On April 28, the State Department issued a joint statement “in solidarity with Panama” in response to one increase in detentions of Panamanian-flagged ships in Chinese ports, which it characterized as “a blatant attempt to politicize maritime trade.”
This comes after one targeted campaign for the law by U.S. and Panamanian officials to expropriate Chinese logistics infrastructure at the Balboa and Cristobal terminals, and within a broader maritime context that has seen the U.S. blocking the Strait of Hormuzwrite a defense partnership with Indonesia and made aggressive statements about Peru Port of Chancay.
Co-signatories to the declaration include Costa Rica, Bolivia (more on that later), Paraguay, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.
It is hard to overstate the irony of this face in Panama. Just months ago, the US was pursuing a dual strategy of diplomatic coercion bilateral security dialogues and legitimacy through a politicized sum audit of Chinese concessions near the Panama Canal.
This culminated in a completely predictable situation Decision of the Supreme Court of Panama against port operator CK Hutchinson, resulting in his eviction and replacement with a subsidiary of the Danish logistics firm Maersk.
We recall that the opening position of the Trump administration in these negotiations was threatening retake the Panama Canal by forceand the State Department’s lofty rhetoric about defending Panama’s “sovereignty” and rejecting “politicization” begins to ring hollow.
The co-signatories joining the US in this declaration of “freedom” may seem random; however, they align perfectly with America’s long-term economic and security priorities in the region.
Guyana is the world’s leading producer of light crude oil and is benefiting from it new investments downstream between America’s blockade of the Persian Gulf, while Trinidad is a major producer of petrochemicals such as urea and ammonia.
Costa Rica is a reliable American ally that acts more advanced technological port in the Caribbean, and Paraguay is likely in the mix as the only remaining South American country that know Taiwan.
But perhaps the most interesting co-signatory is Bolivia, a landlocked Andean nation that seems irrelevant to protecting maritime “security” in the Caribbean — until America’s long-term energy goals are considered.
Bolivia sits at the top of the the largest lithium reserves in the worldbut high magnesium-lithium ratio in brine the resource requires capital (and mostly experimental) processes for extraction.
There is also the logistical challenge of moving thousands of tons of lithium across hundreds of kilometers of rough terrain to Chilean ports in the Pacific and, finally, through the Panama Canal.
Simply put, these factors put a massive premium on every ton of lithium dedicated for export to the production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries and grid-scale energy storage systems. Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz clearly knows this.
His last decision for replace the head of the state-owned lithium companyYacimientos de Litio Bolivianos, signals that he is willing to break deals made with China and Russia under Bolivia’s previous socialist government, provided Western capital can provide a guaranteed market.
For Paz’s foreign ministry, signing a US-led declaration recognizing Panama as a “pillar of our maritime trading system” is a low-friction, transactional diplomatic game.
Bolivia’s potential as a commodity export powerhouse depends on cooperation with its longtime rival, Chile, for port access. (Chile has its own the highly profitable lithium sectorand is why Bolivia has no coastline to begin with).
By siding with the United States against China, Bolivia is signaling to countries like Panama and Chile that it is willing to play by the same American-led rules as everyone else, in exchange for access to their logistics infrastructure.
Of course, America’s diplomatic maneuvering in Panama and Bolivia cannot be understood in a vacuum. In the Persian Gulf, the US military is BLOCK the flow of light and heavy crude oil to Asian markets.
Meanwhile, the State Department is working hard in the Caribbean to expropriate Chinese logistics capital through diplomatic coercion and law.
In this context, it is becoming increasingly clear that the objective of the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” is not the benevolent integration of the US and Latin American economies, but to force capital out of West Asia and back to the Western Hemisphere by creating new maritime trade routes.
Whether or not the US will succeed is impossible to say, but it should not be assumed that it is a coincidence that the State Department is promoting a new maritime consensus with Latin American countries that produce key inputs for the energy, agriculture and logistics industries, as well as the “green” commodities of metals and minerals – many of which have recently opposed Chinese investment offers.
At this point, anyone who still sees America as a neutral arbiter or policeman of global maritime trade is willingly ignoring reality. The US military is capture of ships in West Asiawhile the State Department simultaneously demands that China play by its own rules in Central and South America.
As Trump abdicated America’s responsibility to defend the Persian Gulf under the Carter Doctrine, the romantic notion of a “free” global maritime commons he died
In the long run, this is likely to benefit China and others coastal nations, but in the short term, it has created unprecedented instability in the global maritime order, which the State Department is fully prepared to capitalize on in the service of America’s energy, agricultural, and mining interests.
Logan McMillen writes foreign policy analysis through the lenses of economics and critical political geography, focusing on Latin America. His work has recently appeared in The New Republic, Responsible state work, North American Congress on Latin AmericaAND Foreign policy in focus.
