeli ZIM ships, and CMM CMM in France CoscoCarry the vast majority of American goods through it; They pay the fees. China is the second largest user. The new locks, which cost more than five billion dollars, “a sign of the success of Panama, against most expectations, in the management of the channel”, Benjamin Gidan, director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center and a former national security, told me the council official. I watched the super separators crossing the new corridor in parallel with my ship, which seemed insight into comparison. “If the United States tries to seize all the three corridors,” we used to take something that they built and had no relationship. “

As for the claim that the Chinese soldiers run the channel? In a session of the Senate’s confirmation of his appointment as Minister of State, Marco Rubio acknowledged that Panama did not specify the control of the strategic waterway to foreign authority. It is operated exclusively by the Independent Panama Channel Authority. However, he added, “Foreign power today possesses – through its companies, which we know is not independent – the ability to convert the channel into a strangulation point and a moment of conflict.”

China has been discussed in the channel for decades. In 1997, when the United States still runs the channel, Hutchison Whampoa, a company based in Hong Kong, won a leased privilege to operate container facilities in a port, in Cristóbal and Balboa, on both ends of the waterway. Two months before the United States took control of the channel, in 1999, US intelligence concluded that the presence of the company did not threaten the operations of the American channel or interests in Panama. Its operations were “limited to downloading, unloading and storing shipping containers.” The evaluation also did not find any information to prove that “the company, which is a billion of dollars in Hong Kong for more than a hundred and fifty years, was a façade of the Beijing government.

In 2000, the United States was the largest commercial partner in most of the region. “Now almost all South America is trading with China,” said Freeman. The China’s Belt and Roads Initiative, which was launched in 2013, aims to connect East Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania and Latin America by Earth and Sea. It is one of the most ambitious development projects in the twenty -first century, and it is a wide investment in infrastructure to increase the effects of economic and strategic feet in the country, while facing the American influence. In 2017, Panama cut diplomatic relations with Taiwan to establish relations with China. Many Latin American countries were partially followed by the prospects for development with China. In 2021, Panama was granted a twenty -five -year -old extension of Hutchison operations in the channel.

On Friday, Trump’s new special envoy to Latin America, Mauricio Claver Caron, was martyred “with an increasingly creeping” of Chinese companies and actors-“everything from ports and logistics to communications infrastructure and others”-in the channel’s area since Panama got acquainted with Beijing. He said that China’s participation is now “out of control” and “very worrying” for American national security, and to Panama and half of the entire Western ball. During the weekend, the first leg of Rubio was on his first trip as the state minister in Panama. After meeting with Mulino, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tami Bruce said that Trump had taken a “initial decision” that the “influence and control of the current Chinese Communist Party” on the channel represents a “violation” of terms under treaties of 1977. Rubio Mulino told “the current situation unacceptable” and that “in the absence of immediate changes, the United States will require necessary measures to protect its rights.”

One of the main issues is whether Hutchison can collect intelligence information to the Chinese government from “smart” digital cranes. “If the Chinese are either their equipment or their companies, they are working to operate ports, they can get a lot of information about shipping from where,” Kaidan said. Hutchison is a publicly listed company that is largely owned by a family of billionaires in Hong Kong. However, since Britain has worked in the Hong Kong authority to China, in 1997, China has tightened control of Hong Kong, one of its own administrative regions, and companies can force companies to behave on their behalf. One of the methods of defusing tensions to Panama is to cancel its lease contracts with the company, although this may lead to legal challenges and highly slope costs. Last month, Panama began a “comprehensive scrutiny” of Hutchison.

What if Trump is really trying to seize the channel? On the eve of his journey, Rubio said, “The president was completely clear that he wanted to manage the channel again. It is clear that the Panamans are not a fan of this idea.” The military Nubia may generate turmoil and protests. The anti -American demonstrations began on the channel in 1959, when the United States managed as a virtual colony, with its private hospitals, schools, homes and military bases for about ten thousand American forces and their families. (The Americans were known as the Zoni.) In 1964, after the United States refused to fly Panama’s flag in a secondary school, Benamian attacked the American embassy and other buildings. Thousands of our forces were deployed, killing twenty -one Panamans and wounding hundreds. Panama is the day of “martyrs” every year, on January 9. Continuous tensions, protests and Panamanian deaths – in addition to the escalating costs to maintain a military presence – were distributed to President Jimmy Carter’s decision to negotiate a way out of Panama.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *