Reagan, like Trump, wanted to keep control of the Canal zone—but for different reasons. For Trump it’s all about China—for Reagan it was that evergreen bugaboo of the U.S. foreign policy establishment: credibility.
Said Reagan:
I don’t believe that in Latin America we would do anything to strengthen our position by, again, yielding to the unpleasantness in this treaty. I think, if anything, we would become a laughingstock by surrendering to unreasonable demands, and by doing so, I think we cloak weakness in the suit of virtue.
Buckley, on the other hand, sounded a very different key, noting,
The fact of the matter is that there are people in Panama who don’t accept the notion of Governor Reagan about the undisputed, unambiguous sovereignty that the United States exercises over that territory. We do have there the absolute right, which I do not deny and which my colleagues do not deny, to stay there as long as we want. But to say that we have sovereignty, as Governor Reagan has said, is to belie the intention of the people who supervised our diplomacy in the early part of the century, and it is also to urge people to believe that we harbor an appetite for colonialism.
While the debate over the future of the Canal will almost certainly divide Democrats from Republicans, it also has the potential to divide the navel-gazers who comprise the “realist and restraint” foreign policy community here in Washington. After all, one can easily dream up arguments for re-claiming the Canal on realist grounds—especially (perhaps solely) as they relate to China—but it would be the height of hypocrisy to claim any such move would reflect the priorities of “restrainers”—especially if Trump attempts to reclaim the Canal by force.
In the end, Trump has reopened debate around what was thought to be a long settled issue; perhaps it would be too much to hope that those on both sides of the current debate over the future of the Panama Canal follow the example set by Reagan and Buckley back in 1978.