Word: canalized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...important is the Panama Canal...
...course, it is still important, but not nearly so vital as it used to be. About 8% of U.S. international maritime trade passes through the waterway, much of it in non-American vessels. Some 4% of American coast-to-coast trade transits the canal, compared with 9% in 1964 and 50% in 1940. Few U.S. warships make the trip; the supercarriers are too big, and the nuclear submarines are vulnerable to detection and attack because they must be on the surface to make the crossing. Besides, the U.S. has maintained two virtually separate navies in the Atlantic and the Pacific...
...What claim does Panama have to the canal...
...Historically, at least, not much of one. The U.S. will be ceding the canal to Panama but not "returning" it, since Panama never really possessed it. If anything, Colombia was the aggrieved party. With American connivance, Colombian rebels "liberated" the isthmus from the Bogota government in 1903 and turned the rights to build the canal over to the U.S. Panama and its canal came to life together; without the canal, Panama could scarcely exist as a viable nation. Canal revenues account for some 25% of Panama's gross national product, 20% of its employment and almost...
...waterway under the control of a foreign power. The arrangement may once have been economically justified, even a historical necessity, but it is a current indignity for Panamanians. As Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez told Carter: "The Panamanians feel exactly about the Canal Zone as North Americans would feel if the British owned the Mississippi River." In fact, Americans had much the same attitude as contemporary Panamanians when the Spanish and French (not the British) controlled the Mississippi at the turn of the 19th century. In 1956 America supported Egyptian sovereignty and condemned...