When Americans consider a conflict with China, Taiwan is the very first thing that involves mind.
Nonetheless, there is also a front off our coast in the Caribbean.
Visit nearly every island in the region and you may be confronted with evidence of Beijing’s reach.
Ten Caribbean countries participate in the Belt and Road Initiative – Grenada, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname and, after all, Cuba.
These countries owe much of their modern infrastructure, from roads and ports to energy and telecommunications, to Beijing’s patronage.
In Antigua, China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. built a recent terminal for VC Bird International Airport.
In Jamaica, China Merchant Port Holdings directly owns the Port of Kingston.
One other Chinese company, Hutchison Ports, owns a controlling stake in a port complex in Freeport, Bahamas.
Photovoltaic panels, health clinics, sports stadiums – Beijing funds all of them.
“Chinese development banks offered a less time-consuming process than Western-dominated multilateral lending institutions, required less transparency and disclosure, and were often willing to lend below market rates of interest,” explained Scott B. MacDonald in a recent report for the Jamestown Foundation.
The US prides itself on maintaining a “rules-based international order.”
But for developing countries, the rules may be burdensome.
China offers an affordable alternative no questions asked.
Unfortunately for borrowers, the high-quality print often includes “an option that in the event of non-payment, the Chinese lending institution will take control of the asset in query.”
Nations that don’t voluntarily sell their sovereignty nevertheless face “the possibility that China could use leverage gained through lending or ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ as a way for Beijing to achieve control of strategic assets akin to ports and railways.” .
And China is using its economic pull to maximum political effect.
In 2018, the Dominican Republic severed diplomatic relations with Taipei and declared Taiwan “an inalienable a part of Chinese territory”.
This 12 months, Honduras followed suit.
Honduras, now a part of the Belt and Road, may benefit from greater investment in hydropower, amongst other things.
Chinese influence is growing across Latin America, but the Caribbean is of particular importance.
Five of the other 12 UN member states that recognize Taipei as the country’s capital are in the Caribbean – Haiti, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Belize.
Even when China cannot lure all of them to the Belt and Road, these countries increasingly have to consider Beijing when coping with their very own neighbours. China’s strategic interests at the moment are locally based.
In relation to superpowers, globalization is never just an economic phenomenon. It is also political – and military.
Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation is one among China’s goals in the Caribbean.
One other is to make the most of America’s vulnerability to provocation in its own backyard.
China has a bigger navy than we do, but they can not compete with the combined forces of our navy and our Pacific allies.
China’s best likelihood of winning the war against us is to share our attention.
The very scope of our power is also a limitation – we’re responsible for the security of Europe and our allies in Asia, and we also guard the Persian Gulf.
But unlike other superpowers of the last century, we don’t face any major challenges in our hemisphere.
Nonetheless, the last 100 years are filled with examples of how easily we react after we fear trouble in the neighborhood.
The 1917 Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany wanted Mexico as an ally in the event of the US entering World War I, encouraged America to enter the war.
The threat that Cuba, allied with the USSR, posed to US security forced President John F. Kennedy to contemplate direct military intervention in support of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
Kennedy objected – and a 12 months later faced the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Even at the end of the Cold War, the increasingly repressive communist regime in Grenada sparked an American invasion.
President Ronald Reagan’s actions in Grenada contrasted together with his response to Islamic Jihad’s bombing of Marine barracks in Lebanon in the same week in 1983.
Why did Reagan withdraw troops from Lebanon – after an attack that killed 241 American soldiers – when he was able to go to war in Grenada for the safety of American medical students?
The reply lies in the unique vulnerability of our strategic underbelly.
If a rival like China desires to divert America’s attention away from Asia, even a modest turmoil in the Caribbean may suffice.
Currently, China’s ability to cause such a stir is limited.
But the more power Beijing gains over the economically vulnerable and relatively politically unstable states of the Caribbean, the greater the potential for intrigue – intrigue that might shake the world order.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.