The current debate over the Panama treaties may not produce as many analyses as Castro’s revolution spawned in the early sixties, but the canal controversy will doubtless generate its share of books. This work will remain one of the best on the subject.
LaFeber begins appropriately with the 1903 revolution but corrects the usual interpretation of Panama’s secession by observing the nineteenth-century origins of Panamanian nationalism. From the initial interpretations of the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty, LaFeber chronicles the changing nature of the canal problem and how successive American and Panamanian politicians have confronted it. The last third of the book focuses on the canal imbroglio since 1960. LaFeber’s conclusion, in an unusual departure from scholarly accounts, poses five important questions on the controversy and answers them. The author performs best when assessing the changing nature of Panamanian politics—his treatment of Omar Torrijos is especially perceptive—and the place of the current confrontation within international politics. Panama’s assertiveness, LaFeber argues, reflects in part America’s waning influence in the world.
LaFeber’s book will be essential as a handbook for anyone involved in the canal debate. His own feelings are more sympathetic with the advocates of the new treaties, and the conclusion is geared to meet the objections raised by Ronald Reagan and other critics in the 1976 presidential campaign. Like the treaties’ most ardent supporters, LaFeber looks upon the accords as a “United States diplomatic triumph” (p. 206).
