Panama's Canal: What Happens When the United States Gives a Small Country What it Wants? - Softcover

Falcoff, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0844740314 ISBN 13: 9780844740317

Publisher: Aei Press, 1998

Synopsis

This book focuses on Panama mismanagement of the U.S. properties it received and its cavalier disregard of environmental considerations crucial to the efficient operation of the canal.

About this title

Review

Author Mark Falcoff focuses on one of the most ignored subjects in contemporary American foreign policy analysis: at noon on December 31, 1999, the United States will hand control of the Panama Canal over to the government of Panama. This may sound like a small problem, but consider: roughly five percent of the world's trade flows through the canal's locks, and most of this business has either its origin or destination in the United States. The canal, in other words, plays a crucial role in both the global and American economies. Although Falcoff views the transfer--so far--as a model of postimperialism since the signing of the 1978 Carter-Torrijos treaty, he's not entirely sanguine about the future. Panama's political class, for example, is having second thoughts about a substantial U.S. pullout and its attendant financial and security consequences. Falcoff provides a comprehensive account of the transfer and its origins, and capably conveys an enormous amount of detailed information without ever imposing a burden on the reader. A chapter on the canal's history would have given Panama's Canal a more rounded quality, but Falcoff nevertheless presents a model work of political analysis focused on a topic that cries out for more attention. --John J. Miller

About the Author

Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He has served on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has taught at the Universities of Illinois, Oregon, and California, Los Angeles, and the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.

Edition details

• Publisher: Aei Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0844740314
• ISBN 13: 9780844740317
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168