Posted on 12/24/2024 10:37:36 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
President-elect Donald Trump’s threat last weekend to reclaim the Panama Canal was designed to make clear that “decades of U.S. commerce financing China’s growth and strategic footprint in the Americas is over,” according to a senior Trump appointee.
Successive administrations have allowed a “vacuum of control and influence” in the Western Hemisphere, Mauricio Claver-Carone, named by Trump as his incoming administration’s special envoy for Latin America, said Monday.
But those earlier administrations also included Trump’s first term, when his policy in the hemisphere focused primarily on migration and sanctions against Venezuela, even as Panama severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan and established ties with China in 2017. That opened the door to Chinese investments and companies that were already winning bids for major infrastructure projects elsewhere in the region.
Trump’s recent comments may reflect a newly muscular interpretation of his America First policy amid rising alarm about what the commander of U.S. forces in the region this year called China’s significant presence on America’s “20-yard-line.” At the same time, the incoming administration may see Latin America as an easier place to exert foreign policy pressure — or at least the image of toughness — than some other parts of the world.
Following declarations that the canal was a “vital” U.S. “national asset,” Trump made a similar claim Sunday on another part of the hemisphere. In a social media post, he said that U.S. “ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” for American national security and for “Freedom throughout the World.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Scuttle China influence when ever possible they are our greatest threat.
Belt and road plan includes every country.
I’ve long said to dig a canal across the southern border and kill 2 birds with one big ditch. Raid the LeToureanu Museum for the equipt.
I bet if we go into the vaults....there were ten different locations that were considered at one time.
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