President Trump’s foreign policy prioritizes hemispheric security, countering China, Russia and Iran, while possibly uniting free and open spaces globally.
The Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal near Panama City on Jan. 13, 2025. U.S. President Trump wants to control the Panama Canal, which efficiently provides access between the Atlantic with the Pacific.
The Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal near Panama City on Jan. 13, 2025. President Trump wants to control the Panama Canal, which provides efficient access between the Atlantic and the Pacific. © Getty Images
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In a nutshell
Trump opposes Chinese influence in Panama for national security reasons
U.S. focus emphasizes protecting “free and open” spaces over containment
Washington seeks stronger alliances, expanding influence in the Americas
United States President Donald Trump created a stir throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond when he asserted upon taking office in January that control of Panama Canal operations by Chinese entities and exorbitant fees for the transit of U.S. shipping were unacceptable. The president threatened to take extreme measures to counter what he considers a significant and intolerable threat to American security.
Not long after President Trump’s statements, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama on his first trip in the role, meeting with President Jose Raul Mulino. Discussions appear to have set an agreed path forward addressing U.S. concerns. Rather than focusing on the incident per se, assessing the American demands and Panama’s response offers significant insight into what could be next in hemispheric – and global − relations.
The scope of President Trump’s intentions
It is abundantly clear, given the president’s attention to Greenland and Canada, that Mr. Trump’s concerns are far broader than just the Panama Canal. The administration entered office asserting that Russia, China and Iran had penetrated far too much into the Western Hemisphere, ascending to the point that their influence could threaten vital American interests in the U.S.’s own backyard. The Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada are cases in point.
The primary motivation behind President Trump’s actions is hemispheric security.
Panama is critical for transit of civilian and military maritime traffic by the most expedient route between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Greenland is a crucial waypoint in the transatlantic bridge from the U.S. and Canada to Europe. Canada is crucial to the defense of the U.S. in the High North. The primary motivation behind President Trump’s actions is hemispheric security.
Mr. Trump’s emerging “doctrine,” however, differs significantly from the original Monroe Doctrine, which was first articulated in 1823 by U.S. President James Monroe and aimed at keeping adversarial powers out of the Western Hemisphere. Greenland is important not to protect the hemisphere but to enable the U.S. to project its power beyond U.S. shores. After his reelection and before inauguration, Mr. Trump said Greenland was important for “purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World.”
Trump as isolationist or imperialist?
Dating back to his first term (2017-2021), President Trump’s foreign policy has always been a prime target for his critics. The president, for example, is often labelled an isolationist. As recently as September 2024, Charles Kupchan wrote in Foreign Affairs about “The Deep Roots of Trump’s Isolationism.” In contrast and even more recently, The Economist produced a video describing President Trump as an imperialist for his statements about Greenland, Panama, Canada and Gaza.
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Facts & figures
Panama at a glance
Panama and the U.S.
• Panamanians love baseball, use the U.S. dollar as their national currency and their country is among the most pro-American in the region.
• The U.S. is Panama’s top investor and trading partner.
• Panama has no central bank nor armed forces.
• U.S. Navy vessels get priority for transit, while commercial ships sometimes face waits of up to 10 days.
• Under the neutrality treaty, the U.S. has the right to act if the canal faces military or hostile threats against the peaceful passage of ships.
• The U.S. has intervened in Panama before, for example in 1989 when American troops invaded to overthrow dictator Manuel Noriega.
Panama and China
• In a diplomatic coup for Beijing, in 2017 Panama cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan and became the first Latin American country to join Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
• Panama is home to about 200,000 Chinese, the biggest Chinese diaspora in Central America.
• In 1996, Hong Kong-based company Hutchison outbid Mitsubishi of Japan and U.S.-based Bechtel to secure majority ownership of two key Panamanian ports.
• Other Chinese projects in Panama include a canal bridge, the subway, a cruise-ship terminal, a convention center and renewable energy assets.
• Chinese laws oblige Chinese companies to support state policy.
• The U.S. president is concerned that this amounts to Panama losing its neutrality.
Latest developments
• Marco Rubio’s visit to Panama in early February, shortly after being sworn in as Washington’s secretary of state, led to Panama declaring it would not continue in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
• In early March, U.S.-based BlackRock acquired Hutchison’s stake in the Panamanian ports, among other Hutchison ports worldwide.
Slapping extreme and contradictory labels on the U.S. president suggests that much of the criticism is political in nature rather than rooted in a genuine assessment of geopolitics. Regardless of the motivations of the detractors, what is the punditry’s geopolitical impact? On one hand, the flurry of criticism has been unsettling to friends and allies. On the other, these controversies seem to have had little impact on administration policies or the president’s popularity in the U.S.
Public discourse appears increasingly disconnected from the practice of foreign policy, suggesting the public furor over Mr. Trump’s actions in the hemisphere is less relevant than the level of concern and criticism might suggest.
Cold War or new war strategy?
There is little question that China, Iran and Russia remain global security threats to the U.S. During the Cold War, the U.S. practiced a strategy of containment that sought to block the expansion of Soviet influence. Both Russian and American strategy aimed at carving out hard spheres of control and influence. This struggle was global and included Washington’s efforts to curb Moscow’s encroachment in the Western Hemisphere. For example, the U.S. attempted to overthrow the communist government in Cuba in the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion; supported a coup against the leftist government in Bolivia in 1971; conducted the invasion of Grenada in 1983; and supported the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Read more from national security and foreign policy expert James Jay Carafano
Current U.S. strategy, however, does not appear to be a replay of the Cold War strategy of containment. There are few signs that the U.S., Russia, Iran or China are having much success in expanding hard spheres of influence on the scale of the Cold War. Furthermore, all these adversaries face, in one way or another, significant resource constraints in imposing such robust strategies. Tehran has been weakened through loss of its proxies; Beijing faces severe economic headwinds; while Moscow is stretched in Africa and bogged down in its war on Ukraine.
A fleet of U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers anchored in Balboa harbor at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal in 1934.
A fleet of U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers anchored in Balboa harbor at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal in 1934. Hutchison, a Hong Kong-based Chinese company, has controlled port operations in the Balboa harbor since the late 1990s, but under pressure from the U.S., recently agreed to sell its stake to BlackRock, the asset management firm based in New York. © Getty Images
President Trump’s early actions seem to adopt a more modest strategy of expanding “free and open” spaces that the U.S. does not control but that are protected from adversarial encroachment. The strategy combines conventional deterrence in Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific with a mix of political, diplomatic and economic efforts to expand free and open spaces. U.S. action and intent in Panama and Greenland clearly reflect these objectives, aiming to protect freedom on passage across the Atlantic and to the Pacific.
In addition, President Trump is, in practice, being more proactive than Cold War presidents. By signaling China to back off in Panama and Greenland, he is seeking to preempt more aggressive moves by adversaries that led to incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. President Trump appears to be balancing the desire to exude “peace through strength” with restraint, prudence and bravado.
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Scenarios
Most likely: U.S. expands its activities around Central and North America
The most likely scenario is that the U.S. will expand efforts to control not only passage through the Panama Canal, but also in the Caribbean Basin and the Northwest Passage. U.S. actions, rather than imposing a doctrine on the hemisphere, are likely to be more frequently executed with partners.
Panama is a case in point. The Panamanian view recognizes that the country is simply too small and entirely lacking in hard power to act as a guarantor of a strategic asset that enables passage between the oceans. Panama City also recognizes that the Chinese presence is a legitimate concern for the U.S., hence President Mulino recently announcing the country’s withdrawal from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. The U.S. and Panama will reach a mutual agreement that limits Beijing’s ability to affect the operations of the canal.
Other hemispheric partners, such as Argentina, are already leaning more toward Washington. Upcoming elections in Chile, Canada, Brazil and Colombia could result in even more countries tilting more heavily to alignment with the new U.S. security architecture.
Likely: Washington will link free and open spaces globally
Expect U.S. strategy to expand to other theaters as well. After a recent visit to Washington by Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi, President Trump endorsed a free and open corridor from India through the Middle East to Italy in Europe. In his first term, Mr. Trump supported the concept of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific and the Three Seas Initiative in Europe. What is emerging is a strategy to rob Iran, China and Russia of expanding areas of influence not through hard power containment but by linking free and open spaces together.
Whether the U.S. will enunciate these practices as a deliberate strategy is unclear, but the Panama Canal offers a powerful example of the motivation behind the president’s actions. These early moves by the Trump administration suggest a significant shift in U.S. efforts – one that is not well defined by previous paradigms such as “pivot to Asia” or “great power competition.”
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