Canal vote releases tensions

Melodrama, plus foreign policy impact

By Richard L. Strout | Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

The Panama Canal Treaty ratification struggle lasted longer than expected, was closer than expected, and has had more oblique consequences than expected.

There was melodrama at the end, with U.S. troops in Panama on the alert, Panamanian troops apparently ready to seize the canal, and the senators in their breathless chamber barely able to muster one vote more than the two-thirds required, 68-32.

“This is a day of which Americans can always feel proud,” President Carter said on TV. The treaties, he said, “symbolize our determination to deal with the developing nations of the world, the small nations of the world, on the basis of mutual respect and partnership.”

The administration was eager to put a constructive interpretation on the vote which, indeed, if it had gone the other way, could have all but destroyed the President’s credibility abroad in handling foreign affairs.

On the other hand, in the next-to-final day a coterie of senators took negotiations with Panama largely out of the executive’s hands and worked out a satisfactory compromise through their own channels, with White House officials waiting in the anterooms.

Mr. Carter feels “exuberant” over treaty passage, said House Democratic Leader Jim Wright of Texas after a leadership breakfast at the White House. The President sees no difficulty in getting implementing legislation from Congress, and he feels Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos took a “responsible stand” under extreme pressure in the final excitement.

Senate failure to pass the treaty, Mr. Carter thinks, would have unleashed an “unruly mob” trying to storm the U.S.-controlled Canal Zone. Mr. Carter minimizes General Torrijos’ own threats as intended for home consumption.

The treaty now ratified by the Senate transfers management of the canal to a joint commission. The U.S. retains the decisive voice. Operation of the canal will be shared in gradual but increasing steps, with Panama finally taking control at noon, Dec. 31, 1999. Thus will presumably end a transfer whose negotiation began some 14 years before the April 18 final treaty ratification.

The Panama fight emphasizes the constitutional difficulty of getting a two-thirds Senate majority for any treaty - a difficulty which defeated the Versailles Treaty and kept the U.S. out of the League of Nations. In a Congress of 535 members, 34 senators have a veto under the two-thirds requirement.
Here are some results seen from the Treaty vote:

President Carter’s prestige is raised. He has landed the first “big one” from Congress in his 15-month incumbency; simultaneously the stock market cheers the administration by showing some signs of reviving business confidence.

It removes a two-month-old roadblock on other Senate legislation, particularly the energy bill, which Mr. Carter sent up one year ago - April 20, 1977. He then saw “an impending catastrophe,” but Congress hasn’t acted yet.

The treaty gives Republicans a political problem between Ronald Reagan who opposed it and Gerald Ford and Sen. Howard Baker who favored it.

Treaty passage indicates that defeat in the Vietnam war has not blocked U.S. concessions to smaller countries. The “loss of prestige” argument hung like a cloud over much of the Senate’s debate.
Lastly, the Senate ratification should head off an adverse reaction in Latin America and third-world countries generally against alleged U.S. colonialism.