Powell wrote an article for "The Times" on 29 June, in which he said: "The Falklands have brought to the surface of the British mind our latent perception of ourselves as a sea animal. ... No assault on a landward possession would have evoked the same automatic defiance, tinged with a touch of that self sufficiency which belongs to all nations". The United States' response was "very different but just as deep an instinctual reaction ... the United States have an almost neurotic sense of vulnerability ... its two coastlines, its two theatres, its two navies are separated by the entire length of the New World ... she lives with ... the nightmare of having one day to fight a decisive sea battle without the benefit of concentration, the perpetual spectre of naval 'war on two fronts'." Powell added: "The Panama Canal from 1914 onwards could never quite exorcise the spectre. ... It was the position of the Falkland Islands in relation to that route which gave and gives them their significance—for the United States above all. The British people have become uneasily aware that their American allies would prefer the Falkland Islands to pass out of Britain's possession into hands which, if not wholly American, might be amenable to American control. In fact, the American struggle to wrest the islands from Britain has only commenced in earnest now that the fighting is over". Powell then said there was "the Hispanic factor": "If we could gather together all the anxieties for the future which in Britain cluster around race relations ... and then attribute them, translated into Hispanic terms, to the Americans, we would have something of the phobias which haunt the United States and addressed itself to the aftermath of the Falklands campaign".