President Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio each gave an ultimatum to Panama on Monday: take further measures against China—or else. Rubio stated that the “prerequisite baseline” is that neither China or its companies can exercise effective control of the canal area.
U.S. Army War College’s Research Professor of Latin American Studies, R. Evan Ellis, took to the pages of The Diplomat on Feb. 4 to argue that Panama breaking its contracts with the China-based logistics giant Hutchison Whampoa, which runs two ports at the ends of the Panama Canal, is nowhere near enough. It is China’s economic and cultural influence, per se, in Panama which threatens the security of the Panama Canal, and must be uprooted.
Ellis proposes that an international body, modeled on the “Commission Against Corruption and Impunity in Guatemala,” should be established to conduct an investigation of “benefits obtained by Panamanian officials with decision-making authority through trips to, speaking engagements in, or other business in China… Where corruption is found, Panama’s government should move to impose criminal penalties and invalidate any resulting contracts.” (The UN-based Guatemalan Commission was a joint State Department-George Soros operation against that country.)
Ellis is a well-known anti-China hawk in Washington, D.C. and US Southern Command circles. During Mike Pompeo’s reign as Secretary of State in the first Trump administration he was brought into State Department Policy Planning for a year to develop anti-China strategies for Latin America. Now he’s gunning to purge the Panamanian elite and institutions of people who think they have a right to work with or engage in people-to-people exchanges with China.
