The Week

The State Department is thinking of using computers to determine our foreign policy, presumably because it would be comforting to know that our next fiasco was, at least, a calculated risk.

President Roberto Francisco Chiari of Panama had his two days of “talks” with President Kennedy on the usual topics of pelf and power. To wit: he would like more cash from the Canal, and he would like the U.S. flag to drop, permanently, from the territory over which by treaty it rightly flies. Well, the Canal isn’t what it used to be, what with ships getting heavier about the hips, and there’s talk of digging another, somewhere. But treaties are very much treaties, and national sovereignty is, if anything, more than what it used to be, for little countries, that is. The yearning to Nasserize the Panama Canal is only an expression of Panamanian chauvinism gone amok, and in Panama, as in many other spots about the globe, the riot of local nationalism takes over in areas vacated by the United States’ own disavowal of its national interest. As in so much of human life the discussion will focus on a symbol; in this case the symbol is the continuing presence of the United States flag in the Zone, and the absence of the Panamanian flag. Whether that symbol will be dragged out to sea in the ebb tide of our withdrawal, who can say? There was a time when American statesmen fought for such things as flags.

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The State Department is thinking of using computers to determine our foreign policy, presumably because it would be comforting to know that our next fiasco was, at least, a calculated risk.

President Roberto Francisco Chiari of Panama had his two days of “talks” with President Kennedy on the usual topics of pelf and power. To wit: he would like more cash from the Canal, and he would like the U.S. flag to drop, permanently, from the territory over which by treaty it rightly flies. Well, the Canal isn’t what it used to be, what with ships getting heavier about the hips, and there’s talk of digging another, somewhere. But treaties are very much treaties, and national sovereignty is, if anything, more than what it used to be, for little countries, that is. The yearning to Nasserize the Panama Canal is only an expression of Panamanian chauvinism gone amok, and in Panama, as in many other spots about the globe, the riot of local nationalism takes over in areas vacated by the United States’ own disavowal of its national interest. As in so much of human life the discussion will focus on a symbol; in this case the symbol is the continuing presence of the United States flag in the Zone, and the absence of the Panamanian flag. Whether that symbol will be dragged out to sea in the ebb tide of our withdrawal, who can say? There was a time when American statesmen fought for such things as flags.