Word: canals
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...excerpts also include Carter's observations on three presidential achievements of which he is most proud: his emphasis on human rights as a high-priority principle of U.S. foreign policy; his politically damaging and difficult campaign to negotiate treaties yielding eventual control of the Panama Canal; and his steps to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil and seek an end to a situation in which "the greatest nation on earth was being jerked around by a few desert states...
...protection from the new republic and sign an alternative agreement that would effectively terminate Panama's existence. It was never clear whether John Hay or President Theodore Roosevelt concurred in this remarkable warning. The result of this act was the construction by the U.S. of the Panama Canal within a ten-mile-wide strip of land extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, one of the great engineering achievements of all time and a boon to the seagoing nations of the world. Within the Canal Zone, our country was granted in perpetuity "all the rights, power and authority...
From the outset, Panamanians deeply resented this denial of their authority over part of their territory. That they retained ultimate sovereignty over the Canal Zone was clear from the treaty. Still, some Americans, including some members of Congress, maintained that by granting the U.S. perpetual authority over the Canal Zone, Panama had given away sovereignty as well...
During the 1976 presidential primaries, Ronald Reagan accused the Ford Administration of maintaining a "mouselike silence" in the face of "blackmail" from Panama's "dictator," General Omar Torrijos. Reagan repeatedly used a line guaranteed to get applause: "When it comes to the Canal, we built it, we paid for it, it's ours and we should tell Torrijos and Co. that we are going to keep it!" Reagan's position appealed to many Americans because he presented the issue, simplistically, as a test of our nation's power and greatness...
...ordeal that ended in freedom for the hostages. Carter also tells of those achievements for which he expects historians to give him greater credit than did the U.S. voters who rejected him in 1980: his human rights policy; the treaty yielding control of the Panama Canal; and his efforts to end U.S. dependence on foreign...