The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective

This newly updated edition of Walter LaFeber's widely praised study of the evolution of U.S.-Panama relations contains two new chapters on the events that have occurred since the Panama Canal Treaty in 1978. This new edition offers particularly detailed examinations of the 1988 attempt to oust Manuel Noriega and Noriega's role in aiding the Nicaraguan Contras, as well as invaluable background information for understanding the 1989 crises. LaFeber argues that the interdependent, but turbulent, relationship between Panama and the United States continued into the 1980s with the U.S. using General Manuel Antonio Noriega to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. U.S. officials in the Reagan administration also subordinated widespread knowledge of Noriega's drug trafficking in order to keep Panama in line with the U.S. policy towards Nicaragua. But by 1986, the United States both knew and demanded too much of Noriega, and the relationship finally began to fragment. LaFeber's updated volume remains the essential source for anyone who wants a complete picture of U.S.-Panama relations from Balboa to the present.