[Marxism] The Middle Kingdom in Latin America

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(For those not familar with Mary Anastasia O'Grady,
she might well be described as the head Castro-and-
Chavez basher in charge at the Wall Street Journal.
Most international bodies signed off on the recent
election in Venezuela. Not Mary Anastasia O'Grady.

(Now I guess we're going to start hearing about the
yellow peril as well? It seems that China's giant
steps up and out into the world economy has this
columnist in the main daily journal of the business
class in the US worried. This kind of propaganda is
not your usual staple fare in the daily media, but
it's what those who write editorials in the daily
media take THEIR ideas from. Read this carefully
and see why they're worried and what about. What
we're seeing is a broad international realignment
taking shape. It's a powerful force which tends to
counterbalance Washington's predominance in the
world arena right now. To grasp how this trent
fits into Cuba's overall international policies,
definitely read Mike Erisman's wonderful study 
of Cuban Foreign Policy in a Post-Soviet World.)
=================================================

THE AMERICAS  
The Middle Kingdom in Latin America

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
September 3, 2004; Page A11
WALL STREET JOURNAL


It happened sometime between that sunny September day in
2001 when George W. Bush offered his friendship to Mexico's
President Vicente Fox and last month when the State
Department blessed Venezuela's fishy recall vote count:
Latin America faded from the White House radar screen.

Most Americans probably haven't noticed. But Beijing has
and it is inching into the void.

U.S.-Latin America policy is now defined by a costly drug
war of doubtful effectiveness, persistent and damaging
International Monetary Fund meddling, harassment of Latin
militaries at the behest of left-wing NGOs, an intelligence
network that counts coca plants for a living and a naïve
attitude toward bullies like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. 
This has left Latins scratching their heads about Dubya. 
Of course, these are not Bush values. But they are the
priorities of his State Department and other agencies and
by default have become the U.S. agenda in the region.

Enter China, with money and markets to offer. No wonder
Sino-Latin relations are experiencing an uptick. This
doesn't yet present a serious military threat, but China,
along with its trade endeavors, is becoming a political
rival of the U.S. in its own backyard.

Of most immediate interest is China's growing presence and
influence around the Caribbean. A relatively minor but
interesting example is the deployment to Haiti of a 130-man
Chinese riot-control police unit, scheduled to arrive in
mid-September to join the United Nations stabilization
mission. While it is true that the U.N. needs peacekeepers
for this thankless job in Haiti, it is at least mildly
ironic that China's police, notorious for their high-handed
and sometimes brutal treatment of Chinese citizens, are now
charged with protecting human life in Haiti.

Yet it is no more surprising than the fact that China has
won observer status in the Organization of American States,
a body ostensibly obsessed with democracy.

Then there's the Chinese military relationship with Cuba.
In a staff report to be released on Tuesday, the Institute
for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of
Miami lays out some details: "In February 1999, [China's
defense minister] Chi [Haotian] visited Havana to finalize
an agreement with Cuban counterpart Raul Castro to operate
joint Sino-Cuban signals intelligence and electronic
warfare facilities on the island, equipped (at China's
expense) with the latest telecommunications hardware and
fully integrated into Beijing's global satellite network.
By March 1999, PLA officers and technicians began
monitoring U.S. telephone conversations and Internet data
from a new cyber-warfare complex in the vicinity of
Bejucal, some 20 miles south of Havana."

The report adds: "A second installation, capable of
eavesdropping on classified U.S. military communications by
intercepting satellite signals was also constructed on the
eastern end of the island, near the city of Santiago de
Cuba."

Rounding out the Chinese Caribbean trifecta is Venezuela,
where an anti-American demagogue, Hugo Chávez, delights in
the kind of Yankee-baiting his hero, Fidel Castro, has long
practiced.

Cynthia Watson, a professor of strategy at the National War
College in Washington, has just spent a year studying
China's influence in the region. She says that Latin
America is still below Africa in terms of Chinese strategic
interest. But it is getting more attention. "China has a
targeted need to find energy resources," says Ms. Watson,
who emphasized that her comments are her own. "They are
interested in oil contracts in Venezuela, Ecuador and
Colombia. That's why Jiang Zemin went to Caracas in 2001.
They want to cultivate a relationship that would put them
in a more favorable situation and they want to show Latin
American nations that they will treat them as sovereigns,
that they won't preach to them and they will act as
partners." The idea, which is likely to appeal to the likes
of Mr. Chávez, Brazil's President Luis Inácio "Lula" da
Silva and Argentina's Nestor Kirchner, is that China offers
an alternative to dealing with the U.S. in both economic
and political terms.

Brazil is an interesting case. "The growing relationship
between Brazil and China is viewed as two emerging powers
that can benefit each other vis-à-vis the U.S.," says Ms.
Watson. For China, "there is the possibility of utilizing
Brazil's space program which is on an equatorial path. And
Beijing would like to be the major market where Brazil goes
when it wants to sell its agricultural products. Lula has
not embraced the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas] and
may go to Beijing instead."

Let's not forget that China has an obsession with erasing
Taiwan from the geopolitical map and that six Central
American nations have diplomatic relations with Taipei.
This explains why China reportedly has made a generous
offer (some say $10 billion or more) to Panama to fund an
enlargement of the Panama Canal.

The effort to shut out Taiwan also explains why China is
dropping big bucks into the Caribbean, where the 14
independent English-speaking nations are always hungry for
handouts. The latest Chinese victory in what policy wonks
call "yuan diplomacy" came in March when Dominica dropped
its recognition of Taiwan in favor of Beijing.

The rise of China in the region could complicate U.S.
efforts to control illegal immigration, weapons shipments,
the drug trade and money laundering because China is
cooperating with Latin countries that are not especially
friendly toward those efforts. Some of these nations may
try to use the Chinese alternative to challenge U.S.
hegemony.

Given China's view of liberty, this cannot be a positive
development for the Americas. To counter it, the White
House would do well to take a hard look at the crippled
diplomacy the State Department has been practicing. It
needs an agenda defined by American values that will foster
growth, sound money and open markets. As importantly, it
needs to re-examine whether the war on drugs, as currently
waged, is doing more harm than good.









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