Dangerous straits and the distant Cape of Good Hope

US President Trump said in his inaugural speech on January 20 that it was time for the US to take back control of the Panama Canal and that it was foolish that the canal was gifted to Panama.

Marco Rubio, Trump's Secretary of State, at the Senate confirmation hearing, said in a harsher tone that the fact that "China is located at both ends of the Panama Canal" represents a "direct threat to the interests and national security of the United States."

"The Guardian" in the article "Who really controls the Panama Canal" quotes Natasha Lindstadt from the University of Essex: "Trump is certainly trying to scare Panama." This is a means of negotiation or distraction, or both…”

Is it just a negotiation bluff of the arrogant President Trump or the announcement (renewal) of a more far-reaching American policy focused on controlling the straits, in order to secure military and trade dominance?

photo: ap photo

HISTORY OF THE PANAMA CANAL

Back in the 16th century, the Spaniards recognized the advantages of that Central American landmass, but for a long time, two routes for digging a canal were considered - through the Panamanian landmass and through Nicaragua.

An attempt to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama began in 1881 after the United States built a railroad there in the mid-19th century, and the Colombian government granted a concession to the French Universal Company of the Inter-Oceanic Canal under the leadership of Ferdinand Mario Viscount de Lesseps.

After his triumph in the construction of the Suez Canal, Lesseps gained public support for the construction of the canal at sea level, not taking into account that the geographical and geological conditions in the Straits of Panama differed substantially from those around the Suez Canal.

At first, the proposal of the engineer Adolphe Godin de Lepine, Baron of Brilly, who studied the features of the relief in Panama and proposed in 1879 that the torrential Chagres River, which flowed into the Atlantic, and the smaller Rio Grande, which flowed into the Pacific, should be dammed to create artificial lakes above sea level, and that they should be connected to the oceans by canals and cascade locks.

The venture did not go well. The machines used to dig the canals were either too light or unsuitable for the difficult terrain of the coastal swamp, a tropical jungle with heavy rainfall and landslides.

And tropical diseases – especially yellow fever and malaria – claimed the lives of more than 20.000 workers.

Plans for a sea-level canal were eventually scrapped in favor of an above-sea-level canal, but the change had no effect. The financiers lost faith that they would ever recover the money, and the French public in the project and its leader. The company went bankrupt. The Viscount of Lesseps even liked the court, as well as - the engineer previously involved in the design of the gates at the ship's locks - Gustave Eiffel, the builder of the famous tower in Paris that bears his name. When the scandal broke out due to the bankruptcy of the company, he was accused of material abuses and sentenced to a fine of 20.000 francs and two years in prison, but later he was acquitted, as was the Viscount de Lesseps.

When the Americans decided to take over the failed project, Congress in 1902 authorized the purchase of the assets of the failed French company and the construction of the canal - on the condition that a satisfactory agreement be negotiated with Colombia (of which Panama was then an integral part).

From the first resolution of the Senate in 1835 until then, the American public and the government supported the idea of ​​building a canal through Nicaragua, which, by the way, was discussed in the US as early as 1854.

When treaty negotiations with Colombia failed, Panama, with the implicit support of the United States, declared independence, which it had sought since 1821. US President Theodore Roosevelt recognized Panama in November 1903, and an agreement on the Panama Canal Zone was reached in February 1904.

John F. Stevens, chief engineer between July 1, 1905 and April 1, 1907, convinced President Theodore Roosevelt of the necessity of building a lock on the Baron of Briley's plan instead of a sea-level canal. Stevens lobbied the US Congress and Capitol Hill, just as the Frenchman Godin de Lepin, Baron of Briley, lobbied the International Congress in Paris in 1879. The difference was that Stevens succeeded.

Roosevelt was a proponent of the doctrine that sea supremacy was an integral part of commercial and military power, which in the 1890 book The influence of naval power on history proposed by American naval officer and scientist Thayer Mann.

Picking up where the French had left off, the Americans belatedly sought to prevent a repeat of the epidemics of workers' disease.

As early as 1881, Dr. Carlos Juan Finley was convinced that yellow fever was transmitted by a specific type of mosquito, Stegomiia fasciata (later called Aedes aegypti).

The Canal Commission's first chief engineer, John F. Wallace, however, did not believe this and treated the mosquito campaign as a waste of money. However, Wallace's successor, John F. Stevens, provided full support and funds for the suppression of yellow fever.

Running water was provided to Panama City, Colón and other cities to eliminate the need for household water containers that served as a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, carriers of yellow fever. Disinfection of cisterns and septic tanks was carried out, windows and doors were screened, houses were fumigated from house to house in Panama City and Colon.

The last case of yellow fever was reported in Panama City on November 11, 1905. However, even during the American venture, diseases and accidents claimed the lives of 5.600 workers. At times, the project employed more than 40.000 people, mostly workers from the islands of Barbados, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, with many engineers, administrators, and skilled tradesmen from the United States.

The canal was officially opened to traffic in 1914 and for the next six decades the territorially limited Canal Zone was governed by an American governor appointed by the US president. The governor was ex officio the director and president of the company responsible for the operation and maintenance of the canal. Judicial matters were handled by magistrates or district court judges, who were also appointed by the President of the United States. US military units stationed in the canal zone had the right to act if there was a military threat to the canal's neutrality in war and peace.

Some US politicians complained that the decision to relinquish control of the canal reduced US influence in the region, access to global shipping routes and protection of US economic interests abroad. In the 1976 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan claimed: "We built it, we paid for it, it's ours..."

ANTI-IMPERIALIST ICON

Decades of tension between the Panamanians and the United States, which operated the canal, came to a head on January 9, 1964, when 28 people died in a mass protest that was suppressed by Panamanian authorities.

Under growing international pressure, two agreements to gradually transfer control of the canal to Panama were signed in 1977 by US President Jimmy Carter (1924–2024) and Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos, described by Gabriel García Márquez as "a cross between a tiger and a mule", combining instincts and finesse with stubbornness.

In the book The weak and the powerful: Omar Torrijos, Panama and the non-aligned world, Jonathan Brown of the University of Pittsburgh writes that after the signing of that agreement in 1977, Torrijos became an anti-imperialist icon for many Latin Americans, even though he was trained in an American school and was proud of it. Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi, as well as Nelson Rockefeller and John Wayne, called him a friend.

When many new states appeared on the world stage after Afro-Asian decolonization, Torrijos, a sympathizer of Castro's Cuban revolution in his youth, was inspired by Nasser's nationalization of Suez. Brown writes that Torrijos sought the mentorship of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, the founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, which Panama joined in 1976. Brown writes that Torrijos even said: "As long as Tito lives, I will never be lost."

The "New York Times" reported on July 31, 1981 that "Brigadier General Omar Torrijos Herrera, the strongman of Panama, was killed in a Panamanian Air Force plane crash due to bad weather over western Panama. US Air Force planes stationed in the former Panama Canal Zone joined Panamanian planes in the search…”

After Torrijos died, the top position in the army was taken over by General Manuel Noriega, a former CIA operative who was important for US aid to the Nicaraguans. contras, who at the same time supplied arms to Marxist rebels in El Salvador, and about whom Secretary of State George Schultz said: "You can't buy Noriega, you can only rent him."

When he was indicted by two separate grand juries in February 1988 for human trafficking and racketeering, more than 1988 incidents were reported in Panama from February 1989 to May 600. US President George Bush Sr. intervened militarily in Panama in 1989, as the "New York Times" wrote, in order to protect the lives of US citizens in Panama, defend democracy and human rights, fight against drug trafficking - and ensure the functioning of the Panama Canal as defined by the Torrijos and Carter agreements. Noriega was captured and sentenced in Florida to 40 years in prison (served 17, released for good behavior).

When the mandate of the joint US-Panama authority over the canal expired on December 31, 1999, according to the Torrijos-Carter Agreements, the Panama Canal Authority (Spanish: Autoridad del Canal de Panama) became responsible for the operation, conservation, maintenance, modernization and administration of the canal.

MEGAPROJECT HYDRAULICS

The Panama Canal megaproject is otherwise a rather complicated and vulnerable system.

In the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, ships enter the approach channel in Limon Bay, which extends about 11 km to Gatun, where through a series of three gates the ships rise 26 meters above the sea to Lake Gatun, with an area of ​​430 square kilometers, in which 37 km can only be navigated through a channel 150 to 300 meters wide, 14 to 26 meters deep. At Gamboa, the channel passes through a 13 km long cut in the hills of the continental watershed to the Pedro Miguel lock. There, boats descend to the 225-meter-wide Miraflores Lake, at an altitude of 16 meters. The vessels then pass through a two-kilometer-long canal to the two-stage locks at Miraflores, where they descend to sea level.

The final segment of the canal is a passage to the Pacific, 12 kilometers long.

Due to the delicate nature of the lock mechanisms, only small vessels are allowed to pass unassisted. Larger vessels, centered so as not to hit the walls of the locks, pull electric locomotives, which move along toothed rails on the walls of the locks. They are built in pairs to allow simultaneous transit of ships in both directions.

The gates on the locks with two wings, 20 meters wide, 14 to 25 meters high and two meters thick, are mounted on hinges and driven by electric motors, which are controlled from the control tower. At the same time, the flooding or emptying of chambers 300 meters long, 33 meters wide and 12 meters deep is controlled.

They are filled by the gravity flow of water from Lake Gatun, Alajuela and Miraflores.

According to some estimates, the passage of one ship requires as much water as half a million Panamanians consume in one day. The problem with the Panama Canal is that, under the influence of the El Niño supercyclone effect, unusually dry years (especially 1997, 2016 and 2023) have become frequent.

According to data from the Panama Canal Authority, from October 2023 to September 2024, due to the drought - when the canal's capacity was reduced by 50 percent - only 9.944 vessels passed through, compared to 14.080 the previous year. Last-minute channel bookings, which are auctioned off, were sold at prices as high as 10 times the usual transit fee ($400.000).

Subsequently, the Panamanian government announced plans to expand the Panama Canal watershed.

"The biggest risk facing canal operations is the increasing variability of rainfall," Stephen Patton, a professor at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, told Spanish newspaper Pais. In the last two decades, the canal area has also seen numerous rainfall records and large storms, such as La Purisima 2020, the most intense ever recorded in the region. Then there were problems with landslides and filling up of the waterway, which also happened during construction.

The reconstruction completed in 2001 enabled the two-way passage of the so-called Panamax ships (then the largest ships allowed to enter the canal), although some supertankers and large container ships cannot pass through the Panama Canal.

THE CHINESE ARE COMING

In 1996, Panama granted the Hong Kong company Hutchison Wanpoa, owned by billionaire Li Ka Shing, a concession to manage the port of Balboa, on the Pacific side, and the port of Cristobal, on the Atlantic side. Hutchison Vanpoa, through a subsidiary of the Panama Ports Company, manages the ports on behalf of the Panamanian government, but does not own the ports. In 2021, the concession was extended for 25 years.

"Never mind that (on the canal itself) there are no signs of Chinese influence that Trump claims dominates the waterway, and canal administrators deny his accusations that they overcharge American ships. Panama may have the truth on its side - the question is whether that counts for much these days", writes the "Guardian".

"What I'm saying is: come and see," Illa Espino de Marota, deputy administrator of the Panama Canal, told the Guardian when asked in the control tower about Trump's remarks. “It's pretty obvious when you get to the canal. We are a very transparent entity.”

The company "Hutchison Ports" announced that it will continue to maintain a transparent and cooperative relationship with the Panamanian authorities. In the meantime, the Panamanian authorities have launched an audit of the operations of the company "Panama Ports" to determine whether the company is complying with its concession agreements...

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino was quick to tell the Americans that Panamanian control of the canal could not be questioned. For Panama, a country of 4,5 million inhabitants, the canal generates about four billion dollars annually.

He promised greater cooperation with the United States, which is the buyer of 74 percent of the goods transported through that channel. China is the buyer of 21 percent of goods, and the other major users of that waterway are Chile, Japan and South Korea.

Over the past two decades, China has become an important trading partner of South American countries and a source of foreign direct investment and energy and infrastructure lending.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega recently unveiled plans for a 445-kilometer interoceanic waterway as an alternative to the congested Panama Canal, presenting the proposal to Chinese investors at a regional business summit.

As part of the new proposal, the Chinese company CAMC signed a contract with the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure of Nicaragua for the construction of the Bluefields port facility. Ortega described the undertaking as a historical precedent.

In Panama, which in 2017 was the first Latin American country included in the "Belt and Road" initiative, China is engaged in several infrastructure projects.

However, Chinese investment in Panama in 2023 was a modest 0,8 percent compared to 3,6 percent from Spain and 19,6 percent from the US. However, the Americans do not like China's commercial ties with Panama, and especially not their presence in the ports.

Euclides Tapia, a professor of international relations at the University of Panama, said Trump's "false argument" about high tariffs and Chinese control of the canal was designed to hide his desire to see Panama "minimize its relations with China."

However, US Senator Eric Schmidt introduced a resolution on January 23 calling on the Panamanian government to review and terminate agreements that allow Chinese state-owned enterprises or "so-called China-based private entities" to operate strategic infrastructure, including the ports of Balboa and Cristobal.

Panama is required to "reaffirm its commitment to preserving sovereignty and protecting the security of the Western Hemisphere by seeking partnerships that are consistent with democratic values ​​and mutual respect."

"It has been a concern for some time that China effectively controls the Panama Canal. They control the ports at both ends. Why is it important? Because most of the goods we transport to the Pacific go through the Panama Canal… The Canal is no longer neutral. It's part of China's 'Belt and Road' initiative, where they're buying ports, building airports..." Schmidt said in an interview with Fox News.

This is how the security consulting company "Global Guardian" reflects America's warlike geopolitical view of the critical points of maritime congestion (chokepoints):

"Trade routes have become the main avenue of geopolitical competition, another way for enemy states to fight against Western interests. As it stands today, pro-Western governments control only one-third of the potential choke points connecting global sea lanes. Meanwhile, members of the Axis of Chaos can compromise access to up to 64 percent. Hostile states or non-state actors with geographic proximity to key maritime barriers can blackmail the West into making concessions or tolerating destabilizing behavior in exchange for access, a tactic that could be used in Taiwan in the not-too-distant future…”

photo: ap photo

MALACA, SOFT BELLY OF CHINA

A similar, although (so far?) less dramatic tension between the same protagonists of the trade war can be seen "beyond the seven seas" in the 800-kilometer-long Malay Strait (Strait of Malacca), which is "advertised" in serious Western newspapers as China's strategic weak point.

"Newsweek", for example, writes that about 60 percent of China's imports by value are transported by sea, and about 80 percent of oil imports pass through the Malay Strait.

That main shipping channel between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea is part of the maritime silk road that goes from the Chinese coast to the southern part of India to Mombasa, from there across the Red Sea, and then through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean. More than 94.000 ships pass through there annually, carrying about 25 percent of the world's traded goods: Chinese products, coal, palm oil and Indonesian coffee - and a quarter of all oil transported by sea, mainly from suppliers in the Persian Gulf.

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission's 2023 report states: "China's ability to buy cheap land commodities and fossil fuels from Russia has also reduced Beijing's vulnerability to a blockade of its extensive oil imports that cross the Malay Strait."

The US-China Economic and Security Monitoring Commission, an independent government agency, recommended in its 2022 report that Congress require the Defense Department to produce a classified report on the feasibility, practicality and military requirements "for an effective blockade of energy shipments to China in the event of a military conflict involving China."

When asked whether the Pentagon has prepared such a report, the spokesperson told "Newsweek" that the Ministry of Defense does not comment on classified information or potential war scenarios.

China has been trying for about a decade to reduce the potential impact of such a blockade, including by building up its navy and building land routes for oil and gas like those in neighboring Myanmar, Colin Koh, a maritime security expert at the Singapore School of International Studies, told Newsweek.

Malaysia will continue to protest if any country uses its waters as a military passage without permission, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said.

photo: ap photo

SUEZ AND BAB EL MANDEB

Transit in currently one of the most critical straits Bab al-Mandab decreased by more than 50 percent compared to the previous year. The Red Sea crisis has created challenges for regional ports and key navigation routes such as the Suez Canal, where the number of transits fell from around 2.068 in November 2023 to around 877 in October 2024, according to Lloyd's List data.

This route transports 12 percent of goods globally, including oil, and 30 percent of containerized goods - from car parts to plastic slippers crocs - worth a thousand billion dollars a year.

During the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the Houthis effectively turned Bab al-Mandab into an unsafe area. A year after seizing the car carrier Galaxy Leader (IMO 9237307) and its multinational crew in the Red Sea, the Houthis have carried out more than a hundred attacks on commercial and warships since November 2023.

In mid-October, US Central Command (CENTCOM) forces intensified airstrikes against launchers and weapons depots in Yemen. Since January 2024, Western coalition forces have struck Houthi targets in Yemen at least seven times, and on November 9 and 10 they used F-35C stealth aircraft from an aircraft carrier for the first time.

In January 2024, the Biden administration also designated the Houthis as a global terrorist group, but this did not change their maritime behavior. US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that starts the process of declaring Ansar Allah a terrorist organization.

photo: ap photo

The Houthis could ban American ships from passing through the Bab el-Mandeb strait in response to Washington's actions, a source in the Shiite military-political movement Ansar Allah, which rules northern Yemen, told RIA Novosti.

Whether the high maritime risks at that point will increase or gradually decrease largely depends on the course of the war in Gaza, which the Houthis use to justify their attacks. Some say from Iran, but in that case, it might be the Strait of Hormuz, through which 21 percent of the world's oil is transported.

Six of the ten largest container shipping companies — Maersk, MSC, Hapag-lloyd, CMA CGM, ZIM and ONE — until now they mostly avoided the Red Sea because of the Hutu threat.

UNCTAD states in its Maritime Transport Review that longer routes across the Cape of Good Hope have increased costs for fuel, wages, insurance and catering – while increasing CO2 emissions. For a 20.000-24.000 ton ship on the Far East - Europe route, CO2 emissions alone add $400.000 in costs under the so-called European Union Emissions Trading System.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) notes in its 2024 Maritime Transport Review that the recovery of global maritime trade after the disruption during the Covid epidemic remains fragile, and that the future remains uncertain as food security, energy supplies and the global economy are at risk as maritime transport critical points face growing pressure from geopolitical tensions and climate change.

Malay pirates

In an article about the world's most dangerous waters, Time magazine describes how two hours before sunset on May 28, 10 men, armed with rifles and machetes, climbed from their speedboat onto the deck of a tanker named Orapin 4. The ship was carrying large quantities of fuel between Singapore and Pontianak, a port on the west coast of Indonesian Borneo.

Breaking into the bridge, the attackers locked the ship's crew below deck and disabled the communication system, painted over the ship's name and identification marks. During the next 10 hours, no one saw the ship, despite a radio call for everyone to watch. The attackers, meanwhile, poured more than 3.700 tons of fuel into another tanker. Finally, four days after the attack, the Orapin 4 pulled into its home port of Sri Racha, Thailand. While the 14 crew members were safe – the pirates and $1,9 million in stolen fuel were gone.

It was the sixth such attack in three months.

"In the past, you could be pretty sure that if you had a Russian vessel, it would be owned by a Russian company, the Russian flag would fly, there would be a Russian captain and a Russian crew. Today, the system is much different. It could be a ship owned by the Japanese, sailing under the Panamanian flag, using an Indonesian captain with a Filipino crew," Peter Chalk, a maritime security researcher at the Rand Corporation, told Time.

In a separate incident in April, after pirates stole 2.500 metric tons of fuel from a small product tanker, Reuters quoted unnamed regional security officials as warning that "armed gangs roaming the Malay Straits may be part of a 'syndicate' that may have ties to the crews targeted or knowledge of the vessel and cargo."

Some researchers mention the knowledge that in Indonesia, some chief engineers and captains sell information about the upcoming oil shipment, through intermediaries, to local pirates, who thus gain the opportunity to take over the ship, steal its cargo and mix it with another, legally obtained supply, and sell the mixture to an unsuspecting European buyer who finds it difficult - if not impossible - to determine whether a particular oil supply was obtained illegally...

"When they're transferring liquids, the marine engineer has to know what they're doing," Michael Frodl, a marine safety expert whose company, told Time. C-LEVEL Maritime Risks, advises insurance companies, ship owners, governments and organizations reporting piracy in the region. Due to the complexity of oil diversion, the individuals involved in these attacks must have experience in the oil industry and contacts through which to sell the stolen oil.

Pirate oil is often mixed with legally obtained oil at sea in ships called mother ships, writes "Time".

And during the 41s, the problem in the Malay Strait was piracy. Southeast Asia accounted for 1995 percent of the world's piracy attacks between 2013 and 28. Piracy in the western Indian Ocean, including Somalia, accounted for 18 percent, and off the coast of West Africa for only 2006 percent. Since 2023, the frequency of robberies has been declining until recently, but in the first half of 38, 41 incidents of piracy were recorded in the strait, 2022 percent more than in XNUMX.