Center High-Level Roundtable Illuminates Serious Security Concerns Arising from, Related to Panama Canal’s Handover

Clinton Right that PRC will ‘Run’
Canal, Wrong that It’s no Problem

(Washington, D.C.): On Pearl Harbor Day — one week before the official ceremony is held
to
mark the United States’ relinquishing of the Panama Canal — the Center for Security Policy
convened its latest High-Level Roundtable Discussion to address a highly topical subject:
“After the Hand-over: the Future of the Panama Canal and U.S. Hemispheric
Interests.”
This event provided an indispensable guide to the strategic challenges to American interests and
security now arising in much of the Western Hemisphere, challenges that will likely be
exacerbated by the loss of U.S. bases, training and intelligence capabilities and the capacity to
provide physical security for Panama and the Canal, and by extension, the region.

More than 100 experienced national security practitioners, retired senior military officers,
former
Members of Congress, congressional aides and members of the press participated in this
Roundtable. Valuable overviews were supplied by:

• Former House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon, who
  provided an excellent
  summary of how the United States came to be a party to the 1977 treaties relinquishing
  control over the Panama Canal and how the intervening years have proven the critics of those
  treaties to be right. Rep. Solomon also read a letter prepared for the Roundtable by former
  Senator Paul Laxalt, leader in the Senate of the opponents to the Panama
  Canal Treaties.
  Sen. Laxalt expressed the view that, had he and his colleagues known then what is now
  known about the hemispheric context and Communist Chinese penetration of the Canal Zone
  (among other places in the region), there would almost certainly have been the votes
  needed
  to reject that accord.

• Admiral Leon ‘Bud’ Edney (USN Ret.), former Supreme Allied
  Commander, Atlantic, who
  decried the “benign neglect” with which successive U.S. administrations have treated the
  Western hemisphere, giving rise to a situation in which it is too late to reconsider the wisdom
  of relinquishing the Canal. He also expressed grave concern at the present Administration’s
  failure to apply the basic tenets of the Monroe Doctrine with respect to China’s ominous and
  growing involvement in our backyard.

In addition, the Roundtable benefitted from written inputs by two of the Nation’s most
eminent security policy practitioners. Former Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger
observed:

“In the context of a general ongoing Chinese shift toward more outward-looking
activities and in keeping with their three millennia of statecraft, it is not logical to
assume that they would pass up a chance to acquire a major foothold in one of the
world’s three major naval choke-points — especially if it can be done with little cost or
risk. It suits their diplomatic, economic, military and intelligence interests, just as
such a capability in potentially unfriendly hands can be a threat to ours.”

In a letter to the Senate’s President pro tem, Senator Strom Thurmond,
publicly released at
the Roundtable, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas
Moorer
rebutted the proposition that the 1977 treaties mitigate security concerns arising from the Chinese
or others’ ability to interfere with Canal operations:

“Right of passage in an emergency is too time sensitive for Panamanian court action or
administrative rulings by Panamanian bureaucrats when the safety and effectiveness of
our forward deployed units are threatened. Further, with the current departure of our
forces it may be only a short period of time before that vacuum is filled by hostile
foreign troops which could, in turn, make any current plan, law or treaty ineffective.
With U.S. forces no longer present, the likelihood of damage by terrorists or similar
catastrophes that could put the Canal out of commission is increased.”

The Roundtable focused next on three subjects:

1) “The Strategic Environment — Ominous Developments in the Hemisphere”
with lead
discussants: Dr. J. Michael Waller, Vice President, American Foreign Policy
Council; Dr.
Norman Bailey, former Senior Director, International Economic Affairs, National
Security
Council; Tomas Cabal, journalist and professor, University of Panama; and
Dr. Constantine
Menges, former Senior Director for Latin America, National Security Council.

Among the topics discussed in this section were: the instability in Columbia, which is facing
challenges from three armed groups; the growing authoritarianism, leftist radicalism and
anti-Americanism of Venezuelan President Chavez; the increasingly warm entente between
China
and Cuba; escalating economic difficulties and rampant corruption in Mexico and Ecuador; and
drug-, arms- and alien-smuggling by the PRC, the Russian mafia, the made-over KGB and other
parties in the region.

2) ‘The Abiding Strategic, Military and Economic Importance of
the Panama Canal to the
United States” with lead discussants: Vice Admiral James Perkins (USN
Ret.), former Deputy
Commander-in-Chief , U.S. Southern Command, and former Commander, Military Sealift
Command; and Lieutenant General Gordon Sumner (Ret.), former Chairman,
Inter-American
Defense Board. They and other knowledgeable participants confirmed that U.S. economic and
military interests would be seriously and adversely affected should the Nation be denied the use
of the Canal for a protracted period of time — or even a relatively short period at a strategically
inopportune juncture.

A particularly noteworthy intervention was made by Major General John
Thompson (USA),
the current Chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board. Speaking in a personal capacity,
Gen. Thompson spoke passionately about the need for a greatly increased focus by U.S.
executive and legislative branch policy-makers on hemispheric security matters in the wake of
the Canal’s handover. Special and urgent attention needs to be paid to the fact that “Important
U.S. strategic interests in Colombia are dying the death of 1,000 cuts every day.”

3) “Is China an Emerging Threat to the Canal — and to
Hemispheric Security More
Generally?” featured as Lead Discussants: Al Santoli, the editor of
the American Foreign
Policy Council’s China Reform Monitor and congressional investigator;
Roger Robinson,
former Senior Director of International Economic Affairs, National Security Council; and
Dr.
Richard Fisher, Office of Rep. Chris Cox. Among the important interventions offered
in this
section was a contribution by Edward Timberlake, co-author with
William Triplett of the
best-selling books Year of the Rat and the newly released Red Dragon
Rising.

During this section the Roundtable heard additional, compelling evidence of: China’s
cooperation with Cuba in areas of intelligence; the PRC’s willingness to use “engineer
battalions” to introduce military personnel into the Western Hemisphere under the guise of
infrastructure construction; Beijing’s use of military-to-military ties with Ecuador to acquire
“aggressor” training for the People’s Liberation Army to defeat the tactics and weapon systems
the United States has employed and has shared with its allies; the PLA and other Chinese
entities’ increasing exploitation of American debt and equities markets to raise large sums of
money for activities — whether in Venezuela, Sudan, Iraq or elsewhere — that are highly
inimical to U.S. interests; and Chinese attempts to penetrate, corrupt or otherwise undermine
democratic processes in the hemisphere.