Films: Unbelievable Horror
Turan, Kenneth
The Panama Canal: a durable dilemma DON BOHNING It will soon be three years that the United States and the military regime in Panama have been haggling over terms of a new treaty to replace...
...certainly serve the considerable vested interests of the Defense Department in the Panama Canal, as a military base and link between the Atlantic and Pacific, far better than a new treaty ever could...
...Until recent months, with the appointment of Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State and veteran diplomat Ellsworth Bunker as special ambassador to head the U.S...
...That, as it is written into the 1903 treaty and its revisions, is the crux of what has been the most persistently nagging U.S...
...Panama wants operational control and ownership of the existing Canal by December 31, 1994, or in twenty years...
...Wouldn't it be something more like real economy to stop these tax refund raids on the treasury which have become the most colossal national racket...
...To them, it is an American canal, and it matters little that it happens to be in Panama, or that the seventy-year-old treaty that governs the relationship between the United States and Panama is as outmoded as the horse and buggy before the energy crisis...
...negotiating team, the clear impression was that the Defense Department, not the State Department, controlled the course of the negotiations from the U.S...
...payment to Panama for use of its territory...
...If we are true to our traditions, if we are tolerant of the whole market place of ideas, we will always be strong...
...The State Department, taking public note of the new round of negotiations in late 1971, declared: "It is our intent to show Latin America and the world the United States as a great power can develop a fair and mutually acceptable treaty relationship with a nation as small as Panama...
...And what are we willing to give...
...They are being asked to accept "in perpetuity" the presence of a foreign power (the United States) acting "as if it were sovereign," with all that implies, over 500 square miles of their own territory—the Canal Zone that slices the nation in half—and for which they receive a paltry $1.9 million annual rental...
...Despite a recent spate of optimistic headlines, it would appear on the basis of progress to date that the current negotiations may well be a costly exercise in futility...
...James, Andrew W. Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover handed to multi-millionaires, large corporations, big contributors to Republican campaign chests, and others the staggering sum of $4,054,343,000 in so-called income tax refunds...
...Security Council in Panama last March...
...In such a treaty," said Johnson, "we must retain the rights which are necessary for the effective operation and the protection of the Canal, and the administration of the areas that are necessary for these purposes...
...The Panama Canal: a durable dilemma DON BOHNING It will soon be three years that the United States and the military regime in Panama have been haggling over terms of a new treaty to replace the anachronistic 1903 pact between the two countries which governs operation of the Panama Canal...
...We have tampered with the original language only to achieve brevity...
...In an age when many Americans see the United States under siege, both at home and abroad, the Panama Canal remains one of the few tangible symbols of a more glorious era...
...side of the table...
...Congress and the Panamanian people still remains...
...3) an end to U.S...
...As long as the Canal remains an issue, Torrijos has an important diversion available to distract from internal pressures mounting against his five-year-old regime, which ranks among the most authoritarian in the hemisphere...
...5) a "substantial" increase in the U.S...
...The meeting generated much international attention, probably beyond what the Panamanians had expected, but given the anti-U.S...
...If it was Panama's intent, as some Panamanian officials publicly stated, to put pressure on the United States for a new Canal treaty, acceptable to Panama, by influencing U.S...
...And that, again assuming good faith in the negotiations by both parties, is years away from successful conclusion...
...A second provided for construction and operation of a sea-level Canal, also under a joint U.S.-Panamanian authority...
...In general terms, what Washington is willing to concede is: (1) replacement of the 1903 treaty with a new pact...
...This is in line with President Nixon's stated policy of "partnership"—as opposed to "paternalism"—as the cornerstone of U.S.-Latin American relations...
...It was all the more reason to suspect that the United States was not so anxious as its public pronouncements would indicate to reach agreement with Torrijos (as opposed to Panama), whose government has drifted increasingly leftward since the current round of negotiations began...
...In fact, it appears to differ little from what the United States has repeatedly reiterated since President Johnson first offered to negotiate a new treaty a decade ago...
...Were he to reach an accord he would run the risk of eliminating a handy distraction for his government's own shortcomings and repression...
...On that basis, the abortive three-treaty package of 1967 was hammered out...
...They are: (1) that the Canal should be available to the world's commercial vessels on an equal basis at reasonable tolls...
...That pattern reveals a remarkably consistent devotion to the demands of the nation's special interests—the real estate lobby, the private power trust, the oil crowd, and the country's most affluent taxpayers...
...Panamanian Foreign Minister Juan Tack, regarded as a hardliner on a new treaty and one whose influence is considerable in the negotiations, is more emphatic on Panama's demands...
...Congress...
...But in the face of stiff opposition that developed when the texts were prematurely made public and imminent presidential campaigns in both countries, the draft treaties were never presented for ratification...
...That is what the United States says it wants...
...Currently the United States has fourteen military installations in the Zone, including the headquarters for the U.S...
...Justice William O. Douglas April 1952 TAX REFUND RACKET From 1921 to the time of his appointment as ambassador to the Court of St...
...Armed Forces Southern Command...
...There seems little doubt that the Security Council meeting had a negative impact on the course of negotiations and the prospects for agreement were further delayed by it...
...rhetoric that emerged, the session also stiffened the hand of opposition elements in the United States to any meaningful new treaty...
...problem in Latin America over the years...
...servicemen are numbered among the total Zone population of about 50,000...
...We want full jurisdiction in the Zone—political, administrative, judicial, labor and all other...
...Politically speaking we want jurisdiction over the Canal Zone," Carlos Lopez Guevara, one of Panama's negotiators, declared on the eve of the present round of negotiations...
...defense of the old and new Canals for a set time...
...And as nationalistic fever mounts around the world, so does the temperature of the "Canal problem...
...Given the mood of the U.S...
...They began the following June...
...The Anderson team successfully concluded new Canal agreements in 1967 with the Panamanian government of then President Marco Robles...
...What Panama does not want is the continued large-scale U.S...
...For the United States, the negotiations demonstrate a willingness to deal with countries of the region as equals in attempting to arrive at just solutions to sources of conflict...
...standpoint, it indicates the State Department has regained, or gained for the first time, control of the negotiations—a development no doubt related to Kissinger's new role as Secretary of State...
...Our weakness grows when we become intolerant of opposing ideas, depart from our standards of civil liberties, and borrow the policeman's philosophy from the enemy we detest...
...headaches in the hemisphere for years to come...
...2) that the Canal should be operated and defended by the United States for an extended, but fixed, period of time...
...2) rejection of the "perpetuity" concept, with any new Canal treaty to be one of fixed duration...
...Continuing negotiations serve that end nearly as well as accomplished agreement, especially if it runs into expected ratification difficulties in the U.S...
...And by engaging in negotiations he is able to keep the Canal issue close to the surface, turning it on and off to suit his own domestic purposes...
...In the interim, the obstacles to a new treaty have grown and the desire for agreement apparently diminished both in Washington and Panama City, the differences aggravated by an acrimonious meeting of the U.N...
...From the Panama perspective, it replaces former Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson, who preceded Bunker as the head of the U.S...
...military presence in the Canal Zone—much of it unrelated to defense of the Canal...
...What Bunker's appointment has done is to bring a fresh approach to the problem, in contrast to Anderson, who had served since 1964, when the late President Johnson first committed the United States to negotiating a new treaty...
...The United States says Panama must wait at least fifty years for the present Canal, eighty-five years if a sea-level Canal is built...
...He asked for new negotiations, to start from scratch, in the fall of 1970...
...Congress and the unpredictability of General Omar Torrijos, the vacillating and opportunistic military officer who has held supreme power in Panama since October 1968, the prospects for a new accord in the near future are virtually nonexistent...
...While frictions have existed since President Theodore Roosevelt midwifed the birth of Panama as a nation in 1903 when it broke away from Colombia, the same year the Canal treaty was signed and eleven years before the Canal was opened, the present phase of U.S.Panama relations and negotiations dates from January 1964, when anti-U.S...
...But the realities of the situation suggest that the Canal problems will remain one of the most persistent U.S...
...To them, the Canal and the Canal Zone are both symbols and obsessions...
...If the 1967 agreements were unacceptable, "even as the basis for discussion," what is it then that Panama and Torrijos want...
...4) an end to the Canal Zone as such, but with Panama making available to the United States a reduced area—integrated into Panama's culture, legal jurisdiction, and economy—for operating and defending the Canal...
...Accepting the questionable premise that both sides genuinely want to conclude a new pact, the swearing in last October of the seventy-nine-year-old Bunker as the chief U.S...
...TH E EDITORS CIVIL LIBERTIES Our real power is our spiritual strength, and that spiritual strength stems from our civil liberties...
...Congress is besieged with demands from taxpayers' leagues and economy committees to cut governmental costs by slashing wages of underpaid Federal employes, curbing governmental activities promoting education and health, and eliminating other public services...
...The third dealt with U.S...
...Panama, he says, can no longer tolerate "a government within a government...
...negotiating team, with a prestigious American diplomat, something Torrijos is said to have desired...
...But we are willing to give the United States the right to run the Canal...
...Panama eventually wants that right, too, and the United States has said it is willing to give it, but how soon is a source of major disagreement...
...From the U.S...
...Yet neither is it difficult to understand the viewpoint of 1.5 million Panamanians, living in a country no bigger than the state of South Carolina...
...negotiator and the appointment of Morey Bell, the State Department's Panama desk officer, as his deputy, add up to a most hopeful sign...
...Some 13,000 U.S...
...criminal and civil jurisdiction—the "government within a government"—in Panamanian territory within an unspecified time period...
...On the face of it, then, the basic positions of the two countries would indicate they are within negotiating distance of each other...
...January 1933 THE NIXON PATTERN Despite the twists and turns that clutter up the record, it is possible to piece together a discernible pattern in Nixon's career...
...Unless an author's name is appended, the material represents editorial comment...
...There is, in fact, some suggestion that ongoing negotiations are more advantageous to both sides, for different reasons, than reaching an agreement...
...One treaty provided for operation of the present Canal by a U.S.-controlled joint authority, an increase in annual rental payments to Panama, and the transfer of Canal lands back to Panamanian jurisdiction...
...In December 1964, President Johnson announced that the United States was willing to negotiate a new treaty, replacing the one of 1903 and its 1936 and 1955 revisions...
...riots directed against the Canal Zone broke out in Panama...
...and international public opinion, the results were at best mixed...
...And continuing negotiations Don Bohning is Latin American editor of The Miami Herald, for which he has covered Latin America since 1967...
...The more pressure brought to bear for change, especially pressure such as that generated by the Security Council meeting, the more determined the resolve is likely to become against it...
...They are not about to give in or give up on it easily...
...Torrijos, who came to power with a military coup by Panama's National Guard, was later to find the Anderson-negotiated treaties unacceptable, "even as the basis for discussion...
...When they ended, twenty-two persons were dead...
...The United States, on the other hand, cites three essential considerations in any negotiations for a new treaty...
...There U.S...
...3) that the United States should have the right to provide additional Canal capacity, either by adding another lane of locks to the existing Canal or by building a sea level Canal...
...The recent flurry of misplaced optimism began with Bunker's second visit to Panama in early January and subsequent reports of agreement on a so-called "Declaration of Principles" outlining the basis of resumed negotiations between the two countries...
...veto in Security Council history to reject a resolution that called on Panama and the United States to "conclude a new, just and fair treaty concerning the present Canal which would fulfill Panama's legitimate aspiration and guarantee full respect for Panama's effective sovereignty over all of the territory...
...Ambassador John Scali exercised the third U.S...
...The large obstacle of fleshing out the skeleton of a new accord in a way acceptable to both the U.S...
...Morris H. Rubin October 1960...
...THE WAY WE SAW IT In this space The Progressive publishes flashbacks ta articles and editorials uiritten during its sixty-five-year history...
Vol. 38 • March 1974 • No. 3
