Initial planning.

Seven years after initial implementation of the Panama Canal Treaty on October 1, 1979, planning for the U.S. military withdrawal from Panama by the end of 1999 began in 1986 by the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom) in coordination with other Department of Defense agencies. SouthCom established a Treaty Implementation Planning (TIP) cell within its J5/ Strategy, Policy & Plans Directorate, later consolidated with SouthCom's Center for Treaty Affairs (renamed Center for Treaty Implementation) after 1990.

Such planning was imperative because the Panama Canal Treaty provided only a general framework for the U.S. military presence in Panama. Furthermore, one of the principal documents associated with the Treaty (the Agreement in Implementation of Article IV of the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977) provided specific dates for transferring specified military properties only through 1984 -- the first five years of the 20-year transition period. The remaining properties were to be transferred some time during the life of the Treaty, when no longer needed by the U.S. military, or by the Treaty's end date -- December 31, 1999.) Also required were appropriate guidance, direction, and resources from the Department of Defense to the military Departments and the Southern Command needed to carry out the transfers of properties and drawdown of the military forces.

Major challenges.

Even with seven years of operating under the Panama Canal Treaty (through the bi-national Joint Committee), SouthCom faced an unprecedented challenge of dismantling an eight-decade military presence in Panama and relocating one of the Department of Defense's major regional unified command's out of Panama while continuing its missions. (That was about five years before the unexpected fall of both the Berlin Wall and Communism followed by the ensuring drawdown of U.S military forces in the United States and Europe and the first rounds of military base closings in the United States and Germany. Those drawdowns and base closings -- along with the 1992 withdrawal of U.S. military forces from the Philippines -- all provided valuable experience in base closure and their conversion to civilian use.) One of the driving objectives was to fully comply with the Panama Canal Treaties, while continuing to ensure the proper mix of forces assigned against assigned missions.

As a gage of the magnitude of the challenge, of the total area that was under the control of the U.S. military in Panama before the Treaty went into effect in 1979 (95,293 acres with about 5,237 buildings) only about 15 percent had been transferred to the Government of Panama by the end of 1984. (But all Treaty-required transfers by that date were accomplished successfully and on time.) Left to be transferred to Panama by the end of 1999 were roughly 77,000 acres with about 4,400 buildings.

A preliminary Treaty Implementation Plan was developed as an initial blueprint for an orderly phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Panama by the end of this century and phased schedule for transferring the U.S. military bases, installations, and other facilities and properties to the Government of Panama. It was approved by the Deputy Secretary of Defense in February 1988, and a supporting, more detailed TIP framework plan was developed in early 1989.