Word: canals
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...China sneaking up on our southern flank? Well, if you believe the likes of Pat Buchanan, Washington is leaving the door wide open to the People?s Liberation Army on Monday, when it gives Panama the keys to the last U.S. military bases in the Canal Zone. The handover of Howard Air Force Base and Fort Kirby clears the way for the transfer of the canal to Panama by the end of this year. But that has some U.S. hawks worried. Both Buchanan and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott have cited a Chinese threat in the isthmus, based...
What has America's right wing spooked is how assiduously the Panamanians are working to make the canal--which has always been run on a nonprofit basis--into a cash cow. It is not a new complaint. In the 1970s, when President Jimmy Carter sold the handover treaty to Congress, there was much whining about turning the canal into little more than an expensive toll road. The latest version of this anxiety adds a national security tweak: fear of China. In 1997, the Panamanian government finalized a rich deal with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., based in Hong Kong...
...says Joseph Cornelison, the commission's deputy administrator, "we'll control the timing of ships going in and out of Hutchison's ports." Moreover, under the treaty, U.S. Navy ships will keep their privilege of cutting to the front of the line of vessels waiting to traverse the canal...
With only four months left until U.S. envoys hand over the keys to the waterway, the alarmists may have delayed too long to scupper the deal. The treaty allows the U.S. to intervene militarily--but only if the canal's neutrality is menaced. While critics now include presidential candidates Gary Bauer, Pat Buchanan and John McCain, it is hard to imagine the U.S. backing...
...separated her from the former President, Arnulfo Arias. His career provides a sobering lesson. Arias was elected three times, and each time the army deposed him. Diplomats in Panama say Moscoso knows she must tread cautiously. She has vowed to keep politics out of the handover, entrusting the canal's operations to the autonomous Panama Canal Authority. Moscoso expects Washington to do the same, leaving rumbles of Chinese conspiracies to the thriller writers...