The Panama Canal was Theodore Roosevelt's pet project. Panama was then a province of Columbia, albeit one with an active separatist movement. Columbia was reluctant to give the United States the kind of control it wanted over the canal zone, requesting ten million dollars to cede sovereignty. Rather than pay up, Roosevelt had a different solution in mind.

Sources:

The Panama Deception (Documentary) https://odysee.com/@QuantumRhino:9/The-Panama-Deception-(1992)--Documentary:c

The Treaty That Wall Street Wrote, by Murray N. Rothbard https://mises.org/library/treaty-wall-street-wrote Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer http://stephenkinzer.com/category/books/

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Panama-Warns-of-Disguised-US-Attempts-to-Install-Military-Bases-20210304-0015.html

Rain and Tears by Neutrin05 https://soundcloud.com/neutrin05

Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/2PKvY28 Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/RRsQBq9nSXQ