US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks.
On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump had determined that the country had breached terms of the treaty that handed over the canal in 1999.
Photo: AP
He cited the “influence and control” of China over the canal, through which about 40 percent of US container traffic passes.
Meeting Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino, Rubio “made clear that this status quo is unacceptable and that absent immediate changes, it would require the United States to take measures necessary to protect its rights under the treaty,” US Department of State spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.
She did not spell out the consequences. However, Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out military force.
Nearly 75 percent of cargo that went through the Panama Canal in fiscal 2024 came from the US, with 21 percent from China, followed by Japan and South Korea, official statistics show.
Rubio and Trump say China has gained so much power through surrounding infrastructure that it could shut the canal down in a potential conflict and spell catastrophe for the US.
“China’s running the Panama Canal,” Trump said on Sunday.
“It was not given to China, it was given to Panama foolishly,” he told reporters as he returned to Washington from a weekend in Florida.
“But they violated the agreement and we’re going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen,” he said.
He later added that he did not think US troops would be “necessary” in Panama.
Mulino painted a rosier portrait of his meeting with Rubio, whom he welcomed at his official residence in the tropical capital’s old quarter.
He also announced that Panama would not be renewing an agreement to participate in China’s Belt and Road project, which the country had signed onto under a previous administration.
“I don’t feel that there is any real threat at this time against the treaty, its validity, or much less of the use of military force to seize the canal,” Mulino told reporters.
“Sovereignty over the canal is not in question,” he said, proposing technical-level talks with Washington to clear up concerns.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
FIREWALLS: ‘Democracy doesn’t mean that the loud minority is automatically right,’ the German defense minister said following the US vice president’s remarks US Vice President JD Vance met the leader of a German far-right party during a visit to Munich, Germany, on Friday, nine days before a German election. During his visit he lectured European leaders about the state of democracy and said there is no place for “firewalls.” Vance met with Alice Weidel, the coleader and candidate for chancellor of the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, his office said. Mainstream German parties say they would not work with the party. That stance is often referred to as a “firewall.” Polls put AfD in second place going into the