The Atlantic Council provided its Commanders Series forum on Jan. 19 for the Commander of the Southern Command, Gen. Laura Richardson. She spelled out to a broad audience the role which the U.S. Pentagon insists that Ibero-America and the Caribbean must play in the coming NATO war on China. (https://youtu.be/S2ry5Xl7AhM?t=334)
China gets 36% of its food from the region, Richardson asserted, when listing all the rich resources of the region (lithium, gold, copper, oil, fresh water, etc.) to which the U.S. has decreed China should have no access. (Richardson goofed: China is far from that dependent on this region for its food. It does, however, import circa 36% of its soybean consumption from the region, but the Pentagon’s intent is clear.)
Richardson charged that participation by the region’s countries in the Belt and Road Initiative, and their acceptance of Chinese investment projects, is the leading national security threat to the U.S. homeland. Asked what security threat keeps her up at night, she answered: the Chinese investment in critical infrastructure and in space in the region.
This is criminal lunacy! Those are the very development projects needed to save the region’s more than 170 million people living in poverty, which Wall Street and the raw materials cartels refuse to let those countries build.
The implications of two other facets of her talk stand out.
