Few took the president-elect’s combative comments at face value, but they still sent a shudder through a country that has been invaded by the United States before.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s suggestion on Tuesday that the United States might reclaim the Panama Canal — including by force — unsettled Panamanians, who used to live with the presence of the U.S. military in the canal zone and were invaded by American military forces once before.
Few appeared to be taking Mr. Trump’s threats very seriously, but Panama’s foreign minister, Javier Martínez-Acha, made his country’s position clear at a news conference hours after the American president-elect mused aloud about retaking the canal, which the United States built but turned over to Panama in the late 1990s.
“The sovereignty of our canal is nonnegotiable and is part of our history of struggle and an irreversible conquest,” Mr. Martínez-Acha said. “Let it be clear: The canal belongs to the Panamanians and it will continue to be that way.”
Experts said that Mr. Trump’s real goal might have been intimidation, perhaps aimed at securing favorable treatment from Panama’s government for American ships that use the passageway. More broadly, they said, he might be trying to send a forceful message across a region that will be critical to his goals of controlling the flow of migrants toward the U.S. border.
“If the U.S. wanted to flout international law and act like Vladimir Putin, the U.S. could invade Panama and recover the canal,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program in Washington, adding, “No one would see it as a legitimate act, and it would bring not only grievous damage to its image, but instability to the canal.”