President-elect Donald Trump refused to rule out the idea of using the military to take Greenland and the Panama Canal during a press conference on Tuesday. The post Trump Refuses to Rule Out Using the Military to Take Greenland and the Panama Canal: ‘It Might Be That You’ll Have to Do Something’ first appeared on Mediaite.

The canal was turned over to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999. For Carter, the deal signified a new beginning of mutual respect and cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America, as he said in his speech in 1978. It also showed “the last remnant of alleged American colonialism is being removed” during a time when the world moved away from imperialism.

Recalling the day in 1999 when former President Jimmy Carter completed a historic handoff. The journalist David Gonzalez was at the Miraflores locks in Panama on Dec. 14, 1999, to record this milestone for the front page of The New York Times:

Handing control of the Panama Canal from the U.S. over to the Central American country was one of President Jimmy Carter's most controversial, and most overshadowed, foreign policy achievements.

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent lament that the United States ceded control of the Panama Canal to Panama under the Carter administration is both strategically sound and historically resonant. Trump,

The Panama Canal, often heralded as one of the wonders of the modern world, is far more than a feat of engineering -- it is a cornerstone of U.S. national security and economic prosperity. This vital maritime shortcut has connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for over a century,