Secretary of State Marco Rubio made his first visit abroad this week. He went to Panama and reportedly pushed them to do something about the Panama Canal, in order to somehow appease President Trump's obsession with it. So far, they've refused to do so. Perhaps this is all just as performative as Trump's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't tariffs on Canada and Mexico -- perhaps Trump will find some way to declare victory and move on to other strange obsessions. Panama could, for instance, slightly lower the rates for ships to pass through their canal, either just for American ships or for all ships. That would probably be enough for Trump to move on.

Trump's stance on the Panama Canal is downright delusional. Rubio didn't echo the weirdest of Trump's claims (that Chinese soldiers are actually running the whole operation), he instead tried to somehow square it with the treaty Panama and the U.S. signed which gave them the canal in the first place. Panama is supposed to operate the canal in a totally neutral fashion, and (according to Rubio) they are not, because China operates two of the five ports at either end of the canal. This is, of course, ridiculous (the ports have nothing to do with the operation of the canal itself), but it's better than claiming to see Chinese soldiers where they do not exist, at least.

This is probably all performative, to some degree or another. Trump wants to play "tough guy" and bully other countries into doing what he wants (or at least appearing to do so). But there's always the danger that Trump is not just playing an ego game and is so serious about taking back the Panama Canal that he'd actually use force to do so.

This would be a complete disaster. The American military could certainly retake the Panama Canal, there's no doubt about that. But the shockwaves from doing so would be felt worldwide. It might even precipitate the "World War III" that Trump promised he'd avoid.

Think about it. If the United States invaded and secured the Panama Canal, based on nothing more than: "We built it, we used to own it, and we want it back," then what do you think China is going to do next? Invading Taiwan will never have looked so good, for them. After all, if great powers are allowed to just grab any land they want by use of force, then China's got a clear claim (as far as they are concerned) on Taiwan. They already call it part of China. As far as they are concerned, diplomatically, it's a renegade province and invading it would be merely "internal affairs" -- and thus no other country would have any reason to intervene in any way.

What would Trump do if China did invade Taiwan? Your guess is as good as mine, really. Would he throw the entire weight of the U.S. military into a war with China? Would he send some munitions to Taiwan and essentially say: "There you go -- now you're on your own"? Or would he just shrug and not care at all, since as far as he is concerned grabbing land is completely acceptable for powerful countries to do? I really have no clue which way he'd react.

One thing that is certain is that the United States is in no shape to fight a long war with another superpower. Oh sure, we could go grab the Panama Canal and defend it against any guerrilla-style resistance. That would be relatively easy for the American military to accomplish. But in a war with a bigger country (with a huge military), we would only have anywhere from one week to one month's worth of high-tech weaponry before we use it all up. Fighting China would mean sea battles and air battles, and lots and lots of missiles. Missiles cost a lot of money, and they are not easy to make. And we do not have a huge stockpile of them (a fact which a recent review of America's military readiness painfully pointed out).

The war in Ukraine brought a rather stark reminder of this, in a much more low-tech way. The Ukrainian military, fighting a tank and trench war, started firing off thousands of artillery rounds per week. They were firing them off so fast, they outstripped the ability of us to replace them (using more in a week than we could make in many months). We ramped up production, but please remember these are merely artillery rounds. They're not that complicated, in other words, even if they do have to be precision-machined. Now picture us being in the same predicament except with high-tech multimillion-dollar missiles.

You can't just run extra shifts of workers and start cranking them out, the way we did for the Howitzer shells. High-tech weapons require high-tech parts such as computer chips. And where do we get an enormous amount of our computer chips from? Taiwan. But that supply chain isn't going to be there anymore if a war's going on.

Of course, I hope things don't get to that point. I hope we don't have to find out (the hard way) that we simply cannot produce enough weaponry to fight a sustained global-scale war. Maybe Trump would just refuse to help defend Taiwan at all. This would signal to the world that America is not a reliable ally, but Trump doesn't really care what the rest of the world thinks of him or the country.

Every scenario is pretty frightening to even contemplate. But if Trump does somehow follow through on his threats to take back the Panama Canal, the possibility that we would indeed have to react to China invading Taiwan gets far greater.

Which is why I really do hope that some sort of performative resolution happens instead. Perhaps Panama will announce to the world that it has now followed Donald Trump's advice and kicked out all the (non-existent) Chinese soldiers from the entire length of the Panama Canal. They could invite either Trump or Rubio back down to inspect everything, to prove that all those dastardly Chinese soldiers were now gone. Maybe they could even paint everything red, white, and blue just for fun. Trump could then declare victory, pat himself on the back, and then forget about it all and move on to newer, even-crazier obsessions.

The entire world would laugh at him (and us), of course. But that's a much better thing to endure than giving China a green light to invade Taiwan. Because if that happens, nobody's going to be laughing.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant