ADMINISTRATION SUPPORT FOR TREATIES As I understand the testimony given by all of you, you are in accord in supporting these treaties. Secretary BROWN. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. General BROWN. That is correct. [General McAuliffe nods affirmatively.] [Admiral Long nods affirmatively.] HEADQUARTERS OF COMMANDER IN CHIEF, U S. SOUTHERN COMMAND The CHAIRMAN. General McAuliffe, you are Commander in Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, aren't you? General MCAULIFFE. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Are you stationed in Panama, or here? General MCAULIFFE. I am stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. My headquarters is located at Quarry Heights in the Canal Zone on the southern or Pacific side. The CHAIRMAN. How long have you been in the service? General MCAULIFFE. In the service, I have been commissioned for 33 years, approximately. The CHAIRMAN. Were you ever at Bastogne? General MCAULIFFE. No, sir. The CHAIRMAN. So it was not you who said "Nuts" to surrender? [General laughter.] It is the same name, isn't it? General MCAULIFFE. It is the same name, Mr. Chairman, and that fine soldier regrettably was not related to me. The CHAIRMAN. I have just a few questions. I would like to spread the questioning around, because as I stated earlier we are going to have frequent rollcalls and will have to operate more or less in staggered formation as a committee. U.S. USE OF PANAMANIAN LAND, AIR SPACE, WATERS TO CARRY OUT DEFENSE FUNCTIONS Does the treaty allow to the United States all necessary rights to use Panamanian land, air space, and waters to carry out our defense functions? Secretary BROWN. During the period of the treaty, to last until December 31, 1999, that provision is made, Mr. Chairman. NEUTRALITY AGREEMENT The CHAIRMAN. And after that time there will be a neutrality agreement? Secretary BROWN. Yes, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Do you feel that under the neutrality agreement the canal operations and our interests in it will be amply protected? Secretary BROWN. That is my judgment, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Do all of you agree with that? General BROWN. Yes, sir. Admiral LONG. Yes, sir, I do. [General McAuliffe nods affirmatively.] EMOTIONAL PUBLIC ISSUE The CHAIRMAN. You do realize that with many people in this country this is quite an emotional issue. We have all heard the statements, "Don't give away the canal," and in some instances, "We bought it, paid for it, and we don't intend to give it away." You don't feel that there is any validity in such statements as that, do you? Secretary BROWN. Mr. Chairman, insofar as they reflect feelings of many of the American people, even though they are uninformed feelings, I think they have to be taken into account. I have tried this morning to put the case rationally and practically, and I believe that rationally and practically the case is overwhelming that these treaties provide us by far the best assurance of continuing to be able to use the canal for our military and for our urgent shipping vessels. The emotional feelings are very hard to counter with rational, practical arguments or with education, and I therefore recognize that they have to be responded to anyway. My response to those slogans that | you were quoting is that we want to use the canal, and it is use, not ownership, that counts. The CHAIRMAN. I am sure every member of this committee, every Senator and Members of the House have had very heavy mail. You have seen in press reports some of them indicating how their mail has been running. It is a heavily emotional issue that must be dealt with. What we want to do in these hearings is to get the real facts for the committee and for the country. I certainly appreciate the very fine help that you have given us this morning, Senator Case. VISUAL AIDS Senator CASE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Might I say in apology, if any is necessary, to the witnesses immediately before us, that our staff suggestions were made to the State Department people who were coordinating these hearings. It may not have gotten to you. I assume it did not, of course. Secretary BROWN. I think it was suggested to our staffs that a map be provided. We have such a map and if the questions are such as will have their answers helped by use of the map, we will be happy to use it. Senator CASE. Fine. I leave it to you. You are presenting the case. We are not trying to direct it. It just was a suggestion that it might be more easily understood if there were a visual aid. Secretary BROWN. That may very well prove to be the case. "THE PANAMA CANAL-SOVEREIGNTY AND SECURITY" ARTICLE Senator CASE. You all know, as we all do, especially those of us who have been around for a while, Hanson Baldwin. Hanson Baldwin has a most distinguished career, as well as a very long onemilitary expert and writer for the New York Times, and then later for Readers' Digest. He got the Pulitzer Prize for correspondence in 1943, and in general he is a distinguished American figure. He is unhappy about this thing. He wrote in the "AEI [American Enterprise Institute] Defense Review" Number 4, an article entitled, "The Panama Canal-Sovereignty and Security." I assume that you have individually or at least through your staffs had this article examined. He starts out by saying: The future security and well-being of the United States are threatened by the administration's proposed abandonment of sovereignty over the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone. Any such action would have global consequences, nowhere more adverse than in the Caribbean Sea-Gulf of Mexico area. The vital interests of a nation can be defined in territorial and regional terms or as political, psychological, economic, or military interests. By any and all of these yardsticks, the security of the Caribbean, the ability of the United States to control the Caribbean in war and to be a dominant influence there in peace, is vital to our country. I assume that there is no disagreement among any of you as to the proposition stated there in general terms. Secretary BROWN. In general terms, I would agree with the latter part of his statement, Senator Case. The implication that the United States has sovereignty over the Canal Zone I think is totally incorrect. Senator CASE. I wasn't really asking you to comment on that part. I was not quite specific enough in my question. It is this point I want you to address, that our vital interests may be defined in territorial and regional or as political, psychological, economic, or military interests and that by any of these yardsticks the security of the Caribbean, the ability of the United States to control the Caribbean in war and to be a dominant influence there in peace is vital to our country. Do you accept that? Secretary BROWN. I think that is a reasonable proposition. General BROWN. Yes; I would agree that that general summation is true. Senator CASE. As far as the specifics of the argument go, he comes to the conclusion that the proposed treaties are and our action in regard to the canal under them is harmful to that control and the security of the Caribbean and our ability to control it are adversely affected by them, and as to that, of course, you disagree in detail, and quite specifically, and that is true of each of you, I take it. [General McAuliffe nods affirmatively.] Secretary BROWN. It is, sir. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL FACTORS INVOLVED Senator CASE. He goes on at very considerable length, and I think it is fair to say that he is very much affected by the psychological and political factors involved here. Now, that isn't necessarily your specific and primary concern, but it certainly is a part of your concern. [Secretary Brown nods affirmatively.] Senator CASE. And that includes the military professionals as well as the Secretary, I take it. You cannot operate as heads of your various services and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs without taking these very much into account. Is that correct? General BROWN. That is true. I would say one of the elements that leads to our support of these new treaties is the impact, the favorable impact, ratification would have on all of Latin America and the acceptance of the United States as living by the moral principles that we espouse in divesting ourselves of this last appearance of colonialism. in Panama. Senator CASE. I won't ask you to comment any more on this, but I would like, Mr. Chairman, to include it in the record, so that if anyone wants to comment on it-and I would be very glad to have you do that in detail for the record-they may do so. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, that will be done. [The information referred to follows:] [From the AEI Defense Review] THE PANAMA CANAL: SOVEREIGNTY AND SECURITY (By Hanson W. Baldwin) The future security and well-being of the United States are threatened by the administration's proposed abandonment of sovereignty over the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone. Any such action would have global consequences, nowhere more adverse than in the Caribbean Sea-Gulf of Mexico area. The vital interests of a nation can be defined in territorial and regional terms or as political, psychological, economic, or military interests. By any and all of these yardsticks, the security of the Caribbean, the ability of the United States to control the Caribbean in war and to be a dominant influence there in peace, is vital to our country. THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF THE CANAL These southern seas have been considered essential to U.S. security since the time of Thomas Jefferson and the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine. The great importance of the Caribbean has been restated in modern terms by Alfred Thayer Mahan and all succeeding generations of strategists. In fact, in a strategic sense the Caribbean-Gulf of Mexico area must be considered the mare nostrum of the United States. Unless we are capable of controlling it, we are, indeed, undone. Yet that capability has already been gravely weakened; the turning point was the Communists' seizure of power in Cuba, the Caribbean's most important island, only ninety miles from our shores. Soviet Migs flying in Cuban skies, Soviet submarines calling at Cuban ports, and the hammer and sickle flaunting its red blazon of revolution across the area are both cause and symbol of the deterioration in the past fifteen years of U.S. security on our southern flank. Our own mistakes and weaknesses have cost us dearly; the infiltrators are within the outer walls, and what should be our island-speckled ramparts are becoming today the soft underbelly of North America. It is this broad perspective the future of the Caribbean-Gulf of Mexico area-that any basic change in the status of the Panama Canal must be judged, for any such change will profoundly affect our interests in the area and hence, ultimately, our political, psychological, economic, and military security. And, in an even larger, global sense, any retreat or major concession in Panama in the face of the threats of General Omar Torrijos, the Panamanian dictator, can only be interpreted around the world as scuttle-and run, further proof of the weakening of the will and resolution of the United States. Faith in promises made, belief in the power of a nation and its will to use it in defense of its own interests, is the coin of international respect; since Castro, Vietnam, Angola, the credibility of the United States has been severely impaired and our international solvency in doubt. Panama and the canal are therefore both cause and symbol; the canal is highly important in its own right, but far more so as a symbol of U.S. resolution and as one of the vital links in our vital interests in the Caribbean. Looked at in this light, the canal itself, contrary to the claims of its detractors, is in no way obsolete. It is ironic, indeed, that in an era when the United States Navy needs the canal to a greater degree than at any time since the end of World War II, Washington is considering its abandonment. The navy today is in the same stra 96-949-77—8 tegic bind it was in prior to World War II; it is a one-ocean navy (in size and power) with two-ocean responsibilities. We are outnumbered in submarines and surface ships by the Soviet Union, and, more than at any period since 1945, the navy must have a quick transfer capability between Atlantic and Pacific in order to meet sudden crises. To send the fleet or individual ships around the Horn, as in the days of Fighting Bob Evans and Teddy Roosevelt, might be, in the modern age of speed, to lose a war. General V. H. Krulak, United States Marine Corps (ret.), writing in the summer 1975 issue of Strategic Review, summarized the canal's naval importance: "In truth the Panama Canal is an essential link between the naval forces of the United States deployed in the Atlantic and in the Pacific. It is only because of the waterway that we are able to risk having what amounts to a bare-bones, one-ocean Navy." It is ironic, too, that a major change in naval ship size, construction, and design is starting just at the time when proponents of a transfer of canal sovereignty justify their position by arguing that the locks cannot accommodate the navy's largest ships. The argument-true, though only for the moment-is irrelevant. Only the thirteen giant aircraft carriers of the U.S. Navy have too large a beam to pass through the 110-foot width of the present locks. Yet the days of these behemoths of the seas are numbered; well before 2000 (one of the dates proposed for the transfer of sovereignty over the canal to Panama) a new generation of ships will begin to replace them-smaller, but more effective, with VSTOL aircraft, drones, missiles, or other new state-of-the-art developments like hovercraft and hydrofoils. Even more important is the fact that every other ship in the U.S. Navy (except the thirteen carriers) can transit the canal, a fact of major importance in limited war, the type of crisis we are most likely to face. Our missile-firing and attack submarines (now deservedly called capital ships of the navy), all our antisubmarine and escort forces, our amphibious vessels, and our support and supply craft can transit the canal-a fact which has already proved of major importance in two recent instances. During the Cuban missile crisis marines and supplies from the West Coast ferried through the canal to the Caribbean. If they had had to pass around Cape Horn, they would never have arrived in time to influence the outcome. As it was, the threat of invasion helped materially to force Khrushchev to change his mind. During the Vietnam War about 98 percent of all supplies for our forces were shipped by sea; of this total, approximately 33 percent were loaded in East and Gulf Coast ports and transited the canal. The volume of military-sponsored cargo in the four years from 1964 to 1968 increased, for dry cargo, by some 640 percent and for petroleum products by about 430 percent. And the number of U.S. government vessels (chiefly naval) transiting the canal increased from 284 in 1965 to more than 1,500 in 1968. The limitations of the current locks (though, indeed, the canal can handle much more traffic than the 12,000 to 14,000 vessels a year that now use it) have, in any case, little relevance. A third set of locks, larger than the existing ones, was long ago authorized and started, but work was suspended because of World War II, the excavations (within the present ten-mile-wide Canal Zone) still exist, and whenever the need is demonstrated the new locks could be completed. There is another military factor which bears on the present and future utility of the canal and deserves mention in passing. Nuclear weapons, it is said, have made the canal indefensible and vulnerable to sudden destruction. Actually other means of blocking or closing the canal existed long before the development of nuclear weapons. The point is, however, that this change is completely irrelevant. No sane enemy would waste a nuclear warhead on the Panama Canal with such decisive targets naked to his missiles as New York City and Washington, the industrial complexes of Pittsburgh and Cleveland, the huge urban, industrial. and naval-port complexes of Norfolk and San Diego. In a nuclear war, the Panama Canal would simply play no role whatsoever, either as target or as launching pad. Finally, the U.S. Panama Canal Zone offers facilities unavailable elsewhere under the U.S. flag for training troops in jungle warfare. More important, the zone is oriented towards the problems of Central and South America and the zone's army schools and training faciilties have fostered and helped to develop a close and productive military liaison between the armed forces of many nations in the Southern Hemisphere and the United States. Most important, the |