The Limits of Victory: The Ratification of the Panama Canal Treaties (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 259 The Limits ofVictory: The Ratification of the Panama Canal Treaties. By George D. Moffett III. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. pp. 261. Reviewed by Lawrence T. DiRita, M.A. candidate, SAIS. The most recent casualty in the turbulent Latin American political scene was the fragile government of Panama's President Nicholas Barletta. In the wake of his dismissal by the armed forces, Americans are left to consider once again the impact that this instability might have on the only real U.S. strategic interest in that country—the Panama Canal. In The Limits of Victory George Moffett has brought into sharp focus the controversy that surrounded the two treaties, signed in 1977 and ratified in 1978, which in the year 2000 will turn over control of that vital waterway to the Panamanian government—whatever form it may have. Moffett builds his study around the divergence between public opinion and official attitudes toward the two treaties. The agreements (the Neutrality Treaty and the Panama Canal Treaty) had the bipartisan support of all living former presidents, the chiefs of two hundred Fortune-500—rank corporations (representing 95 percent of U.S. investment exposure in Latin America), the party leadership on both sides of the Senate, and virtually the entire foreign-policy elite in and out of government. Yet how could they nearly fail to be ratified? Further, in pushing through the treaties, how could the Carter administration have expended so much political capital that it was effectively crippled in foreign-policy initiatives for the remainder of its term, sowing the seeds of its own defeat two years later? In answering these questions, Moffett examines both public opinion and the techniques of the major lobbying efforts. Through extensive examination of the various polls conducted during the long campaign for ratification, he discovers a clear trend—a trend that the New Right and its leading spokesman, Ronald Reagan, rode nearly to the point of victory. In brief, the New Right exploited the fact that those who favored ratification were somewhat ambivalent but those who opposed it were resolute. The lesson Moffett draws is that when gauging public opinion, one must consider not only the magnitude but the intensity of feeling. Indeed, the treaties issue became the baptism of the New Right in the church of public opinion. Although the Right lost this battle, it gained the momentum to win the war in 1980. Just as effectively, Moffett describes the high degree of skill with which the Carter White House organized itself for victory. It faced the herculean task of educating a public that knew very little about the Panama Canal and virtually nothing about the efforts to turn control of it over to Panama, which had begun in earnest with the Eisenhower administration. Furthermore, the administration had to counter the argument offered by the Right, that a "sellout" in Panama was just another in a string of American foreign-policy crises that had reached a peak with the fall of South Vietnam. This sentiment was best expressed in thencandidate Reagan's emotion-charged claim that "We built it, we paid for it, it's ours and we're going to keep it!" President Carter, on the other hand, was proposing nothing less than a sea change in foreign policy. The White House took up the Canal issue as the linchpin of this new "liberal internationalist" world outlook. To win on this issue, the administration organized a vast effort of education and persuasion, which influenced numerous fence-sitters among the public and the policymaking elite. 260 SAIS REVIEW Nevertheless, the intensity of the opposition clearly matched the "soft" support in every body of opinion—the public, the Senate, and the international banking and business community. Both treaties passed, of course, but byjust one vote more than the necessary two-thirds Senate majority. However, as Zbigniew Brzezinski noted, it was a Pyrrhic victory for the president. While foreign and domestic supporters reacted enthusiastically, the domestic political costs were substantial. Moffett, who was assistant to chief-of-staff Hamilton Jordan for the last two years of the Carter presidency, was in an excellent position to evaluate the effects of the battle on...