Nicaragua gets canal, not Panama. Effects on Central America?

Suppose in 1902 the lobbying for a Panamanian canal fails and Congress chooses Nicaragua instead. The president of Nicaragua at this time was Jose Santos Zelaya Lopez, an energetic and talented man with dreams of reuniting all of Central America into one nation. From the little I know about him, it seems he was well regarded by Teddy Roosevelt for his his efforts to modernize Nicaragua and his concessions to US business interests. With a canal through Nicaragua, I imagine that both political and business interests in the US would want to support his regime as his reasonably non-corrupt, efficient administration would promote the internal stability needed to safeguard canal operations.

With the good will of Washington and extra revenue from canal duties, Zelaya is now free to pursue his dream of Central American reunification. What means is he likely to use in this campaign? Will he use force, or will he try to buy off local elites and undermine his neighbors from within? Would US business interests in the region prefer to deal with several small, unstable, corrupt governments in Central America, or could Zelaya buy them to his side with ever more lucrative concessions in Nicaragua and his track record of competent administration and stability. Roosevelt certainly had a contentious relationship with large US conglomerates. Would he be willing to use gunboat diplomacy to protect their interests against someone whom he personally respected and who, more importantly, had allowed the construction of one of the most important supports of US power projection? I look forward to hearing from experts on the subject.
 
The Panama Canal (as built) was far more defensible than a Nicaraguan canal (as proposed) would have been. With a length of 80 kilometers, the Panama Canal was much shorter than a Nicaraguan canal, which would have been 266 kilometers long. Thus, all things being equal, the force defending a Nicaraguan canal would necessarily been three or four times the size of the garrison of the Panama Canal. Moreover, since the route of the canal ran through Lake Nicaragua, the defenders of a Nicaraguan canal would have had to have found some means of protecting the ships sailing through that body of water. (I imagine that this would have involved fortifying the Island of Ometepe, as well as patrolling the lake with gunboats.)

The vulnerability of a Nicaraguan canal would invariably have led to rent-seeking on the part of the Nicaraguan government. If that government was led by someone (like Zelaya) who pursued an ambitious foreign policy and was thus plagued by a perpetual liquidity crisis, this would quickly evolve into downright extortion. ("Nice canal you have here, shame if something happened to it ...") Such a threat, in turn, would soon create a strong desire for regime change on the part of the United States government.

In situations in which the Nicaraguan government was led by people who were free of the desire to invade their neighbors, a canal (or, to be more precise, revenue from the operation of the canal) would still serve as an "attractive nuisance." In an era in which such fees added greatly to state revenue, any leader who managed to pull off a coup d'état would be able to reward himself and his followers handsomely. Indeed, we might have seen a situation, like the one in contemporary Haiti, where investors invested in revolutionary groups with the expectation of being paid off with state revenues. (In the case of Haiti, these came from customs duties.)
 
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