U.S. Southern Command Chief Lies To Aspen Forum That China’s BRI Projects Are a Hemispheric Threat
July 23—Speaking before the Aspen Security Forum July 18. Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, delivered another of her rants against China and Russia, this one particularly vectored against Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere, complaining that “Team U.S.A.” and “Team Democracy” are having a hard time competing against China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the region. She depicted the BRI in ominous terms, in which “state-owned enterprises by a communist government” build “dual-use” critical infrastructure—deep-water ports, 5G, cybersecurity, space, etc.—which, she “suspects,” could be flipped to “a military application” very quickly under crisis conditions.
Notably, Richardson admitted that the U.S. isn’t having much success in competing against China. U.S. companies and investors aren’t offering anything comparable to what the BRI does, especially in terms of large-scale infrastructure investment. Since the U.S. or its allies “don’t have those kinds of tools in our kitbag … really, in terms of this region and the strategic competition that we have, which is very stiff … we can’t get around fast enough.” In the absence of a more aggressive presence from “Team U.S.A.,” Richardson said, the only thing that local officials see “are the Chinese cranes and all the development and the Belt and Road Initiative projects.”
She of course threw in the usual shibboleths about Chinese loans being a “debt trap,” weighing countries down with unpayable debt, and forcing them to “give up some sovereignty.” And, she lamented, there’s Chinese President Xi Jinping who is committing the offense of “picking up the phone and calling these leaders and meeting with them and corresponding with them all the time. We should do more of that.”
As a solution, Richardson argued that since the region hasn’t yet fully recovered from the Covid pandemic, it’s time for the U.S. to embark on a “Marshall Plan” for the hemisphere to keep Russian, and especially Chinese influence in check. This would be an economic recovery act like 1948, but revamped for 2024 and 2025, she claimed, to address the instability caused by the Covid-provoked economic crisis of which Moscow and Beijing have taken advantage. “Team U.S.A. and Team Democracy” must get moving, she said, and come up with more initiatives with more U.S. “quality investment” and more U.S. companies investing in the region. “I don’t think we’re branding Team U.S.A. as we should. It should be better. We’ve got to be bragging about what U.S. quality investment does.”
She told her audience of national security officials, diplomats, defense contractors and the like, “I need more visitors to the Western Hemisphere … to the Caribbean … to Central America … to South America … to tell [local officials] and show them how important they are to this region and to the hemisphere that we all live in.” There aren’t enough visitors and “high-profile visits,” she complained. So, these local officials “don’t see what Team USA is bringing to the countries and the investments … they don’t see it.”