In his latest outburst, threatening to regain control over the Panama Canal unless the Panamanian government reduces transit fees for US shipping, President Trump reminded us of just how much his rhetoric echoes that the 26th president of the United States, the man who secured the canal for America in the first place, Theodore Roosevelt.
In many ways, of course, the two men are polar opposites: Roosevelt was incredibly well-read, intellectually curious, and physically energetic: Everything Trump is not. In fact, one could argue that Trump has more in common with Roosevelt’s detested vice-president and successor, William Taft, a corpulent golf-lover who thought higher trade tariffs were in the national interest.
But Trump and Roosevelt shared a fundamental vision of America First, they were both verbose populists who garnered widespread and passionate support by appealing to the nationalist (racist) sentiment of the electorate, they were both part of the establishment but claimed to represent the common man, they skilfully manipulated the media to their own ends, oh, and they both survived assassination attempts, thereby making themselves even more popular.
The New York Times agrees. Under the headline, “Trump’s Wish to Control Greenland and Panama Canal: Not a Joke This Time,” it notes:
His aggressive interpretation of the phrase [America First] evokes the expansionism, or colonialism, of President Theodore Roosevelt, who cemented control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. And it reflects the instincts of a real estate developer who suddenly has the power of the world’s largest military to back up his negotiating strategy.
So, it is instructive to look back at exactly how Roosevelt acquired the canal, or rather the land on which it would be built and the framework for its operation, and how Trump might deal with the isthmus in his second term.
The original Roosevelt plan was to negotiate a treaty with Columbia, which controlled Panama at the time, that would grant the United States an indefinitely renewable lease over the land for the canal in return for a US$10 million payment plus an annual fee. An agreement to that effect was signed on 22 January 1903, by Secretary of State John Hay and the Colombian Chargé Tomás Herrán.
However, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the deal in Columbia, fuelled by long-standing anti-American sentiment. After proposing a number of opportunist amendments such as quadrupling the down-payment to US$40 million, the Columbian Senate voted on 12 August 1903 to reject the treaty in its entirety.
When Roosevelt heard the news – after reviewing a menacing demonstration of US naval power anchored off his summer home on Sagamore Hill – he growled: “We may have to give a lesson to those jack rabbits.”
Roosevelt’s more hawkish advisors argued that, under a 1846 treaty with the then New Grenada that guaranteed American access to the Panama Isthmus, the US was legally entitled, even morally impelled, to seize the land. But Roosevelt was more cautious and instead backed the growing number Panamanian rebels and international adventurers demanding independence from Columbia, who could be relied upon to give the US a favourable deal.
The stage was set for revolution, and although the president could not publicly call for an insurrection, behind the scenes, he let the plotters know that they could count on the US Navy for support. Indeed, in October 1903, several warships were secretly dispatched to waters off Panama where they had orders to intervene if the Colombian government sent troops to quell the coming rebellion.
The uprising took place on 3 November, the same day as gubernatorial elections in which Roosevelt’s Republican Party suffered a landslide defeat. But the bloodless coup in Panama gave Roosevelt everything he wanted, and, a few days later, once the threat of Colombian intervention had been stifled, the United States formally recognised the new government of Panama.
Secretary of State Hay justified the land grab, saying: “The imperative demands of the interests of civilization required [the president] to put a stop … to the incessant civil contests and bickerings which have been for so many years the curse of Panama.”
The president’s many opponents were not buying it. Oswald Garrison Villard, wrote in the New York Evening Post:
This mad plunge of ours is simply and solely a vulgar and mercenary adventure, without a rag to cover its sordidness and shame.… At one stroke, President Roosevelt and Secretary Hay have thrown to the winds the principles for which this nation was ready to go to war in the past, and have committed the country to a policy which is ignoble beyond words.
However, the majority of the American public was in favour of the president’s actions, and even international opinion supported the move, seeing it as a boon to global commerce, and suggesting that the corrupt regime in Bogota had got what it deserved.
Seizing his advantage, on 18 November, Hay quickly signed a new treaty with the chief plotters for the development of the Panama Canal before the newly formed government in Panama could send a delegation to Washington for negotiations.
The treaty, which granted the United States a 100-year lease of a 10-kilometre-wide canal zone through Panama in exchange for a US$10 million payment and a yearly fee of US$250,000, was ratified, after some wrangling, by both governments early in the new year.
Work on the canal soon got underway, and the president himself visited the muddy, disease-ridden construction site in November 1906. He enthused to his son Kermit:
[The engineers] are changing the face of the continent, are doing the greatest engineering feat of the ages, and the effect of their work will be felt while our civilization lasts.
Roosevelt on-board an excavator at the Panama Canal construction site
The canal formally opened eight years later on 15 August 1914, but with the world on the cusp of war, no one, not even Theodore Roosevelt paid it much attention. Nevertheless, he had achieved something that Trump never managed, to build an infrastructure project that would have a global impact for centuries to come.
We can perhaps take comfort from the fact that Trump lacks the negotiating skills and global political experience and understanding that Roosevelt had in abundance. Try as he might to put America (Trump) first, it is unlikely that he will ever be able to emulate Roosevelt in his imperial land grabs. He may have a big stick but clearly lacks the essential ability to speak softly.
For more on Theodore Roosevelt, I recommend the definitive three-volume biography by Edmund Morris, as well as “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.