Close the Panama Canal to Russia, as a shot across the bow to China

OPINION:

It is time to close the Panama Canal to Russia as a signal to China.

To be sure, Russia’s maritime trade is trivial, so the impact on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economic and war-fighting capabilities is nil. But that is not the point.

The message for China is: “Hazard Ahead. Perilous Waters.”

How China interprets this message is up to China. They can take it as a friendly and helpful signal, a warning flare from fellow mariners, a navigation aid. Or they can take it as a shot across the bow.

It is both.

Either way, this message must be unambiguous: Any who follow the course Mr. Putin has charted, leaving such a wake of chaos and devastation, will face consequences, especially in the Western hemisphere.

The Panama Canal is Exhibit A for why what happens in Ukraine will not stay in Ukraine.

This is not a hypothetical. Last week the Russian deputy prime minister and the president of the Russian Duma came to Managua, Nicaragua. Just before the invasion of Ukraine, a similarly high-level delegation went to Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.

Central America is part of Russia’s war plan.

There are solemn neutrality treaties that apply to the Panama Canal, and the question of Panamanian sovereignty is not to be taken lightly. In fact, the fate of sovereignty as we understand it in our modern world — a world of self-determination, constitutions, peace through trade, borders that must not be changed by force, and international law — is precisely what is at stake in Mr. Putin’s war on Ukraine.

In Mr. Putin’s world, the only law is the law of the jungle, and there is only one rule: “the big fish eat the little fish.”

The Panama Canal was claimed from the jungle and from the seas, not just as a work of civil engineering, but as a construct in moral engineering. It is precisely the sanctity of treaties and the goodwill of the trading nations that uphold Panama’s sovereignty and the integrity of the canal. This has allowed Panama, with no army and no navy since the fall of the dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989, to operate the canal peacefully and securely.

We should not be confused by niceties over neutrality treaties. A treaty that guarantees Russian passage through the Western hemisphere, this hemisphere of liberty, even as Mr. Putin wages a vicious war to wipe a sovereign nation off the map, is a treaty that profanes the very international order that makes treaty obligations sacred.

Panama should not be neutral in the face of Mr. Putin’s war on Ukraine. It should join the free world in imposing sanctions on Russia. This should include not just Russian ships, but Russian cargo as well, so that Russia cannot evade sanctions by false-flagging its ships or use the flag-of-convenience system or hide behind offshore companies. Panama has an outsized role and responsibilities in all of these.

Panama should set neutrality aside for the same reason the Swiss set aside their own cherished neutrality in the face of Putin’s barbaric onslaught. The strategic rationale for closing Russia’s access to one of the world’s vital chokepoints is the same as what informed Turkey’s pragmatic decision to deny the Bosphorus to Russian warships.

The Panama Canal has been essential to China’s prosperity, and its rise as a trading nation and world power. Closing the canal to Russia will unambiguously warn President Xi Jinping that the closer he drifts to Mr. Putin’s world, the more he puts all that at risk. If, however, China sticks to the course of peace through trade, and steers by the lodestar of the international rules-based order, it will be a valued partner and fellow mariner in the Panama Canal, on the high seas and perhaps someday beyond.

Let’s not think of the Panama Canal as merely some “strategic asset” or “chokepoint.” 

That’s Mr. Putin’s world. Let’s cherish the canal for what it really is: a civil and moral triumph over the Hobbesian state of nature; as an enduring monument and reminder of American ingenuity, ambition and endeavor, visible from outer space, perhaps even from the stars; and as Panama’s gift to the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  

Every time those colossal gears spin those mighty, never-resting locks, and the waters gush forth bearing all world’s trade, it is a salute to the spirit of enterprise, cooperation and understanding, and to the dream of a more prosperous and peaceful world.

That is worth defending. It means closing the Panama Canal to Mr. Putin, whatever it takes, and to any with the temerity to follow him.

• Roger Pardo-Maurer was deputy assistant Sscretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs (2001-2006) and is a U.S. Army Special Forces veteran of Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2006-2007).