Talk:Panama Canal

I never could figure out why TR didn't go ahead with his canal-digging plans immediately after GWI when the Rebs were too badly beaten to object. Not only would it have yielded strategic advantages--and the importance of that has to have become clear during the war in operations like the one where the Dakota was sent up around the Horn--it would have provided employment and investment opportunities during the downturn portrayed in B&I.

Also, I wonder why they wanted to do Nicaragua instead of Panama. Nicaragua's not a bad choice but Panama is better. Panama was owned by Colombia until the OTL Roosevelt supported an uprising by Panamanian nationalists in exchange for the Canal Zone. (Amusingly, he attempted to conceal US involvement but eventually allowed himself to be goaded into bragging about his coup publicly. Less amusing was the $10 million indemnity we then had to pay Colombia.)

191 Colombia was neutral in both Great Wars. It did rely on US support during its conflict with Venezuela in 1925. Sinclair could have said "Okay, we saved your bacon, now let us dig a canal through your isthmus" (which would be a good euphemism for sex) and the Rebs would still have been too weak to object. (Maybe the Germans would have stopped them? The alliance had never been chillier and they backed Venezuela, though what they stood to gain from it is beyond me.)

Also, I suppose Sinclair would have shied away from a foreign policy that came so close to imperialism. Unique among the Socialist presidents in TL-191, he actually gave some indication that he knew what socialism is, though he certainly was lax in following it domestically. Talk about power corrupting, huh?

And speaking of power corrupting, in OTL we've known that socialist governments can get over their allergy to imperialism quickly enough, ever since the USSR's Mongolian adventure in 1924. That was one year earlier than the Venezuelan-Colombian conflict and was in the third year of the USSR's socialist government, as opposed to the fifth year of the USA's. Turtle Fan 16:06, May 26, 2011 (UTC)