by MARCO FERNANDES
Less than a week after the start of Russia’s military intervention, Juan Sebastian Gonzalez, senior director of Western Hemisphere affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, in an interview with Voice of America (a State Department asset), stated that “the sanctions against Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments that have economic affiliations with Russia, and that is by design. So, Venezuela will start feeling the pressure; Nicaragua will start feeling the pressure; as will Cuba.” A recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine, which by way of the Council on Foreign Relations serves unofficially as a kind of discussion forum of the U.S. State Department, titled “The Eurasian Nightmare,” defended the thesis that Washington has no choice but to fight Russia and China at the same time. However, Gonzalez hints that the Biden administration’s strategy not only contemplates attacking the main front in the east (Moscow and Beijing), but also opens a front in the south—secondary, but important—against three Latin American countries that have challenged Washington the most in recent years (Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba). The southern front, however, may be broader than what the Colombia-born Juan Gonzalez makes clear.
On March 24, the commander of the U.S. Armed Forces Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, testified before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. She said that although Russia is the “more immediate threat” in Latin America and the Caribbean, China would pose a diplomatic, technological, informational, and military challenge to the United States. Richardson had given similar testimony in the House of Representatives about two weeks earlier, where she also stated that without “U.S. leadership,” Chinese influence in the region could “soon resemble the self-serving predatory influence it now holds in Africa.” She refers to the advance of the Belt and Road Initiative across the African continent since 2013, responsible for unprecedented tens of billions of dollars in Chinese investment in basic infrastructure (energy, telecommunications, ports, railroads, highways, etc.) in exchange for the natural resources China needs to feed its industry, which is responsible for 28.7 percent of all manufacturing produced in the world and consumed globally.
General Richardson’s statements are based on two principles. First, that the United States views Latin America and the Caribbean as its “backyard,” expressed in the Monroe Doctrine since 1823 and put into practice in countless military invasions, coups, and, more recently, hybrid wars against peoples and governments not aligned with Washington. Biden recently said that “Latin America is not our backyard,” but rather that it is “America’s front yard.” Latin Americans do not want to be anyone’s yard, whether front or back. Second, that the United States believes that the foreign policy of the region’s governments should be defined by Washington.
China in Latin America
In 2000, the U.S. Congress set up the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which offers Congress its assessment of China on U.S. national security. In November 2021, the commission’s report had an important chapter on the relations between China and the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean. The report worried about China’s support for what it termed “populist” governments from Argentina to Venezuela. It remarked on the increase in the region’s trade with China: from $18.9 billion (2002) to $295.6 billion (2020), in addition to its growing importance as a source of loans, financing ($137 billion from 2005 to 2020) and direct investments ($58 billion between 2016 and 2020). Due to this investment, China was able to assist the region in lessening the impact of the 2008 financial crisis; this investment created jobs (1.8 million between 1995 and 2016) and decreased poverty (falling from 12 percent in 2002 to 4 percent in 2018). Chinese vaccines rushed in during the pandemic, and Latin American commodity exports to China dampened the burden of the COVID recession.
The U.S.-China Commission worried about the increased connections between China and the region in telecommunications and transportation networks. Huawei’s leadership in 5G in the region as well as Sino-South American partnerships in the development of satellites (21 launched in joint ventures, most of which were with Argentina) are offered as examples. The commission also expressed alarm that China’s control or influence over ports in the region, particularly in the Caribbean, since these could—in the future—be used for military purposes (although there is no indication of any such military use by China or by the Latin American and Caribbean states).
Washington’s Cold War
Washington’s hard-right elements reacted to this report with speed. In February 2022, Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, both Cuban-Americans, introduced the Western Hemisphere Security Strategy Act of 2022 in Congress. This bill, drawing from the commission’s recommendations, proposes that the United States government directly challenge China’s role in the region. It characterizes the existence of China and Russia in the region as a “harmful and malign influence.” The bill is vague and short on details.
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