'No one who knows anything' would see China as a threat in Panama: ex-Army official

Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to retake control of the Panama Canal, but military experts say his stated concerns about national security are vastly overblown.

The president claimed in his inaugural address that "China is operating the Panama Canal," saying that "totally violated" the terms of the 1977 treaty handing control of the canal to the Central American nation, but Panamanian officials and former military officials told the Wall Street Journal that Trump doesn't know what he's talking about.

“No one who knows anything about military technology or tactics would view container ports around the world as a national-security threat,” said Joe Reeder, a former U.S. Army undersecretary now on the Panama Canal’s international advisory board.

China probably couldn't convert Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa's busy container port terminal for military use, Reeder said, and he and other experts say the Chinese infrastructure built up in recent years around the canal do not present a national security threat or violate the canal's neutrality.

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“Nothing that China does is ever purely commercial, [but] Panama is close and we know it well," said Wesley Clark, the retired U.S. Army general and former NATO commander. "If China were to seek military advantage there, we could take rapid and decisive action.”

Clark and Panamanian officials say the Trump administration would be better off pushing American companies to invest there to counter China's economic influence after Hutchinson outbid a U.S.- and Japanese-based companies in 1996 to run the ports.

“China will, as always, respect Panama’s sovereignty over the canal and recognize the canal as a permanently neutral international waterway," a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said.

Chinese ranks a distant second to the U.S., and Panamanian authorities denied Trump's claims about American vessels paying exorbitant rates for passage and disputed what he said about China's influence on the region.

“China has no involvement whatsoever in our operations,” said canal administrator Ricaurte Vásquez. “We cannot discriminate against the Chinese, or the Americans, or anyone else.”

The U.S. has intervened in Panama, which has no central bank or armed forces of its own, as recently as 1989, when American troops overthrew then-dictator Manuel Noriega, but retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who once led the Souther Command, said Trump's plans for a military takeover of the canal would be illegal and risky.

“We would sound like it was the 1850s,” McCaffrey said. “If you’re a foreign illegal power, how would we operate the canal without Panamanians?”