The problem with Bluffing

There's a problem with bluffing in that eventually, you're going to be called, and you're going to have to show your deck. We're now hearing that trump's threats to retake the Panama Canal are in effect a bluff to try and weaken China's influence in Central and Latin America. That's great if the bluff works. But China has invested so much in Central and Latin America that they're not simply going to pull out even if Trump has an excellent relationship with Xi.  

  

And that means that at some stage, someone is going to call Trump's bluff. Does this mean that he has to invade and take over Greenland? Does this mean he has to invade and take the canal? 

  

Which of these will he have to do to prove he's not bluffing?  

  

Canada?  

  

Much of the Amerikan economy and, therefore, Amerikan society is contingent upon existing global trade routes and global trade relationships. We saw in the pandemic the impact of supply chain constraints caused by the shutdown of ports. That supply chain constraint resulted in multi-year high inflation in the United States, partly contributing to Donald Trump's victory.  

  

Adding additional costs through tariffs and inflation will return very rapidly to the Amerikan economy. Creating massive supply chain problems would result from an invasion of Panama to take the Panama Canal. There's very little likelihood that the Amerikans could take the canal and secure it without being taken out of commission by the Panamanians for a significant period of time. And by a significant period of time, we're probably talking one to three years.  

  

So the potential economic dislocation and negative impact on the Amerikan economy from the combination of tariffs and the shutting of the Panama Canal would be crippling for the Amerikan economy as it currently functions. It is a delicate but very robust system as long as particular levers and legs of that economic system are not damaged.  

  

Repeat the supply chain problems of the pandemic, and the economy will collapse again. 

  

And, of course, it's doubtful that the Amerikan military could actually take the Panama Canal and keep it functioning. The Panamanian government and the Panamanian military, not to mention the Panamanian people, would simply not allow that to happen and would probably rather destroy pieces of the canal than allow the Amerikans to conquer it and retain control for any period of time.  

  

And invasions don't happen overnight. President Trump doesn't wake up one morning and say, “I want you Mr military to invade Panama next week”.  

  

Until we see the Amerikan military actually begin preparations foreign invasion of one of those three then his bluff will be treated as exactly what it is, a bluff. However, the US military probably does not have the capability to invade Canada, Greenland, and Panama, certainly not at the same time. Trump might want his military to do so, and might order them to be ready to do so, but they would not be able to do so effectively.  

  

Panama would be relatively easy, and by that, I mean relatively only. In 1989, the Amerikans invaded Panama, but they had the advantage of having military bases in the Canal Zone that they could use to expand from. Any invasion at this time would have to be staged from someplace other than Panama itself. It is very unlikely that Costa Rica or Colombia would allow the hosting of Amerikan forces for an invasion. That means an airborne and navy assault directly into Panama itself. 

  

The Amerikan military took over 6 months of build up in Saudi Arabia for both the liberation of Kuwait and then later the invasion of Iraq. That was 6 months building and populating bases on the ground from which troops could jump off directly into enemy occupied territory. An invasion of Panama would require a landing securing a beach and bringing in enough forces then to create a bridgehead that would be used then to advance and take over the rest of the country. OR at least, to take over those bits of the country at the canal so cologne in the north and Panama city in the south. To do that you're invading and taking the two major population centres of the country.  

  

By the time you've managed to get forces ashore and move them to the canal to secure the canal itself in the canal infrastructure, you've probably lost a functioning in working canal. The Panamanian forces will have sabotaged anything that the Amerikans are attempting to gain. That leaves the canal non-functional which effectively means all shipping from the Amerikan East coast or to the Amerikan east coast from Asia has to go around Cape horn. That was the entire purpose of the Panama Canal was to cut out that dangerous and very long journey.  

  

Could the Amerikans invade with a purely airborne exercise landing troops airborne troops to take the control points at both ends of the canal? Certainly they could. But that would be a very difficult operation. And would be fraught with danger and risk. There's then the issue of once the specific targets have been taken and secured, actually getting enough forces onshore to create a safe corridor of control. The United States does not have the forces required to create a safe corridor that will allow them to operate through and around Colon and through and around Panama City. 

  

As the Panamanian president pointed out in response to Trump, an invasion of Panama would also result in a massive influx of additional migrants heading towards the Amerikan border. Currently, the Darien Gap between Columbia and Panama is a route for illegal immigrants and is, in some small part, controlled and managed by the Panamanian government. 

  

At the other end of Panama there's the border with Costa Rica which while controlled by both countries is quite porous. Are the Amerikans going to invade and take all of Panama up to an including the border with Costa Rica to stop the migration? I very much doubt that they would care. After all anyone who makes it all the way to the United States will just be rounded up, put into an internment camp, and deported by Trump and his minions. 

Bluffing only works if the other side(s) don't know you are bluffing. They know that Trump is bluffing, and therefore, there is little actual risk. And if he is not bluffing, the price to Amerika will be far too high.

Gringos and Pandemic - not a good mix

Latin America as we know it today is the product of the Conquista and the conquistadors. In 1532 Pizarro and his band of conquistadors, with support from European diseases, destroyed the Incan Empire and imposed their rule, even though they represented but a tiny fraction of the population. In most of Latin America, it is just history, and today most of the "locals" actually have conquistador or subsequent Spanish (and lately Italian and other European) immigrant or slave blood. It is ancient history. 

But in Panama, there is a new conquistador, one that was (revisionist history) thrown out and national sovereignty regained with the 'return' of the Canal and the Zone to Panamanian control. Yet the new conquistadors continue to arrive, ever after most were thrown out (or more accurately, departed when the jobs for Gringos disappeared).

Panama, which seemed to do quite well early on in its fight against Covid-19, now seems to be ‘losing the plot’ with the number of cases jumping by close to 1000 daily, and hospitals becoming overloaded. I am so glad that we got Francoise out of there and home. While I did think it would be a reasonably ‘safe place’, that was predicated on a couple of factors, including her location in the countryside, and on the reactions of the community to the virus and Gringo/Panamanian relations. The second has negated any advantage from the first, and I fear that the entire Gringo community in the greater Mariato area and that coast will be in danger is this gets much worse. 

The “pitchforks and torches” may be a real threat down there, especially with the apparent history of the wealthy landowners being less than happy with the influx of Gringos who provide alternative employment for people who should be kept stupid and working manual labour on and for the rice plantations. About the only other endorsed employment (it seems, from the perspective of the landowners) being fishing and smallholdings farming for the local communities, and turning a blind eye to the drug runners who cruise the coast. 

The ‘word on the street’ is that wealthy families do not support more Gringos because they create competition. That increases the costs for the wealthy families and reduces their feudal authority. And when they lose the mayor that they bought/rented, then they need to either wait-out a less corrupt mayor, or find a way to corrupt the new mayor. Access to relative wealth and acceptance as a local authority is sometimes enough, especially if they can line their own pockets with the cash that drops off the central government trucks that should otherwise be building roads, bridges, schools, etc. 

Into this environment comes a mixed bag of Gringos, many with libertarian ideas of escape from authority and the ability to buy anything they want, including ‘freedom’ to do anything they want, including ignoring the local government and people, unless those local people are building their houses and providing incidental manual labour – cleaning, gardening, minor construction and repairs for example. 

These Gringos are truly foreigners, as there are very few Gringo on that side of the Azuero Peninsula who are married to Panamanians, and especially to countryside Panamanians. The nearest historical comparison that I can think of are the conquistadors in Peru in the 1530s, who grabbed large tracks of land and set up their haciendas, and lorded over the (in their view) frail, stupid, and exploitable Inca. Now I need to be clear, these Gringos did not conquer the land, nor defeat the indigenous people, the vast majority of whom are descended from European Spaniards intermixed with Native Mayans and their cousins. Nor are they an occupying army that has burned and raped its way through the country. That was done centuries ago by the Spanish.

The Panamanians, of course, have forgotten that ancient history, and the local propaganda machines now are making sure that everyone knows just who the invaders are; the Gringos from America who stole their land and canal, which only the hard-fought protests and deaths of martyrs reclaimed for the nation. The Canal Museum in Panama City drips with the struggle, and in rejection of the invader who stole the sovereign solid of beloved Panama, all the displays information is in Spanish only. The American invasion in 1989 didn't help.

Unfortunately though, some new Gringos ('new' in the past couple of decades, after the handover of the Canal and dismantling of the Zone) seem to share some of the conquistador attitudes.  "This is our land, we acquired it fairly and we can do what we want with it". We do not need to share with you, as you are inferior and lazy. And we will do what we want as a community within but excluding the surrounding community. We will even eat of Gringo owned establishments, even if they are slightly more expensive than local establishments, with food and service that is no better than what if produces and service by the local community.

An elite cannot remain forever in such a position without creating hostility, even if in good (or even moderate) economic times there is mutual acceptance of the boundaries. But as the situation deteriorates, the underlying animosity within the local communities can grow. Poor locals see people much like themselves, but rich and, in their eyes, just as lazy as they are, but with money and power. Where did this authority and money come from, and why is it not being shared. After all, these people (Gringos) are no different from us, as we see every day. Yet they are here, they are rich, and they deserve what they have no more than we deserve the benefits of wealth. And if they are the same as us, then why can we not have what they have?

In a land where income is defined literally by how hard physically a person works, the idea of intellectual capital or 'knowledge working' resulting in 'wealth' is simply incomprehensible. Manual labour pays $15/day (with the Gringos distorting the market at $20/day) while "brick work" (the local equivalent of a tradesman) goes for as much as $30 - $40/day, when they can find work. The amount you work and the amount you sweat defines how much you earn and what you are worth.

Covid-19 is a disease that impacts the poor disproportionally. They have less access to medicine and doctors, their underlying health is weaker (due to a number of factors, almost all economic), they live in tighter quarters without adequate ventilation, they must work or they will not eat and their families will not eat, and the lack of adequate education reduces their understanding of the impact of hygiene as a factor in combating disease. 

But they know that this disease did not spread from the poor to the poor and from the rich to the poor. They know very well that the rich brought this disease into their country, their city, then their region and town. They know that the rich travelled to Spain and Italy on holiday, something impossible for them, and brought this back with them. Now the rich blame the poor for inadequate hygiene and failing to “social distance” and quarantine. 

"Se imaginan a cuántas personas habrá contagiado?  Todos estos familiares a su vez tuvieron contacto con sus familias, amigos, compañeros de trabajo y de estudios!!😱" (Can you imagine how many people it will have infected? All these relatives in turn had contact with their families, friends, colleagues and students !! 😱)

This picture is from Ecuador, but the scenario is the same across Latin American, and certainly the same in Panama. One woman returns from Spain, and there is a large family gathering and party to welcome her home. She carries the Covid-19 virus in her. Soon the virus is running rampant. Servants catch the disease, and as servants rarely live in the employers home any longer, they take the virus back into their communities. 

It was the "rich" that brought the disease in from outside the country. 

And on the “Dark Side” as a friend calls the Mariato side of the Azuero Peninsula, they know that the rich Gringos around them will be taken care of if they get sick. But if you are poor, you might get some treatment in the local Saludo, and who knows, they might even take you to the big city to a real hospital to treat you, or you family member, who by the time they are taken to the city, will already have infected everyone else in the family, and probably other local families.

Meanwhile Gringos were surfing when all outdoor activity was banned. And when they were told to stop, they complained. They are special and not like Panamanians, and they own their beaches. They are different and the rules should not apply to them. 

There is too much opportunity for anger, and that will not end well. Especially when there is a wealthy elite who have a vested interest in limiting the impact of the Gringo influx into their area of the country.

I am worried.

Finishing the conquistador comparison – the Inca revolted and slaughtered the isolated conquistadors in their new haciendas, and marched on Cuzco. The revolt eventually was put down, though it did take a year, and required a re-conquest of the Inca territories. A revolt against Gringos would be put down, but it might take some time, and the isolated Gringo properties will be at risk for quite some time. 

It needs to be remembered that the Panamanians (some, not all) view the Gringos not fundamentally different from the Conquistadors, in that the Gringos occupied the Zone and for decades extracted the wealth of the country through control of the Canal and the revenues of the Canal. While there is a huge amount of nuance required in this, such as the rationale for the Zone, Panama’s acceptance of the ‘deal’ in exchange for independence from Bogata, and a US Congressional mandate that the Canal be run at break-even, there is in Panama today a nationalistic streak that is using the Canal as a prop in a revisionist history that centres around a betrayal of Panama. That revisionist history is used to explain why Panama is still poor and why it is someone else’s fault that they were occupied and exploited. 

That nationalism carries over to label Gringos invaders, who while they provide jobs (some, temporarily) and incomes to some, are still not of and never will be Panamanian. They will always be an elite that has imposed themselves. Foreigners are not welcome in Panama, no matter what is said and what you might see. They are foreigners. They are to be exploited for all that can be extracted before they realise that they are being robbed - then move on to the next Gringo if you can.

It is that revisionism, coupled I must say with the treatment of Panamanians as inferior by some Gringos, and of course with the introduction of Covid-19 by the rich, that will contribute to what may happen.

Oh, and one other minor historical note: the Incan conquest and subsequent revolt took place within the context of a multi-year pandemic that killed half or more of the Incan population.