Who's Behind the 'Nicaragua Grand Canal'—and Why?
Who's Behind the 'Nicaragua Grand Canal'—and Why?
COA’s Eric Farnsworth comments on the potential construction of a Nicaragua Canal backed by a Chinese consortium.
Backers of the "Nicaragua Grand Canal" talk about a vibrant commercial waterway that will reshape commercial shipping, reap a windfall for investors and haul one of the hemisphere's poorest nations out of poverty.
But the project's detractors—and they are many—are having a hard time understanding what, exactly, those pro-canal people are talking about. And they also question whether it's being driven by commercial interests, or Chinese geopolitics.
About a year from the scheduled completion of a $5.2 billion Panama Canal extension that will let the existing waterway accommodate bigger ships, a Chinese consortium and the Managua government have said that they began work on a Nicaragua canal....
"The vision is very significant, but the reality is, a lot of people, including myself, are very skeptical that this will happen," said Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, a group that promotes democracy and free trade. "There have been over 70 attempts to build a canal in Nicaragua, but it hasn't happened."
Farnsworth cited Nicaragua's geological instability, including active volcanos and earthquakes, as one reason the Nicaraguan canal was never built in the first place. In 1902, Panama beat out Nicaragua for the American-built canal route, when the U.S. Senate voted for the smaller, more southerly nation by a mere eight votes. The canal played an important role in the recent U.S. West Coast ports strike, which forced some vessels to use the Panama route to get their goods to the East Coast....
