Word: canals
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Though Johnson likes domestic politics best, there were times during the year when he found himself totally immersed in the less familiar and murkier waters of foreign policy. Less than two months after he took over, he had to cope with rioting in Panama over U.S. management of the Canal Zone, and in the weeks
Presumably, the State Department will sound out each government to see if it does or does not want a canal, then negotiate a series of treaties with them that will permit the U.S. to make a thorough study of the possibilities. The test borings and surveys would take about four years. Once a route is decided upon and a final treaty written, construction will get underway. If possible, the U.S. would like to use nuclear explosives to dig the trench. Nukes are faster than dynamite, run one-tenth the cost, and would hold the price for the Colombia canal...
Nuclear techniques are obviously impossible in the present densely populated Canal Zone. Bypassing the locks and widening the main Gaillard Cut by conventional methods would cost about $2 billion, would require shutting down the canal for only twelve days over the entire construction span. Whichever route is chosen, a new sea-level canal could be ready for operation within 10 years from the day that work starts...
...Time to Negotiate. The sticking point, of course, is what kind of a treaty the U.S. can write for control, operation and defense of a new canal. The Panama Canal made Panama a nation. Yet for years Panamanians have railed against the 1903 treaty, which gives the U.S. "sovereignty in perpetuity" over the ten-mile-wide Canal Zone, demanding a bigger share of the revenues, and more control of both the canal and the zone. Last January's anti-Yankee riots, which left 26 dead (including three U.S. G.l.s) showed how deep the passions go. The U.S., as Johnson...
...those negotiations go may well determine the shape of the treaties for a new canal-and whether or not the U.S. decides to build in Panama. Both Costa Rica and Colombia reacted enthusiastically to the prospect of a canal on their territory. No one seems to understand that better than Panama's recently inaugurated President Marcos Robles. On TV last week, he told his people of President Johnson's "transcendental" announcement and "the happy prospects on this historic day for our nation...