In March, Gen. Laura J. Richardson, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, outlined for the House Armed Services Committee a long list of threats stemming from China’s growing involvement in the region.
The People’s Republic of China is not merely after Latin America’s abundant natural resources, she argued, or simply focused on the isolation of Taiwan. Its investments in deepwater ports, space infrastructure and cyber facilities could become “points of future multi-domain access” for the Chinese military, allowing China to project power in choke points such as the Panama Canal, monitor and track U.S. forces and even improve its nuclear targeting.
“It is imperative that we view the PRC’s economic activities, particularly in the Americas, as connected to their global political and military desires,” she told the committee.
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The alarm bells have grown shriller with each passing month. For Latin American leaders, they offer a grim reminder of what can happen when Washington fears the region might be slipping to the other side.
Perhaps SouthCom’s alarmism should be taken with a grain of salt. Rebecca Bill Chavez, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs during the Obama administration and now heads the Inter-American Dialogue in D.C., told me that raising the alarm about existential threats in the region has been a standard ploy to draw attention and resources from Washington.
Still, Richardson’s opinion matters. She has become one of the most visible U.S. officials in Latin America, often on tour to meet top-ranking civilian and military leaders in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Brazil and Argentina.
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What’s more, her mistrust of China’s intentions is by now broadly shared beyond the U.S. military. Civilians in Washington are not happy about the deepwater megaport that China’s Cosco Shipping is building in Peru. They are getting antsy about Chinese exports to and investments in Mexico, claiming they are designed to circumvent U.S. tariffs.
A few years ago, the Chilean government annulled a contract with a Chinese company to manufacture Chilean passports and IDs after officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned it would be difficult for Chile to remain in the visa waiver program if China had access to Chileans’ passport data.
The United States also leaned on Chile to nix a bid by Huawei to build a trans-Pacific undersea cable connecting Valparaiso to Shanghai. It also tried to block a 2022 deal for China to build Argentina’s fourth nuclear power plant, Atucha III. It stopped Mexico from deploying Chinese-made scanners at its border checkpoints.
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Altogether, Washington’s not-too-subtle message is that it wants Latin America to get on board against its new global rival. As Joshua Meltzer of the Brookings Institution noted about Washington’s concerns over China’s growing links with Mexico, “Failure to cooperate more deeply on how to respond to China risks the U.S. adopting a more go-it-alone approach.”
Latin American leaders, however, see little upside to Washington’s proposition. They might not endorse China’s craving for Taiwan or share its desire to displace the United States as global hegemon, but neither do they love Washington’s ambition to box China out. Especially for the big commodity producers in South America, China has been a godsend.
The Cold War model is something the region would rather avoid. From the Alliance for Progress proposed in the wake of the Cuban Revolution through support of the military coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 and the funding of contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s, Washington’s sole objective in Latin America was to prevent it from falling into the embrace of the Soviet Union.
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The demise of the U.S.S.R. offered a brief moment when other paths could be pursued. The United States signed on to the North American Free Trade Agreement and even proposed a Free Trade Area of the Americas to glue the continent together with ties of trade and investment. But the terrorist attacks on 9/11 slammed that door shut. Washington lost interest in the region — until China started poking around.
The United States should understand, however, that the “you’re either with me or against me” model of the Cold War won’t work in the present. Thuggish and poor, the Soviet Union didn’t have much to offer in exchange for obedience. China, by contrast, has money to invest plus an enormous appetite for the raw materials that underpin the economies of several South American countries. Moreover, Beijing is not demanding unflinching political allegiance. “Until now, the Chinese have not ideologized nor politicized the relationship,” Jorge Castañeda, Mexico’s former foreign minister, told me.
China’s growing economic involvement certainly presents a challenge for the United States and its influence in the region. China offers Latin American countries a measure of strategic independence: They can now snub their nose at Washington, knowing there is an alternative source of finance and commerce.
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Even in Mexico — the least likely country in the region to snub Washington, as it is intimately tied to the U.S. economy and has fairly weak ties to China — officials are enjoying the idea. As Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena told the New Yorker, “Mexico will have to look for other paths” if the United States turns protectionist under a second Trump administration. “China is a country that is constantly looking out for Mexico.”
It is important not to overstate the case in either direction. China invested about $193 billion in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2000 and 2023, according to Red ALC-China, an academic network that monitors the regions’ relationship with China. That amounted to only 6.6 percent of total foreign investment in Latin America and the Caribbean over the period. U.S. companies invest more in a single year. And, sure, the much-maligned Huawei is among the Chinese investors, but it accounts for only 2.6 percent of China’s money. Most of its investment has gone into mining and electric power infrastructure.
Maybe there is a reason for Washington to worry about the Chinese military’s space-monitoring station in Patagonia. But whatever the real threat, it is unhelpful to view Latin America simply as a theater of economic conflict in which to wipe China out. Overall, Washington will make more progress when it offers itself to Latin American leaders as a partner, not a scold.
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This might not be easy, especially since Washington has turned its back on trade, once the most powerful tool it had to build economic ties and alliances across the world. Still, the United States will have better luck if it arrives in Latin American capitals in civilian dress with promising cooperation prospects than it currently does showing up in military regalia hoping to strong-arm the region’s leaders into accepting Washington’s perceived threats as their own.
