The Use of the Panama and Suez Canals

The comparison begins with the Suez canal, simply because it is older than the Panama canal. The Suez canal was completed before the Panama canal, with constructed having been finished in 1869. The Americans initially had no influence over the construction and control of the Suez canal. Indeed it was the French that were originally responsible for developing the idea of the Suez canal. The French believed correctly that the Suez canal would be a commercial success as well as being of great strategic and military value.

The potential of the Suez canal was also clearly understood by the British. Thus the Suez canal was constructed by Britain and France with both countries sharing control of the canal zone. The construction of the Suez canal fulfilled the function of providing a link between the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean, essential for the commercial and strategic interests of the British and the French in the late nineteenth century. The opening of the Suez canal meant that the British and the French were able to link their African and Asian colonies much closer to each other.

From its opening the Suez canal was a great commercial success, reducing the time it took to export goods and materials out of Asia to European consumers and factories. The success of the Suez canal as a commercial shipping route obviously brought substantial profits and dividends to the Anglo-French shareholders that owned it. Such was the commercial and strategic importance of the Suez canal that the British gained de facto over Egypt as a whole in ordrer to run the canal for several decades. The British effectively ran Egypt as an informal colony from the early 1880s despite the county still officially being a part of the Ottoman Empire.

Egypt officially gained independence from Britain in 1936 yet the British still controlled the canal zone, with profits still going to British and French shareholders. The nationalist Egyptian government under General Nasser that came to power in 1952 was determined to own the Suez canal. When the Egyptians did gain complete control of the canal it caused the Suez Crisis of 1956. The Suez Crisis amply demonstrated the declining military power of Britain and France. Once Egypt had full control of the Suez canal US governments had to balance having unrestricted access to the canal with its support for Israel.

During the Cold War the US was anxious to retain access to the Suez canal as well as countering Soviet influence in the Middle East. For a time it looked as though American strategy had failed with the Soviet Union having a strong influence over the Egyptian government. Egyptian defeat in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 might have brought about the Oil Crisis yet it also reduced Soviet influence in Cairo resulting in the Camp David Accord of 1978.

Today access to the Suez canal remains very important, due to the canal been a shipping route for crude oil from the Middle East and the Persian Gulf to other parts of the world. In strategic and military terms the Suez canal remains an important transit point especially for naval forces wanting to move from the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf through to the Indian Ocean. Providing that the US can maintain sound relations with Egypt then it should have no problems in keeping access to the Suez canal unrestricted.

The US had a much greater influence over the construction of the Panama canal as from the onset it was built to serve American commercial, strategic, and military interests. The Spanish had similar ideas about building a canal in Colombia yet had never been able to achieve it. In strategic and military terms the completion of the Panama canal meant that warships of the US Navy could move from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean or vice versa without having to sail around the tip of South America. So important was that ability that the US even created the state of Panama out of Columbia in order to have complete control over the Panama canal.