An article recently published in the Washington Examiner, “China unveils plan to ‘take over’ Latin America”, assures us that the Chinese Communist Party has revealed a plan of action and cooperation with the objective of exerting greater influence in the region and, thus, threatening the interests of the United States in Latin America.
Armed with a somewhat alarmist tone, the author of the opinion column, Joel Gehrke, takes up the observations of Evan Ellis, an academic from the US Army War College (American military school), who establishes that “the Chinese do not say: ‘We want to seize us from Latin America’, but clearly set out a strategy of multidimensional engagement that, if successful, would significantly expand its influence and generate enormous intelligence concerns for the United States.”
In the same way, and in the same sense, US Senator Marco Rubio says that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to deepen ties between China and Latin America, particularly with “anti-American elements”. “Beijing is trying to outdo the United States in every way,” the senator says, “and we must take this threat seriously.”
Such an “action plan” would have been revealed on December 3 of last year at a China-Celac (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) summit. The aforementioned plan presumably seeks not only to strengthen economic ties between Beijing and the region, but also to deepen political and security cooperation. Mateo Haydar, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation, concludes: “There are absolute ambitions for China to become the dominant influence in Latin America. The challenge is integral, and there is absolutely a military and security interest there. … This threat is growing. , and it’s a different kind of threat than what we saw with the Soviet threat.”
Of course, the Chinese stance on this issue has a different approach. Wang Ping of the Global Times, in his article, “China-LatAm cooperation continues momentum despite changes in regional countries’ politics” (“China-LatAm cooperation continues despite regional political changes”), notes the ideological shifts in America Latin in recent times.
Certainly, and regarding the Chilean presidential elections in which Gabriel Boric emerged as a new face of the Chilean left in La Moneda, Ping reports an ideological tendency, a kind of pink tide, or “pink tide”, that crosses the region and that includes countries like Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and perhaps Brazil, if Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva emerges as the winner in the country’s elections.
Be that as it may, since the post-war era, Ping asserts, there has been a historical pattern of a movement, or political “pendulum”, between left and right governments, marked by a constant political struggle between both ideological tendencies in the interior. of governments in the region.
When there is a regional framework in which right-wing governments predominate, concerns arise of a decline in relations between China and Latin America. And when the opposite picture occurs, “Western media [especula] about fires in the US ‘backyard’ or [afirma] that China [está] seizing the opportunity to increase its influence in Latin America.” This is precisely what Gehrke’s arguments say.
However, Ping establishes that the ideological factor, in the last case, is not decisive when it comes to relations between Latin America and China. Both right-wing and left-wing governments have systematically strengthened their ties with China. Enjoying rapid economic growth and already established as the second most important economy in the world, many Latin American countries have managed to benefit from an economy that is still in full development.
China has thus become Latin America’s second largest trading partner and, for some countries in the region, the largest trading partner. In addition, China presents itself as a prominent source of investment, particularly for those countries that seek to strengthen their economies.
“For both left and right governments in Latin America”, Ping states, “if they want to consolidate their governing bases, they need to do a good job in economic terms, and if they want to rejuvenate the economy, it is impossible for them to ignore the China”. Finally, regardless of the political color of Latin American governments, cooperation between both parties in the pursuit of development constitutes, in the Chinese opinion, a long-term project.
In short, we are witnesses of two fundamental positions. The first argues that China is a security threat in the region. The second states that China only seeks to foster cooperation, regardless of the political color of the governments in the region.
A realistic perspective on the international order
Our purpose is not to assess the veracity of recent historical events described above. But we seek to explore the nature of the positions detailed in Gehrke’s article as a prime example of how great powers operate in defense of their national interests and what are classically established as their “zones of influence.” In other words, the US stance is related to the basic nature of great-power rivalry and, furthermore, to doctrinal attitudes specifically developed by the US over time.
As an essential principle, every great power seeks to at least consolidate its position in the international system and, thus, preserve political and material interests and resources within the spheres in which they have historically exerted influence. This is due to the basic realistic principle that the survival of the State is the main goal of every power. Once this has been achieved, the classic operation of the balance of power between states takes care of establishing a minimum order of peace in the international system.
The attitudes detailed in Gehrke’s article encapsulate a long-standing doctrinal attitude. We can cite briefly, therefore, the Monroe Doctrine (1823), which sought to repudiate European interference in the affairs of the region. Or the Olney Doctrine (1895), which was outlined in a diplomatic note sent to London and which established: 1) the right to repel the presence of any non-hemispheric power in the region; and 2) the right to exercise a hegemonic presence in the region itself.
Similarly, later, George F. Kennan, US ambassador to the Soviet Union, in a 1950 letter published in Foreign Relations and addressed to the Secretary of State, described the importance of strengthening US-Latin American relations in response to the “Russian challenge to our right to exist as a world power”. The context is the Cold War and Kennan sums up the fear of a possible ideological domino effect that could occur in Latin America and that would weaken US national interests.
Significantly, Zbigniew Brzezinski in Strategic Vision (2012) attributes the decline of the US to a “dynamic rotation of the world’s center of gravity from west to east”. That said, Gehrke’s writing, and many others, of an alarmist nature, circulating in the international press, should not be taken as a warning of a literal imminent threat, but as a natural reaction to the emergence of one rival power against another. whose preponderance is weakened within the great chessboard that is the international system.
