“We built it. We paid for it. It’s ours.”
That was Ronald Reagan’s take on how we should think about the Panama Canal when Americans were debating giving it to the Panamanian government in the 1970s.
“We cannot abdicate our responsibility for the operation of the canal and the security of the Western Hemisphere,” Reagan said.
Reagan’s argument narrowly lost out in the halls of Congress. The canal was given to Panama after the Senate narrowly ratified—and then-President Jimmy Carter signed—two treaties with the Central American nation in 1977.
But Reagan won the 1980 election, and what he said resonated with many Americans who were fed up with seemingly endless foreign-policy retreats and failures.
Was Reagan right all along that relinquishing control over one of the great architectural wonders of the world would be a huge…
