The secretary of the United States Defense Pete Hegseth should take a close look at the Panama channel Tuesday at the beginning of a rare visit to a Central American nation still disturbed by the threats of the President of the United States Donald Trump to resume the channel.
Hegseth, the first secretary to the defense of the United States to visit the country in decades, arrives in a particularly delicate moment, while Panama fights deep US worries for Chinese commercial investments around the channel.
He is also visiting the country after reporting that the Trump government has requested options from the US armed forces to guarantee access to the channel, which the United States built over a century ago and delivered to Panama in 1999.
Given the hard rhetoric of Trump on the recovery of the canal, the risks are high for the visit of Hegseth.
Panama will be aware of the signs of the management who wants to give to the safety relationship between the United States and Panama, and the channel itself, along which the United States have had a military basic network.
“In general, this was not a winning problem for the United States in terms of public diplomacy in Panama,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
However, the current and former American authorities and experts say that the United States found in the president of Panama José Raul Mulino, a partner willing to fight Chinese influence.
In February, Mulino announced Panama’s formal movement to leave the new Chinese initiative Rota da Seda and contributed to Trump’s repression to immigrants.
He accepted non -Pananian deportation flights and worked to contain the immigration of South America by those who cross the dangerous jungle of Darien in his country.
Hegseth did not make public comments when she arrived in Panama on Monday evening.
But he enthusiastically supported Trump South’s security agenda, by means of sending US troops to the border with Mexico and offering military airplanes for deportation flights.
Trump has falsely stated that China is managing the channel and that Chinese soldiers are present.
But experts recognize concerns about the security of the United States, in particular in relation to espionage, with a wide Chinese commercial presence in Panama, which also includes plans of Chinese companies to build a bridge over the channel.
Last month, Trump celebrated an agreement led by American society Blackrock to purchase most of the port activities of $ 22.8 billion from the conglomerate of Hong Kong Ck Hutchison, including its ports to both ends of the Panama channel.
Trump said the purchase is an example of how the United States were “recovering” the channel.
But China has criticized it, with the market regulation agency, saying that it will perform an antitrust analysis of the agreement.
The current and ancient US officials say that the Panama channel would be fundamental for the passage of the United States war ships during any future conflict in Asia, since the Navy ships moved from the Atlantic to the Pacific to support the war effort.
Even without blocking the canal, China may have a huge advantage because it is able to watch over the ships that exceed it.
However, John Feley, who was the United States ambassador to Panama from 2015 to 2018, contested the declaration of the Trump government according to which the Chinese presence in Panama is a violation of the treaty between the United States and Panama.
“What is not legitimate in the way Trump has done is the intimidation tactic that he used, which is to say that there was a violation of the neutrality treaty. There was not,” said Feey.
Mulino defended the administration of the Cana from Panama, stating that the channel was managed responsible for world trade, including the United States, and that “it is and will remain, Panamenho”.
More than 40% of the US container trafficking, evaluated at around $ 270 billion per year, moves through the Panama channel, which represents more than two thirds of the ships that pass every day from the second busiest full navigable street in the world.
Source: Terra
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