Panama finds itself caught in Washington’s crosshairs as the U.S. President, Donald Trump, indiscriminately indulges his penchant to provoke partners and rivals, far and near, even before he officially entered the White House for his second term in office. Trump claimed in a social media post on Christmas Day that China was illegally operating the Panama Canal, which the U.S. finished building in 1914, and held partial or full control until its complete handover in 1999 to Panama. More ominous was President Trump’s pledge to take back the arterial waterway by force if necessary. It is, of course, beside the point that the Central American nation has been a close ally of Washington and boasts strong cultural links with its giant neighbour.

Paradoxically, a likely pretext for Washington’s arm-twisting in this case dates back to the uncertainties that small African and Latin American nations experienced from President Trump’s erratic first term that China sought to capitalise upon. In June 2017, Panama City cut off diplomatic ties with Taiwan, the self-governing island state that China considers part of its territory, and established relations with Beijing. Further enraging Taiwan’s western allies was the Panamanian government’s move to cement the new partnership through its decision to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a symbol of the country’s ambition for world economic and political dominance.

Ahead of a visit to that country over the weekend, the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, made the wildest of assertions that he had evidence that Beijing had developed contingency plans to shut down the Panama Canal in the event of a conflict. Echoing similar sentiments in a committee hearing on the Canal last week was the Republican senator, Ted Cruz, who decried that Panama City had turned out to be a “bad actor.” Mr. Cruz alleged that scores of Iranian vessels flying the Panamanian flag had for years earned Tehran billions of dollars in oil profits that the Islamic republic deployed to sponsor terrorism.

Panama’s President, Jose Raul Mulino, has dismissed any suggestion of the Chinese military control, insisting that the strategic canal was and always will be Panama’s. While he has expressed a willingness to engage in dialogue with the Trump administration, the exact price Washington would want to extract in return for respecting the country’s sovereignty is, for now, anybody’s guess. The free-trade agreement that Panama has proposed to negotiate with China may not move forward in the current climate of uncertainty.

The horror of hundreds of Panamanian citizens who perished in the 1989 U.S. invasion during the overthrow of the military dictator, General Manuel Noriega, hangs over the country in the wake of President Trump’s threat. Panama cannot become a proxy to target China.