March 2, 1978
Page 5350
DENISON KITCHELL ON THE PANAMA CANAL
Mr. GOLDWATER. Mr. President, yesterday, the senior Senator from Maine, Mr. MUSKIE, used a quotation from a new book about the Panama Canal written by the distinguished attorney and my close friend, Denison Kitchell, which the Senator argued supports the claim that the 1903 treaty was not acceptable in Panama at that time.
It appears from the Senator's remarks that he may have inferred that I share this erroneous interpretation of Mr. Kitchell's book because the Senator mentioned that I wrote a foreword to that book.
Mr. President, nothing could be further from the point, which Mr. Kitchell made in his book at the place cited by the Senator from Maine, than the interpretation which the Senator gave to it. The quotation from Mr. Kitchell's book was clearly taken out of context, as anyone who has read the book would know at a glance.
The passage quoted from reads as follows:
There never was such a one-sided treaty. If it had been written at the conclusion of a war between the United States and Panama and the money payments had run the other way, it would have served as a document of unconditional surrender.
So it is true the treaty was one-sided. But that does not mean that the treaty did not serve Panama well or was not acceptable to Panama. If the Senator from Maine had continued his quotation from Mr. Kitchell's book, he would have read, on the immediately following page, these clarifying statements:
If one looks at the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty in the context of the time at which it was signed, it served Panama well. Not only served, but saved her. Perhaps no one but Bunau-Varilla would have had both the wisdom and the temerity to contrive it. Panama was a nation two weeks old.
Her government was scarcely established. Her ability to preserve law and order, much less her independence from Colombia, was negligible. She could only continue to exist and develop as a nation if the United States were willing to build a canal across her territory and protect her.
Within the United States there were powerful forces bent on having the canal built across Nicaragua. Those forces had to be thwarted at any price if Panama was to become the canal site. It is doubtful that a treaty less favorable to the United States would have sufficed.
Looked at from the United States viewpoint at that time, it is highly questionable whether a less favorable treaty, a treaty that went no further in making concessions to the United States than the Colombian treaty did, would have been realistic. With Colombia, the United States had been dealing with a nation three-quarters of a century old, a nation with an established, albeit shaky, government, a nation with a military force at least capable of keeping the peace. Building and operating a canal under treaty arrangements with such a nation obviously did not require the broad assumption of governmental responsibilities and corresponding rights, the assurances of stability, even the assurance of mere continued existence, that were needed in dealing with the Panamanian embryo.
On balance, regardless of Bunau-Varilla's selfish and French-devoted motives, the Hay-Bunau- Varilla Treaty, at the time it was entered into, was the treaty needed by both Panama and the United States.
And, it should be remembered that despite what Panamanians may say about the treaty today, the voice of the Panamanian people in 1903 was supportive of the treaty. It is an often overlooked historical fact that the revolutionary government directed in 1903 that all the cabildos, that is the equivalent of town councils, be canvassed for their opinion. Within a few weeks, every cabildo in Panama had passed, by unanimous vote, a resolution approving the treaty.
As Paul B. Ryan observes in his book, "The Panama Canal Controversy," since at the time there existed no assembly or congress, this early expression of public opinion was evidence that most of Panama was satisfied that the treaty served their needs.
Now, this is not to contend that Mr. Kitchell or I believe that the 1903 Treaty, with its amendments, should be cemented for all time. Mr. Kitchell recognizes that there are grounds for making changes and he has proposed specific guidelines as to the shape a new treaty might take.
There is no question, however, that Mr. Kitchell strongly opposes, as do I, the present treaties because, among other things, they would jeopardize three basic U.S. interests, foreign relations, foreign trade, and national security.
Mr. President, I regret very much that a distortion of Mr. Kitchell's book was made on the Senate floor, and I commend his book to my colleagues to be read in full because it is an objective and all-inclusive source of information about the Panama Canal.