The Panama Canal is essential for naval communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific. It is the main trade route for goods to and from the East Coast of the United States and Asia, and a strategic point for the transport of hydrocarbons, containers and grain between the United States, Asia and Europe. The United States remains by far the largest user as a country of origin of goods (40% of containers) ahead of China and Japan with 21% and 14% respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Historically, it is thanks to the Panama Canal that the United States began to become a hegemonic power with the effective application of the Monroe Doctrine. This policy, theorised by President James Monroe in the 1920s, was firmly employed almost a century later by Theodore Roosevelt. While when Monroe presented his policy to Congress in 1823, US security was not yet guaranteed and it was essentially a defensive approach, the emergence of American industrial power at the end of the 19th century meant that the Monroe Doctrine began to be applied offensively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the war against what was left of the Spanish Empire, the Americans conquered Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico and, in the Pacific, Guam and the Philippines. In Panama, Roosevelt deployed two warships on both sides of the future canal and supported a rebellion that proclaimed independence. A treaty was immediately negotiated whereby the US bought a strip of land (where years later the famous School of the Americas would be built) for $10 million and compensation of $150,000 per year. The United States had exclusive control of the canal for more than sixty years, until President Jimmy Carter concluded that, given the very tense context in Central and South America, it might be counterproductive to continue with the status quo. The Carter-Torrijos pact, signed in 1977, provided for the gradual ceding of Panama’s sovereignty over the canal, with a political neutrality clause and an annex authorising the United States to intervene in case of if maritime transit obstruction. A Panamanian state entity would be in charge of managing the canal from 1999 onwards, always under US supervision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, Donald Trump’s territorial ambitions are part of a new global context marked by the return of geopolitics (geopolitics of trade, food, energy transition, supply chains, technology, etc.) where so-called chokepoints are gaining importance as key elements associated with national security. In November 2024, Peru and China inaugurated the Chancay mega-port (an investment by the state-owned company China Ocean) with 15 operational docks, with the capacity to receive ships that exceed the measurement limitations of the Panama Canal and make the journey from China in just 25 days at sea. Significantly, the angry reactions came not so much from the Secretary of Commerce or the State Department, but from the Pentagon and the National Security Council. In times of hypothetical conflict between the United States and China, the US perception is that such infrastructure creates opportunities for the Chinese military to use in the event of conflict with the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus, in the current moment of great power tensions and geo-economic fragmentation, it is increasingly evident that international trade, maritime logistics and maritime military power are closely linked. The disruption of supply chains in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war meant that global policy elites shifted from thinking about the benefits of just-in-time to imagining just-in-case threat scenarios in the context of global trade fragmentation and looking for shorter, regional supply chains. At the same time, 2024 saw simultaneous long delays in the Panama Canal due to extreme drought (22 ships crossing the canal each day instead of the usual 36, forcing ships to queue for weeks or pay up to $4 million to transit). And disruptions in the Suez Canal due to attacks by Houthi rebels on commercial ships in the Red Sea. Consequently, the importance of the so-called geopolitics of access, which refers to the (direct and indirect) control over strategic maritime or river access from a geo-economic (flows of critical goods and supplies) and geopolitical (military advantages in case of hypothetical conflicts) point of view, is becoming increasingly relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this context, China has obtained the management of two strategic infrastructures through the concession of two ports located at each end of the Panama Canal: Puerto Crist\u00f3bal, on the Atlantic shore, and Puerto Balboa, on the Pacific shore. Both are managed by Panama Ports, a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, a company owned by the billionaire Li Ka-Shing, considered the richest man in Asia. Moreover, more than forty Chinese companies are operating in Panama and it is significant that a few days after Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections, the Panamanian president met with the ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to discuss future Chinese investments in logistics, renewable energy, tourism, real estate, telecommunications and the agricultural industry. The US response has been so dialectically devastating, with threats to regain sovereignty over the canal, that the Panamanian government has just announced that it is suspending its membership of the New Silk Road, the large international network of strategic collaboration with China,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With its recent declarations calling for the return of US sovereignty over the canal and the pressure exerted on the Panamanian president, Washington’s main objective seems clear: to curtail Chinese influence in the Canal Zone. However, it is not the only one: it is also trying to obtain a greater participation of US companies in the bidding for new infrastructure projects, a sector in which the US presence has been scarce in recent years. Moreover, to exert greater control over the Dari\u00e9n region on the Panama-Colombia border, through which many migrants pass on their way to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nor is the US’s claim to exert more influence in key geopolitical hotspots of accession new. What may change now is the tactics and the forms. One of the hypotheses in relation to the configuration of global power during Trump’s second term refers to a negotiation with Russia and China to establish regional zones of influence, where Washington would have a renewed interest in controlling the closest regions, thus recovering the principles of the Monroe Doctrine. The perception of Trump and his circle of advisers is that now is the time to push to exploit the weakness of allies and rivals: Europe is economically stagnant and politically divided; Justin Trudeau is on his way out in Canada; Russia is mired in war in Ukraine, China’s economy is on the verge of deflation, and the Middle East is fragmented. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, Trump will certainly not redefine national borders or send troops to Panama – as George Bush did in 1989 to capture General Noriega and dismantle the armed forces- but he has already laid the groundwork for further negotiations from a position of strength. In addition, not only in Panama, as his statements on Greenland show. The geopolitics of gateways is therefore not a thing of the future but is already part of today’s global reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n