For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, America faces a significant military challenge within its own hemisphere.
While Moscow plays a growing role in the militarization of the region as its navy returns to Cuba and its nuclear bombers land in Nicaragua, it is China that has become the most prolific foreign influence in the region. The Wilson Center reports that despite the end of the “Golden Decade” of the commodities boom, China will continue to be a game changer for the region.
A Strategic Studies Institute study found that “the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has expanded its military ties with Latin America in multiple important ways. High-level trips by Latin American defense and security personnel to the PRC and visits by their Chinese counterparts have become commonplace. The volume and sophistication of Chinese arms sold to the region has increased. Officer exchange programs, institutional visits, and other lower-level ties have also expanded. Chinese military personnel have begun participating in operations in the region in a modest, yet symbolically important manner. Military engagement among Western countries traditionally has focused on securing greater capability for confronting an adversary, including alliances and base access agreements, that confer strategic geographical position. By contrast, Chinese military engagement primarily supports broader objectives of national development and regime survival.
An example is the recent agreement between China and Argentina. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) notes: “China’s recent agreements with Argentina will prospectively feature the purchase or coproduction of fighter aircraft, APCs, and naval vessels; enhanced military-to-military exchanges; and the implementation of a space tracking facility tied to satellite imagery sharing. Together, these agreements would represent a new phase in China-Latin America military engagement if accomplished…These developments would mark an expansion of China’s broader defense engagement with Latin America that would carry several implications for the United States…the United States may face a new regional security hazard, albeit harmless in the absence of an external conflict. Third, regional actors might use Chinese arms in ways unfavorable to U.S. interests or perceive their security options to have expanded.”
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China’s growing commercial investment in the region (Cover notes “In 2000, the Chinese share of Latin American trade was merely 2%, while that of the United States was 53%. As of 2010, the Chinese share had grown to 11% of the total, while that of the United States had dropped to 39%…) has direct military applications. Commercial Chinese firms have bases on both sides of the Panama Canal, vital to the U.S. military, and Huawei, a telecommunications firm with strong ties to the Chinese military, has invested in the region, providing a boon to Chinese intelligence.
All this comes at a time when the U.S. has reduced its economic presence in the region. CNN Money reports that in 2014, “Chinese banks sent nearly $30 billion in loans to Latin American governments last year, more than double the amount from 2014. It’s also more money than the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank gave to the region last year combined, according to the Inter-American Dialogue, a non-profit in Washington…The investments come as U.S. government aid and private investment in Latin America have declined for three straight years, according to State Department data and EPFR, a research firm that tracks fund flows…”What [the Chinese are] going for is influence — strategic power in the region to create dependence,” says Ilan Berman, vice president at American Foreign Policy Council. American “’influence has steadily retracted.”
The importance of this must be understood in light of Beijing’s’ swiftly growing ability to project power, particularly naval power. The United States Navy, for the first time since the middle of the Second World War, is no longer an unchallengeable force at sea. China already has more submarines than the U.S., and its fleet will be larger than America’s within four years.