Posted on 01/08/2022 8:46:51 AM PST by elpadre
My recent pair of articles based on an interview with Professor David Arase of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, published in Asia Times under the title Belt & Road Phase 2 moves beyond infrastructure and ‘Greater Eurasia’: Belt & Road expands in Africa, detailed the evolution of China’s Belt & Road Initiative beyond large infrastructure projects and its expansion in Africa.
This article follows up with a review of the Chinese economic and strategic presence in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is attracting more and more attention from concerned US foreign policy specialists.
For one thing, as Arase points out, “The number and distribution of port investment projects is impressive and can make China’s Maritime Silk Road circumnavigate the globe, from the South Pacific to Latin America, through the Panama Canal and the Caribbean to Brazil, and then to Belt & Road ports in West Africa.”
Overall, what’s happening undermines the notion that Latin America is the United States’ “backyard.” Admiral Craig Faller, the head of US Southern Command, recently told NBC News: “Chinese influence is global, and it is everywhere in this hemisphere, and moving forward in alarming ways.”
On December 25, 2021, Cuba and China signed a “cooperation plan” for the joint promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Call it a Christmas present for US President Joe Biden, Senator Marco Rubio and others in Washington, DC, who don’t like either country. Or a reminder that Taiwan is not the only offshore island of strategic interest.
Cuba joined Belt & Road in 2018 through a memorandum of understanding. The cooperation plan, in the words of China’s Global Times, clarifies the “key… projects for China and Cuba … including infrastructure, technology, culture, education, tourism, energy, communications and biotechnology, which are in line with Cuba’s development plans for the short ...
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
from the article:
“...As of December 2021, 19 out of 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean had signed up for the Belt and Road. In addition to Cuba, they include Jamaica and six other island states in the Caribbean; El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama in Central America; and Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Uruguay in South America....”
🍊
Testing...
This post should be considered along side yesterday’s post:
“US playing spoiler to China in Horn of Africa —— If there is mayhem in Ethiopia, China’s Belt and Road in the Horn of Africa could be slowed or even derailed.”
All I walked away from that news was that it was a hot mess.
Can you connect the dots?
I don’t know about dots, but I am amazed that China is spreading influence and control all over the world and we in America, thanks to a one dimensional media, are not aware. And those who realize seem to just shrug their shoulders. The focus is on Russia, but the real danger for the US is China. I am just a 90 year old and not very smart, but I sense a deliberate and serious neglect on the part of our leaders.
That’s my take, as well. Heck, it is right under our noses, in the universities and corporations. And what do we do? Ignore it even when one of our “leaders” is caught bedding one of their spies.
We need a Monroe Doctrine II that expresses U.S. foreign policy as opposition, by force if necessary, to extension of CCP control or influence in the western hemisphere.
Monroe...James Monroe...White Courtesy Phone.
Stick it to the gringos while the Chicoms overfish off their coasts.
Then there’s Chile. A Castro-like new President.
Where’s a helicopter when you need one.
Monroe Doctrine
“The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for colonization by any European powers,” Monroe continued. Any attempt by a European power to exert its influence in the Western Hemisphere would, from then on, be seen by the United States as a threat to its security.
Bump
Strategic thinking has never been a State Department highlight.
Forget China. What about the Russians in Kazakhstan. The Russians are the real threat. The Chinese are our friends.
.
“Strategic thinking has never been a State Department highlight.”
Isn’t that the truth!
Anyone the sense now that Bush/Cheney left us way overextended?
Don’t forget Jimmy Carter gave the Panama Canal to the Chinese. This has been a long process.
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