Don’t Send the Navy Packing

The Panama Canal is scheduled to convert to Panamanian control on Dec. 31, 1999. A U.S. negotiating team is now close to an agreement with Panama that would allow 2,000 American military and civilian personnel to remain stationed on an isthmus air base as part of an inter-American drug interdiction operation.

Under the pact now being negotiated, the Panama Canal itself and the locks connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would revert entirely to Panamanian control. And except for a few insignificant facilities, there would be no more U.S. Navy presence in Panama or its territorial waters after the turn of the century.

Fixated on retention of Howard Air Force Base, where the multinational drug traffic control center is to be located, and the need to placate Panama and insulate the drug control center’s personnel from mob violence, the Defense Department has apparently waived strategic interest in the Canal as such. The Pentagon’s position is that in any future crisis, naval repair and supply facilities on each coast will be sufficient to service fleet requirements.

Unless modified in the next few weeks, the forthcoming pact will bring down the curtain on an engineering marvel that the U.S. completed in 1914 and has operated ever since. This is the deplorable but inevitable result of the two 1977 treaties negotiated and signed by President Jimmy Carter in which passing and ultimately unfounded foreign policy fears were allowed to override U.S. strategic needs.

The Carter administration accepted negotiating guidelines based on Panama’s largely symbolic grievances over the Canal Zone’s territorial status--questions of sovereignty, flags, U.S. installations and employee housing, Panamanian access rights and the like; the strategic importance of the Panama Canal was downgraded to second place.

Today’s U.S. negotiating team is again fixed on the wrong priorities. This time, a small, only marginally effective drug interdiction staging center has been allowed to override the imperative need for an expanded, efficiently maintained “Pathway between the Seas” with a protective naval presence.

This is a logistics issue as much as one of combat mobility. Today, as in 1977, America’s aircraft carriers are too big to transit the locks. But this is not true of the cruisers, destroyers and frigates that also compose a battle group or of the vast majority of naval supply vessels. What if more than one crisis erupts at a time? What if a single “emergency” overtaxes sealift, overhaul and port facilities on one coast?

Moreover, the U.S. negotiating position seems to ignore the Panama Canal’s function as a global merchant marine waterway, vital to our commerce and energy needs in peace and war, even though nowadays U.S. cargoes largely travel in foreign flag vessels.

Sooner or later, the Panama Canal will have to be widened and deepened to accommodate supertankers and modern container ships that no longer fit; the 1914 locks will have to be replaced and new computerized navigation systems will have to be installed.

The first Panama Canal Treaty, which gave the United States its present extensive rights, will expire on schedule at the turn of the century. The second instrument, the Neutrality Treaty, is of indefinite duration and does indeed give the United States an implied right to intervene unilaterally to protect the Panama Canal from both an external and internal security threat. But this is weak language to sustain a U.S. naval presence and continued involvement in the Panama Canal’s upkeep and modernization; to invoke it for these purposes would precipitate an inter-American crisis.

The present negotiations offer a unique opportunity to rectify these deficiencies. It should not be necessary to sacrifice the drug interdiction center but in the forthcoming agreement the Panama Canal should be given primacy. This time, negotiators should be given the right priorities.