Workers World, Vol. 20, No. 16
April 19 – The ratification of the Panama Canal treaty must of course be viewed against the background of the anti-imperialist struggle in all of Latin America, the declining fortunes of U.S. imperialism on a world scale, and the attempt by the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex to reassert a new aggressiveness in world affairs.
This is especially true in the light of the heavy defeat suffered by the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
It is also very important for the American working class and oppressed peoples to view the ratification in the light of the inner struggle in the capitalist establishment here over the multitude of crises it faces at home and abroad.
It should be borne in mind that the original treaties between the U.S. and Panama were signed last September between General Torrijos and President Carter. In the ordinary course of events during a period of stable capitalist development, the signatures of the two heads of state would signify that whatever the nature of the treaties, they would be agreed to by the U.S. Senate with a modicum of discussion, followed by ratification.
But the present phase of U.S. imperialist decline doesn’t permit such an orderly procedure.
That august body the U.S. Senate, otherwise known as the “millionaires’ club” on Capitol Hill, frequently asserts its constitutional right of “advise and consent” on matters relating to treaties and foreign affairs generally, precisely when the popular will ought to command it to keep quiet. But this millionaires’ club, which considers itself the “greatest deliberative body in the world,” shows all too frequent lapses of memory when it ought to assert its right to speak out, not merely with advice but with dissent.
Thus, when President Johnson launched his infamous Gulf of Tonkin resolution as a cover for the Vietnam War, the Senate almost unanimously went along, with hardly any discussion except for two lone dissenters – Senators Gruening from Alaska and Morse from Oregon. In so doing the Senate lived up to the vilest traditions of the Cold War, when the 81st Congress completely closed its eyes to the Korean War and permitted Truman to commence military operations in Korea under the euphemism of a “police action” without getting a war declaration from Congress.
Toward the tail end of the Vietnam War and in the heat of the struggle against the Nixon faction of the ruling class, Congress passed the War Powers Act to limit the President’s unilateral military actions without Congressional approval. Yet when on March 17 Carter in his saber-rattling speech at Wake Forest University said that he would instruct the Secretary of Defense to deploy troops practically anywhere on the globe, no one in the Senate seemed to have noticed that this extremely provocative statement violated the War Powers act.
The Senate also paid no attention to a so-called sleeper in last year’s defense budget when Carter at the behest of the Pentagon slipped in a one-line item which called for production of the neutron bomb. The august, “greatest deliberative body in the world” was singularly silent.
Yet when the treaties between Panama and the United States were signed last September, the Senate suddenly awoke to its great responsibility and its obligation, not merely to discuss and advise the President on it, but to do much more.
Between last September and today, a grouping in the Senate led by formidable forces from the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex systematically went about rewriting, “renegotiating,” and virtually changing the whole character of the two treaties which had been in the process of negotiation over the last 14 years.
It should be remembered that the Johnson administration didn’t begin the negotiations with the Panamanian government as a voluntary gesture of goodwill or to redress the wrongs done to an oppressed country dominated lock, stock, and barrel by U.S. imperialism. The negotiating process had its origin in 1964 in the tremendous demonstration led by Panamanian workers and students which resulted in the massacre of more than 20 Panamanians at the hands of the U.S. military in the Canal Zone. This is how the negotiating process began. It was won by the blood of the Panamanian people.
Fourteen years of worldwide anti-imperialist struggle and the weakening of the bases of imperialist military and economic power finally forced the U.S. government to seriously consider a treaty which would grant some concessions to the Panamanian people.
But no sooner had the treaty been delivered to the Senate than the process of dismantling it began. As of April 18, the day of the final vote on the second treaty, the New York Times was able to say editorially in urging the Senate to ratify it that “the United States would yield nothing of consequence by turning the canal over to Panama” and that “the treaties give away nothing of substance.”
But this was not enough to satisfy the ultra-rightist faction of the military-industrial complex, which seemed bent on frustrating its passage in spite of the fact that it was obvious that the capitalist establishment generally was for it. The ultras would not be satisfied. Not that they differed with the others on the fundamental issue of whether much of substance was really conceded to the Panamanians. What they really objected to was the symbolism involved in the ratification of the treaties – namely that it was a sign that the imperialist establishment was in decline and that “giving in,” by however little, would accelerate the decline.
The very idea of “giving in,” which symbolizes the decline of U.S. imperialism, was more important to them than the substance of what the treaties contained. This is how the infamous DeConcini reservation arose, which was calculated to cancel out any idea that the U.S. would not intervene militarily in Panama. The DeConcini reservation simply declared that the U.S. had a right to intervene militarily into Panama whenever it saw fit. Period.
The Washington Post of April 13 seemed astonished that such a reservation could be passed by the Senate and with the consent of the President who had championed and signed the treaty, which foreswore military intervention by the U.S. “How was it that the treaties with their immense diplomatic and political freight, came to hinge on the ill-informed whims of a 40-year-old freshman Senator of no previous renown, of no known international awareness, or little experience of any kind beyond minor administrative posts in Arizona? How could a supposedly responsible U.S. Senate in effect delegate its power, in a matter as sweeping as this, to a lightweight whom serious Senators should regard as an embarrassment? How was it that this obscure legislator came to be cultivated by the President in a matter itself evidence of the humbling of the highest office in the land?”
The Post innocently asks these questions as if it doesn’t know the answer. But it puts the blame on the irresponsibility of this new, ill-informed, and obscure individual Senator.
Of course the Post knows very well that no new, obscure, individual Senator, one out of a hundred, could possibly propose and pass an amendment to a treaty which virtually nullifies its basic provisions unless there were formidable forces behind him.
A little investigative reporting of the type that the Post so well utilized during the Watergate scandal would easily have told them, if they cared to tell the public, that it was the hardcore section of the military-industrial complex which had gotten to DeConcini and made him a willing tool. Joseph McCarthy was also an “obscure, ill-informed Senator” without any “known international awareness” and “little experience.” Both McCarthy and DeConcini were the instruments of unbridled reactionary forces that wanted to go beyond what the capitalist establishment generally was ready to do. DeConcini seemed the perfect candidate for a McCarthy role. In this case, however, the scenario came to a rather abrupt end. The two factions in the ruling class go together. A vague new provision, which seemingly moderates the original DeConcini resolution giving the U.S. the unilateral right to intervene in Panama, was agreed to by DeConcini and enabled the Carter administration to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority with one vote to spare, which it might not have been able to garner without backstage maneuvering with the forces behind DeConcini.
DeConcini, who had suddenly become a national hero of the new right, just as suddenly was reduced to size after the backstage compromise.
Of course, as matters stand, the U.S. affirms the sovereignty of Panama and agrees not to interfere in its internal affairs, but also reserves the right to move in militarily, to “keep the Canal open.” The issue of the right to intervene militarily could thus be argued both ways.
“Ambiguity,” Kissinger had told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier in the year when he testified on the treaty, “is the essence of diplomacy.” Imperialist diplomacy, of course. And on this point the Senate went along quite eagerly.
Law, said Marx, can never be higher than the state of the class struggle. It cannot invalidate or supersede the laws of motion of capitalist society. In the imperialist epoch the latter have evoked the worldwide rebellion of oppressed peoples on a scale which no laws, no treaties, no imperialist maneuvers can for long stifle, as our contemporary epoch has so vividly shown.
The fundamental reason why the basic section of the ruling class finally got itself to agree to the treaty and got the ultras to pull their horns in, after literally taking its guts out, was not due to any vision of a “new era” of friendship with the oppressed people south of the U.S. border. It has nothing whatever to do with any new-found sense of justice or rectifying past wrongs or a desire to curb the predatory appetites of the multinational corporations or the unbridled military.
It was due basically to the fact that the establishment feared that a failure to ratify the treaty as it finally came out would set off a firestorm of rebellion not limited even to Panama itself.
Signals of this were visible all over Latin America and even in the kept press of all the colonial regimes. The Panamanian press was most vocal on the issue. Anyone could see that it was a symptom, a foreboding of things to come. It was in an effort to arrest such developments that the Senate finally got itself to agree to the treaty.
However, the authentic voice of the Panamanian people and their judgement of the treaty is yet to come. It goes without saying that the progressive and working class movement in the United States is duty-bound to support the liberation struggle of the Panamanian people, as of all oppressed people, and fight for the unconditional withdrawal of U.S. imperialism from Panama and the surrender of the Canal and all else that belongs to the Panamanian people.
Last updated: 11 May 2026