GOP Tries to Scare up Old Ghosts

by Steve Chapman

The Berlin Wall may have fallen, and the Soviet bloc may be as defunct as the Aztecs, but for conservatives, nothing has changed on this issue. There is something about the canal that brings out the possessive instincts of the right. Ronald Reagan nearly won the GOP presidential nomination in 1976 by vowing to hang on to the waterway. "We bought it, we paid for it, we built it, and we intend to keep it," he declared. California Republican Sen. S.I. Hayakawa put things in better perspective when he joked, "We stole it fair and square."

But Americans elected Jimmy Carter instead, Carter signed a treaty agreeing to hand over the canal, and in 1978, the Senate ratified it. That was the last we heard of the issue: Even Reagan himself, once in the White House, regarded the canal as yesterday's news.

The treaty, however, stipulated that the transfer would not take place until Dec. 31, 1999, and the approach of that date has concentrated some minds on what they have always regarded as an outrage. A group called the National Security Center is sponsoring a Washington event this week on the theme, "Save Our Panama Canal." The host committee includes Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott and nine GOP House members.

The issue spans the spectrum from A to B. In addition to Lott and Co., the far-right John Birch Society has been running newspaper ads decrying the pending handover and quoting former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Thomas Moorer: "Very soon, we could see Communist China in control of one of the world's most strategic waterways in our backyard."

The newest complaint is that Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., a Hong Kong corporation with ties to the Chinese government, has contracted with Panama to manage the operations of two ports located near either end of the canal. In the fevered imagination of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), this means a hostile and expansionist communist power will soon possess "a maritime base in our hemisphere."

But the firm is a legitimate and highly-regarded business enterprise that operates 19 other ports, including Britain's busiest. "Shipping experts," reports Time magazine, "consider the company among the world's finest." And it's not constructing a Chinese navy installation. It's just going to be loading and unloading cargo containers.

Is that a security threat? Not according to the Pentagon. "We have had nothing to indicate that the Chinese have the slightest desire to somehow control the Panama Canal, and we don't consider this a security issue at all," a spokesman says.

The idea that the Chinese military is going to seize control of the canal is a specimen of paranoid fantasy. But even if there were a shred of plausiblity to this fear, the canal is not the indispensable strategic asset that conservatives portray.

It's of only modest value to the U.S. Navy, for the simple reason that our most important ships can't use it. The canal is too shallow to accommodate the huge aircraft carriers that serve to project U.S. power wherever trouble looms. Nuclear-armed submarines and attack subs don't go through it because that would mean giving away their location to the enemy. In military terms, says University of Kentucky defense scholar Michael Desch, "the Panama Canal is completely irrelevant."

If we were to go to war with the Chinese, it's possible they would try to bomb, block or sabotage the canal to impede American shipping. That's no different, though, from what any enemy might do -- with or without a local address.

But any threat to the canal, whether from China or North Korea or Botswana, would invite a swift and highly unpleasant response from the most powerful military on earth. Under our agreement with Panama, the United States has the eternal right to use force to assure unhindered access to the canal. If we decide to do so, the Chinese government will derive scant comfort from the proximity of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.

The beauty of that company's arrival is that it lets conservatives join together an old bugaboo, the loss of the Panama Canal, and a new danger, the rise of China. But once they've done their worst to excite unwarranted resentment and hysteria, the Panama Canal will be transferred, on schedule, to the government of Panama. That decision was made a long time ago, and it's about time the right got over it.