As President-elect Trump unveils his proposed program for his upcoming administration, it reminds me of the Russian matryoshka (nesting) dolls that I bought overseas years ago – new ideas bursting forth in quotidian regularity. Open one doll and a different one pops out. Except with Mr. Trump, these are important ideas, not dolls. Most interesting to me are his “geopolitical” ideas, specifically regarding some of the places I’ve seen first-hand: Panama, Greenland, Mexico, Canada, the Ukraine, the NATO countries, the Gulf of Mexico, etc.
While his detractors might compare the clarity of his policies with what Winston Churchill famously said in a 1939 radio speech to describe something that was difficult to understand: “It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” I get it. Mr. Trump understands, perhaps better than some of his predecessors in the oval office, that the United States faces many existential threats, both internal and external, and that, as President Harry Truman famously said regarding presidential responsibility: “The buck stops here.” The president-elect is not a perfect man; neither am I; but you will not read any disparaging comments about him here. I am no chary, partisan cynic. All my life, I was taught to respect and obey the lawful orders of my superior officers, and I’m not going to stop now. Upon reflection, I even remember many of the Eleven Standing Orders that every sentry must learn in bootcamp:
1. To take charge of this post and all government property in view.
2. To walk my post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert, and observing everything that takes place within sight or view.
3. To report all violations of orders that I am instructed to enforce.
4. To quit my post only when properly relieved.
5. To give the alarm in case of fire or disorder.
6. To salute all officers, and all colors and standards not cased.
I’m tempted to say that if the general population had the discipline and dedication of a simple military sentry walking his or her post, many of our problems would solve themselves. In any event, let’s look briefly at the controversies surrounding just two of Mr. Trump’s recent ideas, the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and reassuming ownership of the Panama Canal.
You must admit, the “Gulf of America” does have a certain “ring” to it. Why not? Last week, in a press conference called in opposition to the change, the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, showed off a 1607 map with the Gulf of Mexico being identified as such and with North America labeled “Mexican America.” This is a tired argument. When I was a student at New Mexico State University, in Las Cruces, I had a history teacher who told us that teachers in Mexican high schools referred to the states of California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas as “Occupied Mexico.”
The term “Mexico” itself is relatively recent, dating from perhaps 14th century Mesoamerica. In one of the native, indigenous languages it meant “navel of the moon.” The Spanish named it “New Spain,” and the name “Mexico” owes as much to some vague European cartographer as anything else, perhaps the same map maker who named America “America.”
While the Gulf is not exactly our “Mare Nostrum” (Our Sea) as the ancient Romans referred to the Mediterranean Sea, if you look at a map, you will see that we have more coastline than Mexico, more prosperous cities, more active ports, etc. It is literally “in our backyard.” For most inshore Americans, however, the Gulf is no more than Carnival cruises to Cozumel, cheap bananas, Jimmy Buffet music, and the source of late season hurricanes.
While I’m sympathetic, I don’t think it’s going to happen, although Representative Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga) stands ready to introduce such a bill in Congress. Her rationale is that the “American people are footing the bill to protect and secure the maritime waterways for commerce to be conducted. Our U.S. armed forces protect the area [the Gulf] from any military threats from foreign countries.” While we could make the change unilaterally, it would have to be approved by the appropriate international bodies, and that’s not going to happen. As an aside, a senator from Texas has suggested, tongue in cheek, that the Gulf be renamed the “Gulf of Buc-ee’s,” a favorite traveler’s stopping place which has been described as both a “7-Eleven on steroids,” and as “an amusement park without the rides.” I know that every time I take my grandchildren to Orange Beach, a stop at Buc-ee’s is going to cost me at least $100.
Regarding the Panama Canal, I certainly mean no disrespect to the late President Jimmy Carter, but I also agree with President-elect Trump’s idea about returning it to the supervision of the United States. Realistically, this is impossible, however, because when the Panamanians recently enlarged the canal, the so-called “Panamax,” they borrowed the money from China which effectively holds the mortgage on it today. I suspect this is Mr. Trump’s primary reason for wanting to take the canal back.
At President Carter’s urging in 1977, Congress voted to gradually turn the canal over to the Panamanians, giving them complete control in 1999. I sailed through the canal on different ships in the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s; and I watched it turn from a well-oiled, highly efficient modern wonder of the world into a deteriorating, rust-bound failure of American foreign policy. When I went through the canal in the 1980s on the battleship New Jersey (BB-62), most of the donkey diesel tractors that shepherded ships through the locks were broken down, and ships were lined up for miles on the Pacific side, awaiting their turn.
In my opinion, we stole the canal fair and square from Columbia with the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903, which gave us rights to a ten-mile-wide strip across the Isthmus of Panama for perpetuity. Without American know how and resolve, the canal never would have been built. You would still have forty miles of impenetrable jungle. Although a French company, “La Societe internationale du Canal interoceanique,” had started digging a canal across the Columbian Province of Panama in the 1870s, strategic thinkers as far back as Spain’s Charles V in 1524 saw the value of a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He was primarily interested in facilitating the return to Spain of the rich cargos of the so-called Manila (Philippines) galleons whose crews, by stopping in what is now California, became some of the first Europeans to visit the American west coast. In modern times, such a canal cuts almost 8,000 miles off an ocean voyage from New York City to San Francisco around Cape Horn, which features some of the most violent weather conditions in the world.
The leader of the French effort, Ferdinand de Lessups, was an entrepreneur who had successfully built the sea level Suez Canal which connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas. He was not an engineer, however, and did not consider the mountainous spine of Central America, which rises to a height of over 110 feet above sea level. Water, unfortunately, won’t flow uphill. His “La Grande Tranchee” (the big ditch) was also doomed to failure from the beginning because of the prodigious amount of earth removal a sea level canal would have required. Even as late as the 1970s, you could still see wreckage of the French earth moving machinery abandoned alongside the canal, rusting away in the tropical heat and rain. It was tropical diseases, however, primarily yellow fever and malaria, that ultimately stopped the French effort after the expenditure of countless millions of francs and the loss of over 22,000 lives. It is said that young French professionals who took jobs on the canal often took their own coffins with them because of the high death rate.
When Teddy Roosevelt, who had served as Secretary of the Navy and understood the importance of sea power and being able to move Navy ships quickly from coast to coast, became President in 1901 after William McKinley’s assassination, he made building the canal a priority for the United States. However, he had to manipulate a revolution in Columbia and create the Republic of Panama to do it. In 1897, Britain’s Ronald Ross proved in India that malaria and yellow fever were spread by the mosquito, and not the medieval idea of the “miasma” or “malevolent wind,” which was also blamed for the plague and the “Black Death.” When the wall was built around the recently completed hospital at Naval Station, Pensacola, Florida, in 1835, they made it twelve feet high, tall enough it was thought, to keep out the “miasma” flowing off Pensacola Bay. You can see it today. I have recently been diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease, and the primary medication, surprisingly enough, is the treatment that was developed for malaria. This is also the same one that then-President Trump controversially wanted to give everyone to combat COVID-19.
It took two years for American Army medical officers to get the mosquitos under control along the canal route. In the meantime, plans were drawn up for a canal that would utilize water from the Chagres River to form a reservoir (Gatun Lake) of water needed to operate three huge locks (Pedro Miguel, Miraflores, and Gatun) that would raise and lower ships on their 40-mile journey across Panama. The canal was completed in 1914, and has been in use ever since, serving as a source of revenue for both the United States and Panama. For example, in 1997, the cruise ship, the “Rapsody of the Seas,” established a then record toll when it paid $155,662.66 to transit the waterway. On the other end of the scale, on August 23, 1928, Richard Halliburton transited the canal swimming, and he paid a toll of thirty-six cents, since he only weighted 150 pounds.
Our primary interest in building the Canal then, in addition to cheaper commercial shipping, was in moving Navy ships from the west coast to the east coast, and vice versa, faster. Today, with our depleted Navy of less than 300 ships, the ability to do so is even more important; yet, our arch enemy, China, now owns the Canal. Personally, I would be more worried about this than who owns TikTok.
I would be remiss if I didn’t briefly open another nesting doll in President-elect Trump’s collection of vexing problems that he will face in just a few days – that of immigration.
I’m all for deporting the crooks, murderers, and rapists that somehow escape our justice system, but I think some accommodation needs to be made for those honest, hardworking, taxpaying individuals who have come here illegally looking for a better way of life for their families. I know some, and you know some. After all, we are a nation of immigrants. If I were a young man with a family, living in a Mexican border town, working in a maquiladora for a few dollars a day, assembling televisions for the Japanese, and I knew that just across the border I could triple my wages and thereby help my family – the first dark night, I’d be swimming the Rio Grande, and so would you.
If you know much about American history, you know that no sooner than one group of displaced foreigners arrived, they began to pass laws to exclude groups they opposed – of different ethnicities, races, religions, etc. The last time I visited the Statue of Liberty and read the words on the base, I was proud to be an American:
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sailed through New York harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, heading overseas, or returning from a long deployment, in defense of our country, and felt a surge of pride at being an American, at living in a country that offers hope to the hopeless, and opportunity to the oppressed. I still think we are such a welcoming nation.
Light a candle for me.
—
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
