Monroe Doctrine Redux: US Military Trying to “Box Out” China and Russia from Strategic Resources in Latin America
Posted on January 24, 2023 by Nick Corbishley
“In a lot of our countries in this region, [the PRC] is the number one trade partner, with the United States number two in most cases”: General Laura Richardson, USSOUTHCOM.
As regular readers are by now probably aware, the Commander of US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), General Laura Richardson, has a rare talent for saying the quiet parts out loud. That talent was on full display in a recent interview with Washington-based think tank, the Atlantic Council last Thursday (Jan 19). In one 90-second clip (featured below) Richardson laid out in disarmingly frank terms why the US is showing a renewed interest in Latin America: the region’s abundant natural resources.
“Our” Countries in Latin America
Those resources include rare earth elements, lithium, gold, oil, natural gas, light sweet crude (huge deposits of which have been found off the coast of Guyana), copper, abundant food crops, and fresh water. And the US government and military, and the corporations whose interests they serve, have their eyes on all of them. As the Argentinean journalist and news presenter Carlos Montero lamented in a tweet, it would be nice to live in a would where the US wasn’t interested in Latin America for the riches it could plunder but to help it break free from being the world’s most unequal region.
Of even greater concern to the US is that many of Latin America’s resources are now being sold to its number-one adversary, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Its number-two adversary is, of course, Russia, with whom a number of LatAm countries have close military ties. As Richardson told the Atlantic Council’s virtual audience (emphasis my own), “in a lot of our countries in this region, [the PRC] is the number one trade partner, with the United States number two in most cases.” She then clumsily corrected herself: “Not in most cases, I would say in some cases.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/01/the-us-looks-to-escalate-its-war-with-russia-and-china-in-latin-america.html
