American Thought Leaders - Has Trump Been Proven Right About the Panama Canal? Joseph Humire Says, Yes.

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

President Trump says he wants the United States to control the Panama Canal and other regions and waterways that he says are crucial to America’s national security interests.“The question we would have to have with Panama is: Do you truly, verifiably know everything that China is doing in regards to your canal for national security concerns? And unless they could give us an answer of ‘100%, we do,’ I think that we’re going to have to have more transparency on that. And I think that’s where the conversation is at today,” says Joseph Humire. He is an expert on Latin America, specializing, in foreign policy, national security, and asymmetric warfare.“Worst case scenario for the United States would be that [China] would find a way to disrupt the Panama Canal so that the United States no longer has rapid reaction capabilities to be able to move from the Atlantic into the Pacific,” he says.In this episode, Humire breaks down the context of Trump’s recent comments and explains how vulnerable the United States is to increasing Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence in the region.“The United States has not had a grand strategy for the Western Hemisphere arguably in 100 years—arguably since the Monroe Doctrine,” he says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

That's the question we would have to have with Panama is, do you truly, verifiably know everything that China is doing in regards to the canal for national security concerns? Unless they could give us an answer of 100% we do, we're going to have to have more transparency on that. And I think that that's where the conversation is at today. President Trump says he wants the U.S. to control the Panama Canal and other regions and waterways that he says are crucial to America's national security interests. Joseph Humeyer, expert on Latin America and

asymmetric warfare, breaks down the context of Trump's recent comments and how vulnerable the U.S. is to increasing Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence in the region. The United States has not had a grand strategy for the Western Hemisphere, arguably in 100 years, arguably since the Monroe Doctrine. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Joseph Humeyer, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Always a pleasure, Jan. So President Trump seems like he really wants to control the Panama Canal and perhaps Greenland as well at almost any cost. Some people think it's a negotiating tactic. Others

are afraid, frankly. What's your take? So I think this is mostly a national security conversation that President Trump is presenting. Obviously, there's some economic dimensions. Obviously, there's negotiation aspects to any kind of discussion that's had with partners and allies. But I think fundamentally, what President Trump is doing is he's beginning a conversation about our near abroad. And this is something that's been sorely lacking in U.S. foreign policy throughout the 21st century, for sure, you can even go back to a large part of the 20th century, U.S. foreign policy has focused on just about every part of the world except the one in which we live, the one where we trade the most, the one we travel

the most, the one we have probably the most affinity. And I think President Trump has understood that there's no way to protect the homeland if your outer perimeter is breached. Does China control it? Well, I think China's a major actor. China's the largest adversary to the United States, is the more serious adversary to our security. And I think the fact that China's breached that perimeter, both through Latin America and through the Arctic and Canada, is a serious concern for U.S. national security interests. So I think what President Trump is positioning here is the United States and our

national security interests in our near abroad. And that doesn't necessarily always have to be a negotiation because some things are non-negotiable. Like we're not going to allow the United States to get attacked. And if Russia or China or any bad actor wants to essentially potentially position themselves to launch any kind of kinetic attack on the United States, we need to get well ahead of that and make sure that that's neutralized and not possible. So everything from the Arctic and Greenland's part of that, all the way down to the Panama Canal is part of that perimeter.

I think there's another conversation that's including the perimeter, but it's kind of broader, is the conversation about waterways, strategic waterways. And I think the Arctic is a strategic waterway because of the northern passage. But in a matter of a couple of decades, it'll be probably one of the most, if not the most, strategic waterway as being an interpolar sea route for the first time being able to go from the North Pole to the South Pole. And I think that China has been positioning itself, along with Russia, to be able to control that route into the future. The Panama Canal goes without saying.

Everyone understands the importance of the Panama Canal. I think all our history books talk about the Panama Canal. But that's the problem. It's stayed in the history books. It hasn't moved into the present. And for those that have been paying attention, obviously I have, China has been quietly and silently encroaching on the Panama Canal. Do they control the canal? Can they shut down the canal? And those questions don't always get a black and white response.

The response, the reality is China every day has that much more influence over the operations of the canal and Panama itself. Panama does not like to talk about that because they have a lot of trade and a lot of commerce with China. But fundamentally, they know that that's the case. And the question with China is when you talk about commercial enterprises, companies, and we could get into the specifics in a bit, you're fundamentally talking about military ambitions. China blends the two together. They have a military-civil fusion strategy. They have the ability to use dual-use companies. And I think that that's something that is lost sometimes among Latin Americans,

policymakers and politicians. Let's do a little bit of history, just to go a little bit back to the importance of the canal. So the canal is in many ways an extension of the Monroe Doctrine. So the Monroe Doctrine that was signed in 1823, and this is important because many people, especially academics, have this kind of misconception or misperception about the Monroe Doctrine, thinking it's an interventionist or imperialistic U.S. foreign policy. Latin America is ours. It's not. It was a defensive posture. As a matter of fact, one of the main architects of the Monroe Doctrine, obviously President James Monroe,

was what was his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. And if anyone has read or learned about John Quincy Adams, he was absolutely not an interventionist. I think his famous saying was, let not search for monsters to destroy. He was very much restrained on foreign adventures. The Monroe Doctrine was a statement at a time by a burgeoning power, the United States was not a world power yet, to say that the new world is off limits to old ways of governing, the monarchs from Europe in the past. And it was a time that we didn't really know how that was going to play out. But now we do. And what happened after the Monroe Doctrine was signed in 1823

was the burgeoning of sovereign nations in Latin America. Many of these countries probably would never reach their sovereignty had it not been for the Monroe Doctrine and the rise of the United States as a world power. So that takes us to the Panama Canal, which was effectively built in 1903. But prior to the Panama Canal, it wasn't the United States' idea. It was actually the French idea to build the Panama Canal. They sent a lot of French engineers, except they had a lot of trouble.

The French engineer that initiated the Panama Canal construction had just built the Suez Canal over in Egypt. And he thought that this was going to be very similar and we're going to use the same technology and engineering. And what he found out is terrain matters and it's very different desert to a swamp jungle, which is Panama. And the elevation of Panama from the sea route was very difficult to traverse. So they lost a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of lives actually in constructing the canal and pretty much by, I'd say, 1890, 1895, pretty much abandoned the effort, except for one individual, one of the French individuals that decided that he wanted to persist and

began this conversation with the United States about this opportunity to finish the Panama Canal. At the time, Panama was actually a province of Colombia. The map looked different. It was called the Greater Colombia, which is where Panama is today. And so we approached Colombia to essentially make an offer. I believe the offer was about $10 million annual, and then a certain amount of perpetuity to be able to construct the canal and administer it. And the Colombian government, my understanding, was approved this offer, but the Colombian Senate did not. Since they did not ratify it, the deal was shut down, and we were back to square one.

But then a rebellion happened and it was a Panamanian separatist movement lifted up with the United States support and they became an independent republic. And I tell that historical anecdote because it's to signify how important the canal is to the identity of Panama as a nation. So the birth of the Republic of Panama, their independence from Colombia, is tied to the canal. It's tied to the birth of the Republic of Panama, their independence from Colombia, is tied to the canal. It's tied to the creation of the Panama Canal. As soon as they became an independent republic, they gave the concessions to the United States to build it. And our engineers, particularly one engineer named John Stevens, is really the brilliance behind building that canal. Because

what the French couldn't do with their engineering, we were able to accomplish. And if you go visit the canal, that same technology exists about the ability to raise the water levels to open a series of locks to be able to traverse this kind of mountain that's tied to the sea, the access to the sea routes. So that engineering was 100 years ago, 120 years ago, was brilliant at the time. It's still brilliant today. It needs some improvements and expansions. But nonetheless, I think that that's the beginning starting point of the canal, which takes us

to the treaty. The negotiations for the treaty began in 1967, signed in 1979, and then effectively transferred in 1999. And we could talk about that if you like. What's happening with this treaty? Because this is current events actually right now. So the treaty was signed by Jimmy Carter, by President Jimmy Carter, and it was a hot button issue at the time in the United States. And it had to do with President Carter's vision at the time of essentially trying to change the image of

the United States as less of an imperialist power, less of an interventionist country, and more of a one that's going to talk and work and have a kind of a community with our allies. And so in that, there was a discussion about the canal. The reason I mention the 60s was because that's where the movement inside Panama to resist the canal started to bubble up. And we really don't know why it happened. At least I don't know the specific reasons. Other than we had a military presence in Panama at the time.

The canal zone was actually a military presence in Panama at the time. The Canal Zone was actually a military base by the United States. And it started actually with a student protest. A student protest stood up and basically protested the presence of the United States military in Panama. And then that kind of started to create a narrative inside Panama and is extensively into the United States about potentially transferring the canal to Panama. That happened prior to Jimmy Carter becoming president. Matter of fact, when Jimmy Carter was campaigning, he actually said he would not sign over the

canal. He won the election and he changed his mind. And then he signed the treaty. And what essentially the treaty says is that there's a period of about 20 years in which the United States will gradually turn over the operations of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama, but with conditions. And those conditions had to do with neutrality. And this is actually a separate agreement from the actual treaty to turn over the canal. And the neutrality agreement has to do with the ability of not having any one country have complete dominance and control over the canal, particularly countries that are hostile

to the United States. And it says that inside the treaty. Actually, it has a thing called the Deconcini Clause. It's one of the clauses inside the neutrality treaty that talks about any hostile powers to the United States having any type of control or influence over the canal. That brings us to today because right before the canal was fully transferred in 1999, two years prior, Hutchinson Wampoa, a port company from China, made a bid to get concessions to operate a couple of the ports on the canal.

They won that concession and so they timed it perfectly because right before the transfer happened they were able to start to operate ports and all throughout the period of the period where Panama became fully in control of the canal, China has quietly incrementally began to have more and more influence. I heard President Trump say in some of his statements or maybe some of his postings, you know, the Chinese military are on the Panama Canal. And that drove a bit of a discussion in Panama. Well, the reality is that's a very advanced understanding of how Chinese companies operate. Hutchinson Wampoa, for all its private sector activities and enterprise, as we know very well, has supported the PLA. Li Ka-shing particularly has known to be a logistical service provider for the PLA. Li Ka-shing particularly has known to be a logistical service provider for the

PLA. So it's not a stretch when you say that there are Chinese military operating the canal. It may not be what people visualize, a Chinese PLA soldier operating the canal, but they're influenced by the People's Liberation Army and the National Security Apparatus of China. Since we filmed this episode a few days ago, the Panama Maritime Authority announced they will be conducting an audit of the Hong Kong-based port operator CK Hutchison Holdings, which controls ports at the Panama Canal. Joe, at this point, just very quickly, could you explain this doctrine of military-civil fusion the Chinese use? Yeah, so what China does, and I think the way they kind of envision the private sector, is as a ways and means to an end.

And that end doesn't have to do with commercial productivity, it has to do with military ambitions. It has to be positioning Chinese military throughout the world. I think China understands, just like any strategist would understand, that the waterways in the world are what's really most important. I mean, the United States becomes a superpower, along with our U.S. Navy being able to provide maritime security throughout the world. So China's ambitions to be able to replace the United States as that superpower has a lot to do with being able to position themselves throughout the world in terms of maritime routes. And so in that, they know that they don't have the kind of conventional muscle to flex with their military, at least not yet, so they've used commercial enterprise. And so the military civil fusion strategy has to do with dual-use operations, companies

that have a commercial application that do, you know, whatever port construction, telecommunications or whatever commercial endeavor, but have a dual use with military applications as well and so in the case of the canal uh we and it's not just the hutchinson wampoa the operations of the port the holding companies that are on those uh ports but it's also the construction companies so the panel has gone through an expansion uh that effectively began around 2014 2015 and became uh operation around 2019. uh That expansion was done in large part to contracts given to Chinese construction companies. The two Chinese construction companies that were operating, those are both state-owned companies that are known to be very close to the People's Liberation Army.

And so that is a good example of their military civil fusion strategy because these companies kind of literally paved the road for future ambitions that their military would undertake. So you're saying this neutrality is being encroached upon? What the last couple of years have shown is that there's potential instability. There's mass migration coming into Panama that's destabilizing the country. There's a drought that happened last year that really severely tested the limits of the Panama Canal. There's political corruption and money laundering and just all kinds of financial shenanigans that have been played out

that really have given Panama a bad rap because it's not necessarily all tied to Panama, but Panama is a financial center. And all this has basically manifested itself into a situation where the question is drawn, what happens if Panama falls? Like, what happens if the government becomes a Venezuela? What happens if narco-traffickers take over? We've had those questions, actually, in the 1980s, which is why the United States invaded Panama, right?

Because the president of Panama at the time, Manuel Noriega, was a narco-trafficker, and there was a concern that he would turn over the Panama Canal to drugs, to drug traffickers. And so we made sure that that didn't happen. I'm not saying that we're at that point today, but I think history serves as a lesson, and we want to make sure that that's not going to happen. And so the China question falls into that equation. What is China's true intention with the Panama Canal?

Now, you can't just ask China that openly in an interview, but that's an intelligence question. That's a strategy question but that's an intelligence question. That's a strategy question. That's a policy question. It is a question that we need to have with allies. And one point of that, because I've heard this, people say, well, but why treat allies with that kind of blatant kind of aggressiveness? Well, my response to that is,

who else are you going to have the conversation with? If this was an adversarial nation, which would be a lot worse, it's hard to have the conversation with? If this was an adversarial nation, which would be a lot worse, it's hard to have that conversation with an adversary because the adversary doesn't necessarily care about your interests or necessarily have the same strategic ends that they want to get to. Allies are supposed to have these conversations about what serves our national security interests, what serves your national security interests. If you cannot talk with your allies about things of strategic importance, then what If you cannot talk with your allies about things of strategic importance, then what can you talk about with your allies?

There's no scenario where an adversarial power could make the rules about what happens there that the U.S. could accept. Does that sound right to you? That's right. And just so your audience knows how important it is to the United States, so it's important to the world. First, it's 7%, upwards of 7%, 6%, 7% of global shippings. It's one of the seven major strategic waterways choke points throughout the world.

But for the United States in particular, it's even more important. It's upwards of 40% of our container traffic and upwards of 70% of anything that comes and goes from U.S. ports. In fact, a lot of the commercial traffic that goes from the eastern seaboard of the United States, largely from New York and Baltimore, that traverses to go to the west coast of the United States, California, goes through the Panama Canal. That's the most efficient route. Otherwise, it would have to go all the way through the bottom of South America, which would almost double the transit time, double the cost, maybe even triple the cost of that

kind of trade. And so fundamentally, it would affect our economy substantially more than it would affect anywhere else in the world. So I think that that's the strategic importance. There's also a military importance to the canal. It's not as vital as it once was before we started building out these bigger aircraft carriers, but it did enable the two-ocean navy. It did enable us to be able to have transit

of military vessels from the Atlantic side to the Pacific side in a manner much more expeditiously. In fact, during World War II, it was vital. The ability to get our navy to go into the Pacific to be able to deter Japan was Panama Canal was the most vital national asset. In fact, Imperial Japan had plans to attack the canal, as did the Nazis, by the way, plans to attack the canal, understanding that that's a strategic choke point that would severely limit the United States' military maneuvering. Back to where we're at in current day, yeah, I don't think there's a circumstance that exists where the United States will allow that to happen, especially not under President Trump.

I don't think there's a condition where we would say, you know what, just keep building more bridges, building more electrical grids, more water management, and have it all controlled by China, and we're just going to be okay with that. The fact that we even got to this point is problematic in itself. Like, why do we even let this happen? And that kind of thing says a lot about some of our failures in U.S. foreign policy. But if anything, we're learning about President Trump, he's correcting a lot of that. He's looking at the map and he's saying that this was,

even if it's not conventionally popular, I think that he's realizing that these are things that should have never happened and we have to correct that. And he stated it in his posting. He said, President Jimmy Carter's transfer, the treaty that transferred the canal to the Panama was a foreign policy blunder, a mistake. And I agree with that. I don't think that that should have ever happened. There was actually a debate about that back then. But it was reaffirmed recently, wasn't it? Didn't the U.S. in effect reaffirm that decision? I think you may be talking about the concessions to the port holding companies by China.

Yeah. So as I mentioned before, China initially bid to operate these two ports on the canal. So the canal is a series of five ports, and the two outer ports, both on the Caribbean side and on the Pacific side, are the holding companies are Chinese companies. And the bidding started in 97. And in effect, China won the concession for 25 years. And so that expired in 2022, 2023. And we had an opportunity then, the Biden administration had an opportunity then to stop it, to say, okay, they lived out their concession, the 25 years they've been operating those ties to the canal. Well, that's done. But unfortunately, there was nothing done effectively on it. So China bid again for another 25 years, and they won another concession.

So that's where we're at today. We're at a situation where unless we do something now, China has control at least of these two ports. And I want to make a point on that because people talk about, well, the ports are not operated by China. There's the holding companies. They do the administrative support. If you go to those ports, it's Panamanians that are operating those ports on the canal. Correct. They're not Chinese operators on the canal.

They're holding companies. But even if you go beyond that, you go to construction companies. They're building a bridge that transfers to the Panama Canal, the electrical grid, the water management system. These are all Chinese companies. Yes, they're contractors to the Panamanian government, but going back to our military civil fusion strategy discussion, to what level of transparency? And that's the big question. And that's the question we would have to have with Panama, is do you truly, verifiably know everything that China is doing in regards to your canal

for national security concerns? And unless they could give us an answer of 100%, we do. I think that we're going to have to have more transparency on that. And I think that that's where the conversation is at today. What do people in the region think about all this? I know you talked with folks down there all the time. A couple things. Immediately when President Trump made the statement, firstly say I think it caught a lot of people by surprise. In my mind I thought it was a great opportunity for for Panama and Latin America because you know every country wants to get on the agenda of the United

States. Every I think head of state wants to visit the United States, and they have a lot of interests in their own agendas. Panama, I don't know where it was, but it certainly probably wasn't in the top five. But now it is. And it's a very privileged position to be in the top five of U.S. foreign policy interests. And this is an opportunity to you to bring what you need, your agenda, the president's prerogatives and priorities. So Panamanian leadership is thinking to themselves, aha, we have an opportunity here.

Well, that's how I think they should be thinking about this. How they actually are thinking about this, I don't know. But I think that they should approach this as an opportunity because this is a discussion that allows them to elevate Panama's role in U.S. foreign policy. And it should be elevated because of what we discussed about. The rest of the region depends, right? So you have part of the region, and I say a significant part of the region, that is trying to work against the United States in different regards. And some of them came out very vocal in support of Panama in trying to condemn the United States for being imperialistic. It's kind of ironic because one of the first countries that I remember that made a statement was the president of Colombia, President Gustavo Petro.

And that's a sore spot for Panama because a lot of Colombians kind of joke, or maybe some more than joke, that Panama really is still just a province of Colombia. So when the Panamanians heard the president of Colombia, who's not an ally of the president of Panama, kind of become very vocal, they were like, OK, thank you. But no, thank you. Like, we don't necessarily need you to make this any more difficult. There was by that kind of crowd of, let me say, the more leftist leaders in Latin America, a narrative that they're trying to spin up about the United States imperialistic ambitions. But in reality, I think most people in Latin America kind of get it. President Trump has his manner of communicating, but fundamentally what he's talking about here is security, national security. And I think the people of Panama, who I think were a little bit

in shock in the beginning, over time will start to realize that this has to do with their well-being as well. Correlation is not causation, but from the time that China began to really increase its presence in Panama, which is about 2017, when they began to politically maneuver inside Panama more than they did economically, you could just see Panama disintegrate little by little. More instability, more economic uncertainty. Obviously, the pandemic did not help them. And we can talk about China's role, the pandemic did not help them. And we can talk about China's role in the pandemic as well. And fundamentally, Panama today in 2025 is not as strong as it was in 2015, 10 years ago. I mean, Panama at one point was growing 10% a year. It was considered the Miami of Latin America. It was a great tourist destination. Many prominent

celebrities were buying houses. And today, it's a shell of that. And like I said, correlation is not causation. But we do look at that inflection point in 2017, where the Panamanian government abandoned Taiwan in favor of the PRC, where they were the first country to sign the Belt and Road Initiative in Latin America, where China increased its diplomatic presence inside the city. And so fundamentally, there's a correlation between that period and where we are today. So there's something in The Economist which caught my eye recently.

The headline is, Marco Rubio will find China is hard to beat in Latin America. Subtitle, China buys lithium, copper, and bull semen and doesn't export its ideologies attached. Whereas China just says, you know, give us the stuff. Yeah, so that's certainly the common perception. And I think most Latin American governments have that perception that China is just easier to work with. The United States comes with all these demands and conditions. The United States is much more transparent in what it wants and what it needs.

And sometimes what it wants and what it needs honestly don't align with our U.S. national interests. Like I think in recent years, you had kind of more like ideological things that were being imposed on Latin American countries tied to this woke mindset of, you know, gender ideology or gender equality that were being promoted aggressively in predominantly Catholic nations, which I don't think had any success and many of our friends down south. The difference here is fundamentally the transparency because China says that they don't have conditions. They'll say we don't care, but if you start to look in over time they

tend to meddle quite a bit in the internal affairs of these nations. They just don't do it very vocally. They don't talk about it, but in practicality they're involved. Watch what happens when the country acts in some way that's very obviously against the interests of the Chinese regime, right? Correct. When they make a statement or if you, I mean, we talked a lot about in other conversations about the Uyghurs and the situation of the Uyghur Muslims. That's like an off-limits topic. If any diplomat or much less a minister or president of Latin America begins to raise that issue as a human rights level,

you'll get quick condemnation and also quick action by Beijing's embassy in those countries. So this idea that they don't have conditions, I think it's a bit of a false nomer. They don't have transparent conditions. They don't actually list their conditions. They don't talk about their conditions. But when you cross a line that China does not like, they will absolutely let you know, and they will impose their will. And they have done so on many occasions, and they'll play political warfare inside these countries. And I think now, you know, China's been effectively in Latin America for more than 20 years, but I'd say really aggressively in the last 10 years. And I think that that's starting to take shape inside the region. You know, they cite a former Argentinian minister, right? And he says, with China, ideology is clearly in second place. We are lithium, copper and food for them. It's very depersonalized.

And I think that China has a kind of sales pitch, if you will. And I don't think it's exclusive to Latin America. I think they do similar in kind of sales pitch, if you will. And I don't think it's exclusive to Latin America. I think they do similar in Africa, partially in the Middle East as well, with this idea that we're here and all we want to do is help buy your commodities and help create commercial agreements. We have a large population, give you access to our consumer markets. And they make it very attractive. But in reality, and I think this is something that I think most Latin Americans missed is the way Chinese economies developed it's not

stable in terms of the consumer market there's a lot of volatility in their economy but more importantly as their economy has more trouble or contracts even their defense in the industry continues to grow and I think that a lot of these raw materials whether it's lithium whether it's rare earths, aren't necessarily just to feed a growing economy, it's to feed a growing defense industry. And I think that that's something that many countries, I don't think, really understood at the onset. And that fundamentally would bring these countries into a geopolitical alignment that could cause tension and problems in their country. I don't think any country in Latin America wants to be in the middle of a trade war or any kind of war between the United States and China, but fundamentally China is going

to suck them into that war if they keep continuing to basically build their economic leverage and coercion over these countries. So I think in that sense, the statement that was made by that Argentine minister is a little bit naive in the respects to what China truly is trying to acquire. Yeah, they don't have ideological requirements. They're also very happy to enrich people who are going to be helpful to them and get their deals done. That's what's called elite capture.

So you go into any one of these countries, and Latin America is no different. And you have a host of families that have a lot of legacies and both have economic and business influence. Some become political influence. Others have influence through industry. In China, there's a great survey. They spend a lot of time surveying what I call the social cultural conditions of these countries to understand what makes the levers move. They have this kind of common saying in Latin America that there's always 12 families that control any one of these countries, so you've got to identify those 12 families.

12 is not a really big number, so you can really get that. In reality, in some cases, there's a lot more families. In other cases, it may be closer to 12. But nonetheless, I think once you understand that network, and most importantly, understand the history, because if there's a prominent family in any of these countries in Latin America, it's more likely because their genealogy is tied to either the founding, could be tied to their independence,

could be tied to the Spanish colonial rule. You understand the history. You understand the present-day network. You can actually make moves. And I feel like the United States doesn't always do that. We don't always go that deep. We always kind of keep it a little bit superficial. Who's the minister today?

I'll talk to him. When he's gone tomorrow, give me the new minister. But there's a history to all this. In the military, we used to have a thing called, we still have a thing called foreign area officers designed to basically understand the deep-rooted history of these countries to advise our military leadership whenever they're doing any type of engagement. And I think these exist.

We still have them, but we need to rely on them more, maybe amplify it a bit more, because a lot of these countries have deep-rooted histories that I argue is actually more tied to the United States than any other part of the world. I want to go back to something you started talking about, and just that there's this sort of bizarre lack of interest overall, compared to the level of interest in other places in Latin America, right? And even why do we say Latin America, not South America? And I know you have some thoughts on this exactly, right? Like, let's dig into that a little bit. We're hitting a moment, which I call the Western Hemisphere moment. I mean, you know, we, anyone

that's been a Latin Americanist in foreign policy over the last few decades, they had the number, the common complaint is that we're the last line of U.S. foreign policy. We're like the bastion of U.S. foreign interests. And, you know, the bastard? No, the bastion, like the last line, like the ultimate, the final agenda item on any kind of secretary of state or president's agenda. And that's been kind of the common kind of grievance, you will, of anyone that studies Latin America or works on Latin America foreign policy. The challenge there is that how do you make it strategically relevant, right? Because we had wars in the Middle East. Obviously, there's a lot going on in Asia.

Now we have wars in Eastern Europe. So all this is happening. And as my friends in special operations used to tell me, they said, Joseph, we get it. There's headaches in Latin America. We have migraines in other parts of the world, migraines in the Middle East. And so I think the border really started to wake up a lot of folks because what's happening on the U.S. southern border is untenable. It's unsustainable. It could collapse this country. And I think President Trump knows that better than anybody. But the American people, I think, understand that. That's one of the reasons I think President Trump knows that better than anybody, but the American people, I think, understand that.

That's one of the reasons I think that President Trump was elected. I think that's one of his mandates. And so that border conversation has now, through President Trump's leadership, extended through a regional conversation. And in that, I think we're starting to talk about grand strategy. United States has not had a grand strategy for the Western Hemisphere, arguably in 100 years, arguably since the Monroe Doctrine. I think that was the last time we really started to talk about it.

You know, there's been elements of it. It's kind of encoded in our strategic DNA. Our founding fathers talked a lot about the hemisphere. As a matter of fact, Jefferson and George Washington famously talked about non-foreign entanglements. Jefferson talked about, you know, isolating Europe to be able to strengthen the hemisphere. Obviously, James Monroe. But I think that DNA translated into the 20th century with a lot of repeated attempts.

FDR's good neighbor policy, JFK's Alliance for Progress. We even had President Reagan and his containment policy of communism in Central America. And even the trade deals with NAFTA and other trade deals with the Bush administration. But all that really were good policies without any real action, trade deals with NAFTA and other trade deals with the Bush administration. But all that really were good policies without any real action, without any real initiative. And I think President Bush Jr., W. Bush, would have done more in Latin America had it not been for 9-11. And you can make that argument.

It's perhaps true. But I think reality is what it is today. And the reality is in the 21st century, the United States has abandoned Latin America more than probably any other point in history. So I think what President Trump's doing is he's now redesigning this idea for a grand strategy. So when you do grand strategy, it's not only about looking at the political situations inside these countries. When you do grand strategy and when you do geopolitics, you look at geography. And when you look at geography in Latin America, you start to realize that there's specific very key areas that are vital

to U.S. national interests. We talked about waterways. Let's dive into that a little bit. So another thing that President Trump has said recently is renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. To the amusement to some and maybe to the delight of others and to disdain from others. But fundamentally what he's talking about is a part of the ocean, the Caribbean, that if for whatever reason gets compromised by foreign or hostile actors, could create a tremendous amount of headaches for the United States. And that's tied to the Panama Canal.

And that has to do with two strategic waterways, which is the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba, and the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba as well. And last year, I believe, we had an incident to where a Russian nuclear submarine transited through those exact waterways to position themselves along the western part of Cuba, a part of Cuba that also has been reported to have Cuban espionage military stations. So what we're seeing is we're seeing the beginning of an encroachment that could actually cause a lot of headaches for the United States if it's permitted to continue.

And I think that that's a good understanding of how we need to deter it. But the question is how. And my argument for how is we have to go back to geography and we have to understand what are the victory conditions for China to accomplish what it wants to do, not just in Latin America, but throughout the world. And to me, China's whole effort in Latin America, if I could sum it up into just like a sentence or two, it would be change the identity of Latin Americans. That's the ambition. To make Latin Americans believe that they are part of this southern alliance that's building throughout the world, different and distinct from what they would interpret as the North, Canada and United States. They're trying to wedge the two.

In China's map of Latin America, Mexico would be considered a southern country, and that would go all the way down to Argentina. And by implanting this new identity, they've been playing on this idea of artificial regional political blocs. So if you go to any conversation with Central America, you're going to hear this term called Northern Triangle. Everybody, like Northern Triangle, would talk about when we talked about our border, they would talk about Northern Triangle.

It's a collection of three countries, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. But it's not a real geographic region. It was an epithet of trade during the 1990s by El Salvador that somehow got into the lexicon of the U.S. State Department and now became like a bureaucracy. Now we have envoys for the Northern Triangle. We have desk officers for the Northern Triangle. Well, that complicates things.

And what China essentially capitalized on that, it weakened U.S. positioning positioning so they were able to say, here's this block of countries that you can negotiate via the United States. Same thing in South America, the Southern Cone or Mercosur, the Andean nations. However they want to block it, just to create a different identity from what's more simplistically and historically accurate, which is North and South. So I argue that if we develop a grand strategy that's very accurate in Latin America, we redefine what is North and also redefine what is South. And I believe that if you look at on a map and you study this in terms of the topographic part, you realize that really the dividing line

between North and South isn't much, definitely isn't our border. It really isn't even just Mexico and Central America. It goes all the way down to the equator. And geography is more defined by water than it is by land. And so you look at the North Atlantic and you look at the North Pacific, you look at where those waterways connect and how they map this landmass, and you realize that everything north of the equator should be considered North America. That would include parts of Ecuador.

That would include Panama, all of Central America, our third border, the Caribbean, and even would include Colombia and Venezuela. It doesn't necessarily have to be a geographic realignment, but it has to be a kind of conceptual realignment of understanding area of affinity. And the north part of South America, what's considered South America, is drastically different than the south part. The south part from Peru, Brazil down has more influence from Europe, always has historically. British, Italian, Portuguese, French in some parts and is drastically different in terms of their makeup than the north. And part of that is because of natural barriers. The only real physical natural barriers that divide the hemisphere are mountains and an Amazon.

Matter of fact, the Amazon is the reason why the Spanish didn't conquer Brazil, right? The Amazon is the reason that they speak Portuguese in Brazil and Spanish in the rest of the continent. The Andes Mountains provides a ridge that actually splits up at the north and fragments into Colombia and Ecuador, which is the reason why the indigenous tribes in Colombia and Ecuador are drastically different and speak different languages than the indigenous tribes in Peru and Bolivia. So once you get into that understanding of how this actually geographic makeup changes culture, then you understand where our area of affinity is.

And the United States has a tremendous amount of influence and affinity with Colombia, with Venezuela, with Ecuador, with Guyana, and obviously all of Central America. And I think that President Trump, I don't, obviously I haven't had this conversation with the president, but I feel like he's seeing this more clear than most. And I've had a lot of conversation with academics, a lot of conversation with diplomats and others in our U.S. foreign policy and security establishment, and very few see that. They understand it once you start to talk about it, some may debate it, but nonetheless, it wasn't at the top of our agenda, and I think it should be. If, God forbid, there was a kinetic war with China, China initiated something like that in effect, how does the current reality of the Panama Canal fit in? So worst case scenario for the United States would be that they would find a way to disrupt the Panama Canal so that

the United States no longer has rapid reaction capabilities to be able to move from the Atlantic into the Pacific. We'd to be able to move from the Atlantic into the Pacific. We'd still be able to move. Are they positioned to do that? I guess that's my question. It's hard to know without knowing the full accountability and transparency of what they're doing in Panama. That's the fundamental problem.

We don't know. And that's an intelligence gap, and we need to know. There's an argument that people say that they're not nearly at that level, and maybe they're right. But really, I think in that part, in this part of the world, this part of Latin America, we're talking about alliances too. I mean, Venezuela is involved in this. Cuba is involved in this. Nicaragua, Iran, Russia. So it's kind of this collection of countries that would have an interest to potentially in a contested war like that to be able to weaken the United States. So there are scenarios.

There are scenarios of what I call bottlenecking the canal to create disruptions both on the Caribbean side and on the Pacific side that basically would drive a traffic jam that's so big that you wouldn't be able to effectively move. When the drought happened in 2023 in the Panama Canal, the operations of the canal diminished significantly. In fact, I don't have the exact number, but it's, let's say, give or take about 30-some ships transited the canal

per day. That number got cut to almost half, 16, 17 ships, because of the drought. But when that happened, it kind of tested what was the vulnerabilities, you know, because what happens when there's less ability to transit, there's more of a traffic, just like any highway, right? There's more of a line that starts to build to be able to transit. And that bottleneck creates all kinds of situations and scenarios that are very dangerous, which includes kinetic attacks, but also includes accidents, includes disasters, oil spills, things like that. So the scenarios are actually multitude, sabotage, subversion, espionage, not your conventional type of attack, because people think that they might shoot a missile or something and blow up the canal. I don't believe that that's how China really operates. I think they would operate unconventionally and most likely operate

with and through their partners in the region. So they have, as I mentioned, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, by the three most relevant, that are little by little developing capabilities to disrupt. You know, they always favor these gray zone tactics. So suddenly, you know, for some reason, the canal is not working properly, the locks are not working, you know, and then nothing to do with China. These are the types of things that they like to, they like to employ. Yeah, with high degree of plausible deniability. But what does the activity in the South China Sea right now? There's a lot of,

exactly what we would say is gray zone activity. And gray zone, kind of pushing the limit because you've got these Chinese coast guards hosing down all sorts of other regional actors, basically preventing them from using what's arguably their waterways normally. You could also look at the fishing fleets. China has historically used it. So in the South China Sea around the Scarborough Shell, before we had these collisions and things that we've seen in recent years, you had illegal fishing that was all over invading pretty much the Philippine islands.

And that created a lot of conditions of destabilization that the Philippine government complained actually, I think, had a lawsuit in relation to. Well, that same thing is happening on Latin America. We have a tremendous amount of illegal, unregulated fishing that's happening both on the Pacific coast near the Panama Canal most notably around the waters of Ecuador and into the Galapagos and also happening all the way south and through South America. So these are to me part of those gray zone tactics and we know that the maritime fishing

the maritime command of China has at least some type of informal communication with some of these fishing fleets to be able to create swarms of them to be able to occupy territorial waters. And because they're not state actors or not even legal fishers, they're irregular actors that they don't care about boundaries and maritime borders. They just literally proliferate. So the scenarios here I think are abundant.

But you draw a good point, which this is a point that I made a lot when I go down to Latin America, is that they need to learn from what's happening in the South China Sea. The South China Sea to the Panama Canal, despite the difference in geographic location and language, they're actually going through similar situations. And I think, obviously, much more advanced in South China Sea. But I think that Latin America could learn a lot from that. Also, what's happening in Africa and what's happening to Djibouti. These are things I think that Latin America, and you mentioned this earlier, that it's not just happening in Latin America, it's happening in other parts of the world. And honestly, it probably has advanced further and more aggressively in other

parts of the world. But for the United States, if what happened in the South China Sea or what's happening in Djibouti happens in our near abroad, the implications and the consequences are much more severe for the U.S. And I think that's really at the crux of the geographic and strategic importance of this part of the world. So as we finish up, what are the kind of immediate things that are on your wish list from your perspective? I'll start from the micro to the macro. I think eventually we may be going to a renegotiation of the Panama Canal Treaty, redrawing the treaty to build in some concessions

that allow us to avoid these problems that we're currently having about lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and violations of the neutrality. Part of that, there's actually precedent for this. One of the kind of extensions of the Monroe Doctrine is something called the Lodge Corollary. I know everyone knows the Roosevelt Corollary, but the Lodge Corollary was actually a corollary that was developed by a senator in the U.S. Senate that inserted this corollary because he was concerned about Japanese firms taking over strategic sites in Mexico. So the way the corollary is written, it talks about companies. It talks about private enterprises that are tied to hostile governments that are positioning themselves in strategic areas that may be harmful to the United States.

This is 100 years ago. This is like in the 1920s. Well, I think that's very relevant today. I mean, if that's happening back then with Imperial Japan, it's happening times 100 with Communist China. type of elements of U.S. foreign policy and maybe brandage it together to package it into a real policy that will allow us to be able to protect these strategic areas and ultimately protect the homeland. I think second is a containment strategy of essentially access denial of these hostile actors. I think someone told me when I talked about this security perimeter and what I call a

greater North America, right? When I talk about these concepts, they say, well, you have a problem there. So what's the problem? I say, we have at least three countries there that hate the United States and want to do us harm, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. So would they agree of being part of this now new North American project? And I say, well, maybe they won't. But fundamentally, the conversation that we need to have with those countries isn't about whether they agree with us or disagree with us. It has to be like, you want to be a dictator, you want to violate human rights, you want to

repress your opposition. You can't do that with Chinese weapons, Iranian weapons, Russian armament. That's the conversation. And I believe that if we can cut off the supply lines to those countries from those external actors, they become infinitely weaker than what they are today. So I would like to see the United States look at Latin America from a strategic perspective. I think President Trump has well positioned the United States for this. I think Senator, well now Secretary of State Designate Marco Rubio, I think is considered in the U.S. Senate one of the most knowledgeable about Latin America. His number two, the Deputy Secretary of State, Ambassador Christopher Landau, is also well, well versed in Latin America.

He was the ambassador to Mexico during the first Trump administration, but grew up the son of diplomats all throughout South America and Venezuela and Paraguay. I think President Trump has nominated more ambassadors to Latin America than any other region in the world very early in the administration. That was not the case in his first administration. And even people like Michael Waltz and Pete Hegseth. Michael Waltz knows Latin America very well as a congressman from Florida but also as a Green Beret. And Pete Hegseth who I think understands the proximity challenges in terms

of our military. So I think President Trump's assembling a team that you can argue would be a Latin America first team, but really it's an America first team that can understand the strategic importance of Latin America. And so what I see is I see an opportunity for the United States to really correct the mistakes that we've made over the last several decades, if not a century. Well, Joe Humeier, it's such a pleasure to have had you on again.

Always a pleasure. Thank you, John. Thank you all for joining Joseph Humeier and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.