Título: THE WEAK AND THE POWERFUL: OMAR TORRIJOS, PANAMA, AND THE NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT IN THE WORLD
Autor: BROWN, JONATHAN C.
Año: 2024
Género: BIOGRAFÍAS Y MEMORIAS
Formato: PDF
Panama is a country whose geopolitical importance outweighs its size because of the volume of trade that passes the Central American isthmus through the canal. For nearly a century, the United States occupied and controlled the Panama Canal Zone and its shipping operations. In 1999, control was passed to Panama's Canal Authority. This peaceful transfer was a result of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties. «The Weak and the Powerful» studies how a weak country negotiated the Cold War and how a strongman navigated between competing power blocs.
Omar Torrijos took power in Panama through a 1968 coup d'état and ruled that country until his death in 1981. He committed his country to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which purported to stand for noninterference and against imperialism. Jonathan C. Brown looks at how Torrijos and the NAM were able to mobilize world opinion of the weak against the powerful to pressure the United States to live up to its democratic and international ideals regarding sovereignty of the canal. The author also demonstrates how world opinion was unable to address the problems of ideologically motivated warfare in neighboring Central American states.
«The Weak and the Powerful» offers a compelling reexamination of Panama's role in hemispheric politics. The book highlights Torrijos' strategic use of international alliances to pressure the United States into granting historic concessions. This achievement came at a time of significant U.S. intervention in Latin America—an irony that reinforces Brown's larger argument that “no model of international relations can explain [Torrijos'] accomplishments”. Ultimately, Dr. Brown's return to the Panama Canal offers a fresh perspective on treaty negotiations and enriches existing Cold War historiography.
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