Pubdate: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 Source: Wall Street Journal (US) Page: A11 Copyright: 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Contact: http://www.wsj.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487 Author: Mary Anastasia O'Grady THE MIDDLE KINGDOM IN LATIN AMERICA 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 naive attitude toward bullies like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. 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. Hugo Chavez and Jiang Zemin in 2001 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 Chavez, 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. Chavez, Brazil's President Luis Inacio "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-a-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. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake