War on Covid: China Wins As Violence, and Instability Increase in the Western Hemisphere
The “War” on a Pandemic and its aftermath: COVID-19 and its affects on the Western Hemisphere:
An article published on the Army war college website entitled “More Violent, and Unstable Western Hemisphere,” by Dr. R. Evan Ellis warns of violence, chaos and instability in Latin America and the Caribbean, “significantly impacting the security, interests, and strategic position of the United States.”
The anticipated longevity of COVID-19 will leave a Latin America that is “far sicker, poorer, beset by crime, violence, social unrest, and political instability than today.” But the disastrous result to the United States security interests is that the pandemic will also leave a region with expanded People’s Republic of China (PRC) commercial presence and political influence. The PRC has invested heavily in the South and Latin Americas already, but this pandemic, affecting the region later than other regions of the world, has given China the time to regain its equilibrium and widens the opportunity for the PCR to exploit the situation, according to Dr. Ellis.
Small business, business owners, and employees throughout the hemisphere, including in the United States, Canada, Latin and South America, are being severely affected by the lockdown rules. “Significant portion of temporarily closed small businesses is likely to disappear permanently through bankruptcy while…Latin America-based financial institutions may also consolidate, compounding the liquidity crisis faced by Latin American businesses,” Dr. Lewis writes.
The economic disaster resulting to these businesses is compounded by governments deeply in debt, unable to bail the companies out. The governments will likely seek instant relief, giving China the perfect opportunity to exploit the situations and dig in deeper. The long term benefit to China is that it will become more of a power player in the economic sector, giving it clout in the political sector. “In some cases, such as Argentina, governments may default on their debts, locking them out of Western credit markets. Some countries may then turn to the PRC for new lending, agreeing to conditions which dramatically expand PRC influence,” Dr Ellis warns.
EXPANDING CRIMINALITY AND VIOLENCE
Related to the collapse of businesses, tens of millions of jobs are disappearing across the region, resulting in a “greatly expanded mass of desperate persons” who become vulnerable to recruitment by the many drug and human traffickers, and other criminal groups, such as MS-13 operating in the region. Those criminal elements will aggressively recruit for illicit activities with offers of survival incomes.
The pandemic has already resulted in fraudsters exploiting those desperately seeking testing, cures or precautionary products. Those involved in activities involving “contraband medicine and equipment, cybercrime, and the robbery, extortion or embezzling of COVID-19 related aid” will spike according to the report. By providing survival food, medicine, and other needed goods or enforcing curfews in areas they dominate, the criminal elements will control the local populations, as has occurred in Mexico and Brazil.
Police and other security services will be ill equipped to respond, some frightened off by the fear mongering of the pandemic, while the sizes of forces will likely be limited for the enforcement of curfews and other Covid related violations, due to lack of government financial resources.
The biggest winner will be China as it was during the global crisis in 2008, Dr. Ellis concludes:
“Chinese companies will be well positioned, with the help of PRC government and financial partners, to expand their role in global supply chains, acquiring the strategic assets that bankrupted or distressed local and Western companies will seek to sell.” Economic control has resulted in political control in regions in which China is heavily vested worldwide in the aftermaths of global conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. The pandemic gives the PCR the same opportunities to exploit in the chaotic aftermaths of the Covid-19 “War,” in the Latin and South American countries.
Admiral Craig S. Faller of SOUTHCOM agrees in a report to Congress, on a more overall strategic level that China is a threat to the United States in our back yard. He warned, of Threats to our Neighborhood: Malign State Actors. As the Department of Defense has prioritized the Indo-Pacific region, Beijing has aggressively turned its attention to the Western Hemisphere, exporting corrupt business practices and disregard for international law and standards to countries already struggling with government corruption and weak governance. The region of Latin America and the Caribbean, home to ~25% of all U.S. exports and key global infrastructure like the Panama Canal, sea lanes, and deep water ports that provide access to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is threatened by Chinese influence.
It is directly connected to our homeland in every domain—land, sea, air, space, cyber, and most importantly values—which makes any threat or encroachment in this region particularly concerning. Latin America’s strategic importance lies in its unique potential as both a vulnerability and an opportunity for our own security, prosperity, and efforts to address global challenges.
Concerning Trends. Last year, the Chinese government absorbed three more Latin American countries into its One Belt One Road Initiative, bringing the regional total to 19 – more than half of all countries in the region. Beijing now has 29 government exchange programs with Latin America and the Caribbean, and continues to expand offers of professional military education, equipment donations, and funding for infrastructure projects. Russia once again projected power in our neighborhood, establishing a military footprint in Venezuela; deploying (for the first time) its most advanced nuclear-capable warship; and sending a research ship capable of mapping and cutting undersea cables, as well as two other naval research vessels to operate near our homeland. Under Russian and Cuban tutelage, oppression in Venezuela is ever-increasing. The illegitimate former Maduro regime arbitrarily arrested for political reasons more than 2,000 individuals in 2019. Between January 2018 and May 2019, regime-aligned security forces killed more than 7,000 people, and many of these killings may constitute extrajudicial killings.
These malign state actors are part of a vicious circle of threats that deliberately erode stability and security in the region. This vicious circle is framed by systemic issues of young democracies, often with weak governance and porous legal frameworks, exacerbated by a propensity towards patronage and corruption that is deliberately exploited by transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), external state actors (such as the PRC and Russia), and violent extremist organizations (VEOs) to advance their own ends at the expense of U.S. and partner nation security. This vicious circle continues to negatively impact our homeland, most acutely in the form of illegal immigration and illicit drug flows, but also in other, more harmful ways. Due to high levels of insecurity and frustration with government corruption, support for democracy and democratic institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean is at its lowest levels in 15 years,2 providing further openings for malign state actors to increase their influence. Anumber of countries are experiencing democratic backsliding, with others sliding towards outright authoritarianism.
The Pandemic that started in China ends up with China as the winner in terms of stretching wider and deeper its global power reach as it expands its influence in the Western Hemisphere.
The above is based on an article by Dr. R. Evan Ellis that is to be distributed widely to the military. For the full article and in in-depth analysis, please visit the Army war college site
For the full report by Admirall Faller Visit Congress.Gov