Panama promotes itself “as the bridge of the world, heart of the universe” but lately the narrow Central American Isthmus and its namesake canal that joins the Atlantic to the Pacific have become the setting for a bitter clash between the world’s two preeminent economic superpowers.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has again put China at the center of U.S. priorities in the western hemisphere, one day after calling the world power a threat to the Panama Canal