The Atlantic–Pacific bridge: from Magellan to Panama and the return of multimodal connectivity

For centuries, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated not only by distance but by geography. Before the construction of the Panama Canal, ships travelling between the two oceans had to make the long journey around Cape Horn, following the route associated with Ferdinand Magellan's expedition and the southern tip of the Americas. Geography imposed the route; infrastructure later began to rewrite it.

The opening of the Panama Canal transformed this relationship. It did not merely shorten a maritime journey. It changed the geography of global trade by turning the narrowest practical connection between two enormous ocean systems into one of the world's most consequential pieces of infrastructure. Panama demonstrated a principle that has become increasingly important in the twenty-first century: connectivity can change the strategic value of geography.

Panama and the intermodal panorama

Yet Panama also illustrates the limits of the chokepoint model. A canal creates efficiency precisely because it concentrates flows. The same concentration can create vulnerability. Congestion, accidents, geopolitical disruption, drought and changing patterns of global trade can transform an advantage into systemic exposure. The question for the future is therefore not simply how to move more vessels through Panama, but how to build an Atlantic–Pacific system capable of remaining functional when one route is constrained.

Geopolitical uncertainty and the return of disruption are increasingly central to GAFG's research and policy work.

This question has become more urgent because the global connectivity system is being tested simultaneously by environmental and geopolitical pressures. Climate change and water availability are long-term structural concerns for canal infrastructure, but they are not the only-or necessarily the most immediate-sources of disruption. The war in Eastern Europe has constrained important segments of the Eurasian land-transport architecture, while conflict and insecurity in the wider MENA region have disrupted normal shipping patterns through the Red Sea and Suez corridor. Together, these developments demonstrate how quickly geopolitical shocks can turn established trade routes into constrained or commercially uncertain pathways. The lesson for Panama and the wider Atlantic–Pacific connection is therefore not simply that more capacity is needed, but that alternative, interoperable routes are becoming a strategic necessity.

There is, however, another vulnerability beneath the physical and geopolitical ones: the uneven universality of the rules governing the maritime domain. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides the principal legal framework for the oceans, but not all states are parties to the Convention. More importantly, the existence of international rules does not automatically guarantee their equal application. This raises an uncomfortable but increasingly important question for global connectivity: do international norms constrain power, or do they constrain primarily those states that are willing or able to comply with them? If rules are predictable for smaller and weaker actors but negotiable for the most powerful, the credibility of the entire connectivity system is weakened.

For the GMGF, this is not a peripheral legal question. Maritime trade depends on predictability: predictable passage, predictable jurisdiction, predictable liability, predictable insurance and predictable dispute resolution. Where the application of international law becomes dependent on relative power, risk is transferred from the political sphere into shipping costs, insurance premiums, investment decisions and ultimately supply chains. The challenge, therefore, is not only to build alternative routes but to ensure that the rules connecting those routes are credible, interoperable and applied consistently. Otherwise, the world may succeed in creating a network of corridors while failing to create a network of governance.

Intermodality, supply chains and food security

This is where the idea of the multimodal bridge becomes important.

The nineteenth- and twentieth-century model largely sought to overcome geography by constructing a single decisive infrastructure link: a canal, a tunnel, a railway or a major port. The emerging model is different. It combines maritime and land-based modes so that cargo can move through a network rather than depend entirely on one passage.

Central America is particularly suited to this way of thinking. Its geography offers several potential interfaces between the Atlantic and Pacific, including maritime routes, railways, highways, ports and intermodal logistics platforms. The long-discussed idea of a Nicaraguan interoceanic canal is normally presented as a competitor or alternative to Panama. A more contemporary perspective would ask a different question: could Nicaragua become part of a broader interoceanic multimodal system rather than simply another canal project?

A Nicaraguan "speedway" of combined transport could, in principle, connect Atlantic and Pacific gateways through a coordinated system of rail, road, ports and maritime services. Such a model would not necessarily attempt to reproduce Panama. Its purpose would be to diversify the ways in which cargo crosses the isthmus, allowing containers or other high-value freight to shift between maritime and land transport according to capacity, cost, time, security and environmental conditions.

This is precisely the logic of the GAFG/GMGF Connectivity Doctrine: systems over projects, complementarity over competition and interoperability over isolated infrastructure efficiency. The Atlantic–Pacific question should therefore not be framed as Panama versus Nicaragua, canal versus railway, or maritime versus land transport. The strategic objective is to create an interoperable network in which maritime, rail, road and port infrastructure can reinforce one another. In this sense, resilience is not a property of a single corridor; it is an ecosystem property.

The importance of such an approach extends well beyond the movement of containers. Intermodality is becoming a strategic instrument for managing global supply chains. A resilient Atlantic–Pacific system would allow cargo to shift between ships, railways, roads and ports according to changing circumstances. A vessel delayed on one side of the isthmus would not necessarily bring the entire supply chain to a halt: high-value or time-sensitive cargo could move by rail, bulk commodities could remain on maritime routes, while road and inland logistics networks could support regional distribution. The objective is not to make every mode equally important, but to make them interoperable. Recent disruptions-from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine to instability around the Red Sea-have demonstrated how quickly a disruption at one chokepoint can propagate across continents. Redundancy is therefore no longer simply additional capacity; it is strategic optionality.