All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 1, 2025 - Epoch Times
22:55
Is the Panama Canal Controlled by China? | Joseph Humire
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The question we would have to have with Panama is, do you truly, verifiably know everything that China is doing in regards to your canal for national security concerns?
Unless they could give us an answer of 100% we do, we're going to have to have more transparency on that.
And I think that that's where the conversation is at today.
President Trump says he wants the U.S. to control the Panama Canal and other regions and waterways that he says are crucial to America's national security interests.
Worst case scenario for the United States?
Would be that they would find a way to disrupt the Panama Canal so that the United States no longer has rapid reaction capabilities to be able to move from the Atlantic into the Pacific.
Joseph Humeyer is an expert on Latin America and asymmetric warfare.
In this episode, he breaks down the context of Trump's recent comments and how vulnerable the U.S. is to increasing Chinese, Russian and Iranian influence in the region.
The United States has not had a grand strategy for the Western Hemisphere.
Arguably in 100 years.
Arguably since the Monroe Doctrine.
This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Joseph Humeyer, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Always a pleasure, Jan.
So President Trump seems like he really wants to control the Panama Canal and perhaps Greenland as well at almost any cost.
Some people think it's a negotiating tactic.
Others are afraid, frankly.
What's your take?
So I think this is mostly a national security conversation that President Trump is presenting.
Obviously, there's some economic dimensions.
Obviously, there's negotiation aspects to any kind of discussion that's had with partners and allies.
But I think fundamentally what President Trump is doing is he's beginning a conversation about our near abroad.
And this is something that's been sorely lacking in U.S. foreign policy throughout the 21st century, for sure.
You can even go back to a large part of the 20th century.
U.S. foreign policy has focused on just about every part of the world except the one in which we live.
The one we trade the most, the one we travel the most, the one we have probably the most affinity.
And I think President Trump has understood that there's no way to protect the homeland if your outer perimeter is breached.
Does China control it?
Well, I think China's a major actor.
China's the largest adversary to the United States.
It's the most serious adversary to our security.
And I think the fact that China's breached that perimeter, both through Latin America and through the Arctic and Canada, is a serious concern for U.S. national security interests.
So I think what President Trump is positioning here is the United States and our national security interests in our near abroad.
And that doesn't necessarily always have to be a negotiation, because some things are non-negotiable.
We're not going to allow the United States to get attacked.
And if Russia or China or any bad actor wants to potentially position themselves to launch any kind of kinetic attack on the United States, we need to get well ahead of that.
And make sure that that's neutralized and not possible.
So everything from the Arctic and Greenland's part of that, all the way down to the Panama Canal is part of that perimeter.
I think there's another conversation that's including the perimeter, but it's kind of broader, is the conversation about waterways, strategic waterways.
And I think the Arctic is a strategic waterway because of the Northern Passage.
But in a matter of a couple decades, it'll be probably...
One of the most, if not the most, strategic waterway as being an interpolar sea route, for the first time being able to go from the North Pole to the South Pole.
And I think that China has been positioning itself, along with Russia, to be able to control that route into the future.
The Panama Canal goes without saying.
Everyone understands the importance of the Panama Canal.
I think all our history books talk about the Panama Canal, but that's the problem.
It's stayed in the history books.
It hasn't moved into the present.
And for those that have been paying attention, you know, obviously I have, China has been quietly and silently encroaching on the Panama Canal.
Do they control the canal?
Can they shut down the canal?
And those questions don't always get a black-and-white response.
The response, the reality is China every day.
China has that much more influence over the operations of the canal and Panama itself.
Panama does not like to talk about that because they have a lot of trade and a lot of commerce with China, but fundamentally they know that that's the case.
And the question with China is when you talk about commercial enterprises, companies, and we could get into the specifics in a bit.
You're fundamentally talking about military ambitions.
China blends the two together.
They have a military-civil fusion strategy.
They have the ability to use dual-use companies.
And I think that that's something that is lost sometimes among Latin Americans, policymakers, and politicians.
Let's do a little bit of history, just to go a little bit back to the importance of the canal.
So the canal is, in many ways, an extension of the Monroe Doctrine.
So the Monroe Doctrine that was signed in 1823, and this is important because many people, especially academics, have this kind of...
Misconception or misperception about the Monroe Doctrine, thinking it's an interventionist or imperialistic U.S. foreign policy.
Latin America is ours.
It's not.
It was a defensive posture.
As a matter of fact, one of the main architects of the Monroe Doctrine, obviously President James Monroe, was his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.
And if anyone has read or learned about John Quincy Adams, he was absolutely not an interventionist.
I think his famous saying was, let not search for monsters to destroy.
He was very much restrained on foreign adventures.
The Monroe Doctrine was a statement at a time by a...
Burgeoning power, the United States was not a world power yet, to say that the new world is off limits to old ways of governing.
The monarchs from Europe in the past.
And it was a time that we didn't really know how that was going to play out.
But now we do.
And what happened after the Monroe Doctrine was signed in 1823 was the burgeoning of sovereign nations in Latin America.
Many of these countries probably would never reach their sovereignty had it not been for the Monroe Doctrine and the rise of the United States as a world power.
So that takes us to the Panama Canal, which was effectively built in 1903. But prior to the Panama Canal, it wasn't the United States' idea.
It was actually the French idea.
The French engineer that initiated the Panama Canal construction had just built the Suez Canal over in Egypt and he thought that this was going to be very similar and we're going to use the same technology and engineering and what he found out is...
Terrain matters, and it's a very different desert to a swamp jungle, which is Panama.
And the elevation of Panama from the sea route was very difficult to traverse.
So they lost a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of lives, actually, in constructing the canal.
And pretty much, I'd say...
1895, pretty much abandoned the effort, except for one individual, one of the French individuals that decided that he wanted to persist and began this conversation with the United States about this opportunity to finish the Panama Canal.
At the time, Panama was actually a province of Colombia.
The map looked different.
It was called the Greater Colombia, which is where Panama is today, and so we approached Colombia.
To essentially make an offer.
I believe the offer was about $10 million annual and then a certain amount of perpetuity to be able to construct the canal and administer it.
And the Colombian government, my understanding, approved this offer, but the Colombian Senate did not.
Since they did not ratify it, the deal was shut down and we were back to square one.
But then a rebellion happened and the Panamanian separatist movement lifted up.
With the United States support, and they became an independent republic.
And I tell that historical anecdote because it's to signify how important the canal is to the identity of Panama as a nation.
So the birth of the Republic of Panama, their independence from Colombia, is tied to the canal.
As soon as they became an independent republic, they gave the concessions to the United States to build it.
And our engineers, particularly one engineer named John Stevens, is really the brilliance behind building that canal.
Because what the French couldn't do...
With their engineering, we were able to accomplish.
And if you go visit the canal, that same technology exists about the ability to raise the water levels to open a series of locks to be able to traverse this kind of mountain that's tied to the sea, the access to the sea routes.
So that engineering was, you know, 100 years ago, 120 years ago, was brilliant at the time.
It's still brilliant today.
It needs some improvements and expansions.
But nonetheless, I think that that's the beginning starting point of the canal, which takes us to the treaty.
The negotiations with the treaty began in 1967, signed in 1979, and then effectively transferred in 1999. And we can talk about that if you like.
What's happening with this treaty?
Because this is, you know, current events, actually, right now.
Yeah.
So the treaty was signed by Jimmy Carter, by President Jimmy Carter, and it was a hot-button issue at the time in the United States.
And it had to do with President Carter's vision at the time of essentially trying to change the image of the United States as less of an imperialist power, less of an interventionist country, and more of one that's going to talk and work and have a kind of a community with our allies.
And so in that, there was a discussion about the canal.
The reason I wrench in the 60s was because that's where the movement inside Panama to resist the canal started to bubble up.
And we really don't know why it happened.
At least I don't know the specific reasons.
Other than we had a military presence in Panama at the time.
The Canal Zone was actually a military base by the United States.
And it started actually with a student protest.
A student protest stood up and basically protested the presence of the United States military.
In Panama, and then that kind of started to create a narrative inside Panama and essentially into the United States about potentially transferring the canal to Panama.
That happened prior to Jimmy Carter becoming president.
Matter of fact, when Jimmy Carter was campaigning, he actually said he would not sign over the canal.
He won the election and he changed his mind.
And then he signed the treaty.
The treaty says is that there's a period of about 20 years in which the United States will gradually turn over the operations of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama, but with conditions.
And those conditions had to do with neutrality.
And this is actually a separate agreement from the actual treaty to turn over the canal.
And the neutrality agreement has to do with the ability of not having any one country have complete dominance and control over the canal.
Particularly countries that are hostile to the United States.
And it says that inside the treaty.
Actually, it has a thing called the Deconcini Clause.
It's one of the clauses inside the Neutrality Treaty that talks about any hostile powers to the United States having any type of control or influence over the canal.
That brings us to today, because right before the canal was fully transferred in 1999, two years prior, Hutchinson Wampoa, a port company from China, made a bid.
to get concessions to operate a couple of the ports on the canal.
They won that concession and so they timed it perfectly because right before the transfer happened They were able to start to operate ports, and all throughout the period where Panama became fully in control of the canal, China has quietly, incrementally began to have more and more influence.
I heard President Trump say in some of his statements or maybe some of his postings, the Chinese military are on the Panama Canal, and that drove a bit of a discussion in Panama.
Well, the reality is that's a very advanced understanding of how Chinese companies operate.
For all its private sector activities and enterprise, as we know very well, has supported the PLA. Li Ka-xing, particularly, has known to be a logistical service provider for the PLA. So it's not a stretch when you say that there are Chinese military operating the canal.
It may not be what people visualize, a Chinese PLA soldier operating the canal, but they're influenced by the People's Liberation Army and the National Security Apparatus of China.
Since we filmed this episode a few days ago, the Panama Maritime Authority announced they will be conducting an audit of the Hong Kong-based port operator C.K. Hutchison Holdings, which controls ports at the Panama Canal.
Joe, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back.
And we're back with Joseph Humeyer, Executive Director of the Center for a Secure Free Society.
Joe, at this point, just very quickly, could you...
Explain this doctrine of military-civil fusion that Chinese use.
Yeah, so what China does, and I think the way they kind of envision the private sector, is as a ways and means to an end.
And that end doesn't have to do with commercial productivity.
It has to do with military ambitions.
It has to be positioning Chinese military throughout the world.
I think China understands, just like any strategist would understand, that the...
The waterways in the world are what's really most important.
I mean, the United States becomes a superpower.
Along with our U.S. Navy, being able to provide maritime security throughout the world.
So China's ambitions to be able to replace the United States as that superpower has a lot to do with being able to position themselves throughout the world in terms of maritime routes.
And so in that, they know that they don't have the kind of conventional muscle to flex with their military, at least not yet.
So they've used commercial enterprise.
And so the military civil fusion strategy has to do with dual-use operations.
companies that have a commercial application that do, you know, whatever port construction, telecommunications or whatever commercial endeavor, but have a dual use with military applications as well.
And so in the case of the canal, and it's not just the Hutchinson, Wampoa, the operations of the port, the holding companies that are on those ports, but it's also the construction companies.
So the canal's gone through an expansion.
That effectively began around 2014, 2015, and became operational around 2019. That expansion was done in large part to contracts given to Chinese construction companies.
The two Chinese construction companies that were operating, those are both state-owned companies that are known to be very close to the People's Liberation Army.
And so that is a good example of their military superfusion strategy, because these companies kind of literally paved the road for future ambitions that their military would undertake.
So you're saying this neutrality is being encroached upon?
What the last couple years have shown is that there's potential instability.
There's mass migration coming into Panama that's destabilizing the country.
There's a drought that happened last year that really severely tested the limits of the Panama Canal.
There's political corruption and money laundering and just all kinds of financial shenanigans that have been played out that really have given Panama a bad rap because it's not necessarily all tied to Panama, but Panama is a financial center.
And all this has basically manifested itself into a situation where the question is drawn, what happens if Panama falls?
Like, what happens if the government becomes a Venezuela?
What happens if narco-traffickers take over?
We had those questions, actually, in the 1980s, which is why...
The United States invaded Panama, right?
Because the president of Panama at the time, Manuel Noriega, was a narco-trafficker, and there was a concern that he would turn over the Panama Canal to drugs, to drug traffickers.
And so we made sure that that didn't happen.
I'm not saying that we're at that point today.
But I think history serves as a lesson, and we want to make sure that that's not going to happen.
And so the China question falls into that equation.
What is China's true intention with the Panama Canal?
Now, you can't just ask China that openly in an interview, but that's an intelligence question, that's a strategy question, that's a policy question, and it's a question that we need to have with allies.
And one point on that, because I've heard this, people say, well, but why treat allies with that kind of blatant kind of aggressiveness?
Well, my response to that is, Who else are you going to have the conversation with?
If this was an adversarial nation, which would be a lot worse, it's hard to have that conversation with an adversary because the adversary doesn't necessarily care about your interests or necessarily have the same strategic ends that they want to get to.
Allies are supposed to have these conversations about what serves our national security interests, what serves your national security interests.
If you cannot talk with your allies about things of strategic importance, then what can you talk about with your allies?
There's no scenario where an adversarial power could make the rules about what happens there that the U.S. could accept.
Does that sound right to you?
That's right.
And just so your audience knows how important it is to the United States.
It's important to the world.
First, it's 7%, upwards of 6%, 7% of global shipping.
It's one of the seven major strategic waterways choke points throughout the world.
But for the United States in particular, it's even more important.
It's upwards of 40% of our container traffic and upwards of 70% of anything that comes and goes from U.S. ports.
In fact, a lot of the commercial traffic that goes from the eastern seaboard of the United States, largely from New York and Baltimore, that traverses to go to the west coast of the United States, California, goes through the Panama Canal.
That's the most efficient route.
Otherwise, it would have to go all the way through the bottom of South America, which would almost double the transit time, double the cost, maybe even triple the cost of that kind of trade.
And so fundamentally, it would affect our economy substantially more than it would affect anywhere else in the world.
So I think that that's the strategic importance.
There's also a military importance to the canal.
It's not as vital as it once was before we started building out these bigger aircraft carriers, but it did enable a two-ocean navy.
To be able to have transit of military vessels from the Atlantic side to the Pacific side in a manner much more expeditiously.
In fact, during World War II, it was vital.
The ability to get our Navy to go into the Pacific to be able to deter Japan.
Panama Canal was the most vital national asset, in fact.
Imperial Japan had plans to attack the canal, as did the Nazis, by the way.
Plans to attack the canal, understanding that that's a strategic choke point that would severely limit the United States' military maneuvering.
Back to where we're at in current day, yeah, I don't think there's a circumstance that exists where the United States will allow that to happen, especially not under President Trump.
I don't think there's a condition where we would say, you know what, just keep building more bridges, building more...
More electrical grids, more water management, and have it all controlled by China.
And we're just going to be okay with that.
The fact that we even got to this point is problematic in itself.
Like, why do we even let this happen?
And that kind of thing says a lot about some of our failures in U.S. foreign policy.
But if anything, we're learning about President Trump is he's correcting a lot of that.
He's looking at the map and he's saying that this was, even if it's not conventionally...
I think that he's realizing that these are things that should have never happened, and we have to correct that.
And he stated it in his posting.
He said President Jimmy Carter's treaty that transferred the canal to Panama was a foreign policy blunder, a mistake.
And I agree with that.
I don't think that that should have ever happened.
There was actually a debate about that back then.
So, you know, as we finish up, what are the kind of immediate things that are on your wish list from your perspective?
I'll start from the micro, go to the macro.
I think eventually we may be going to a renegotiation of the Panama Canal Treaty, redrawing the treaty to build in some concessions that allow us to avoid these problems that we're currently having about lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and violations of neutrality.
Part of that, there's actually precedent for this.
One of the kind of extensions of the Monroe Doctrine is something called the Lodge Corollary.
Everyone knows the Roosevelt Corollary, but the Lodge Corollary was actually a corollary that was developed by a senator in the U.S. Senate that inserted this corollary because he was concerned about Japanese firms taking over strategic sites in Mexico.
So the way the corollary is written, it talks about companies.
It talks about private enterprises that are tied to hostile governments that are positioning themselves in strategic areas that may be harmful to the United States.
This is 100 years ago.
This is like in the 1920s.
Well, I think that's very relevant today.
I mean, if that's happening back then with Imperial Japan, it's happening times 100 with Communist China.
And I think that we have to look at those type of elements of U.S. foreign policy and maybe brandage it together to package it into a real A policy that will allow us to be able to protect these strategic areas and ultimately protect the homeland.
I think second is a containment strategy of essentially access denial of these hostile actors, I think.
Someone told me, when I talked about this security perimeter in what I call Greater North America, when I talk about these concepts, they say, well, you have a problem there.
I said, what's the problem?
I said, we have at least three countries there that hate the United States and want to do us harm.
Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
So would they agree of being part of this now new North American project?
And I said, well, maybe they won't.
But fundamentally, the conversation that we need to have with those countries isn't about whether they agree with us or disagree with us.
It has to be like, you want to be a dictator, you want to violate human rights, you want to repress your opposition.
You can't do that with Chinese weapons, Iranian weapons, Russian armament.
That's the conversation.
And I believe that if we can cut off the supply lines to those countries from those external actors, they become infinitely weaker than what they are today.
So I would like to see the United States look at Latin America from a strategic perspective.
I think President Trump has well positioned the United States for this.
I think Senator, well now Secretary of State, designate Marco Rubio.
I think is considered in the U.S. Senate one of the most knowledgeable about Latin America.
His number two, the Deputy Secretary of State, Ambassador Christopher Landau, is also well, well-versed in Latin America.
He was the ambassador to Mexico during the first Trump administration, but grew up the son of diplomats all throughout South America and Venezuela and Paraguay.
I think President Trump has nominated more ambassadors to Latin America than any other region in the world.
Very early in the administration.
That was not the case in his first administration.
And even people like Michael Waltz and Pete Hegseth.
Michael Waltz knows Latin America very well as a congressman from Florida, but also as a Green Beret.
And Pete Hegseth, who I think understands the proximity challenges in terms of our military.
So I think President Trump's assembling a team that you can argue would be a Latin America first team, but really it's an America first team that can understand the strategic importance of Latin America.
And so what I see...
I see an opportunity for the United States to really correct the mistakes that we've made over the last several decades, if not a century.
Well, Joe Humeyer, it's such a pleasure to have had you on again.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you, John.
Thank you all for joining Joseph Humeyer and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
▲
Export Selection