The policy outlined in the Jan. 12 paper by the U.S. Army War College’s Evan Ellis, “The Strategic Role of Latin America in a Global Conflict Over Taiwan,” of securing the resources of Ibero-America and the Caribbean for exclusive use in a coming U.S. war with China, is not some wild-eyed policy cooked up by one fool. On July 20, 2022, U.S. Southern Command head Gen. Laura Richardson described that resource-grab policy of the U.S. military for the region in exactly the same terms, in her presentation at the Aspen Institute Forum.
The region matters to U.S. national security interests, because “our competitors know, our adversaries know that this region is so rich in resources, she declared at the outset. “It’s off the charts rich… 60% of the world’s lithium is in the region. You have heavy crude. You have light sweet crude. You have rare earth elements. You have the Amazon, which is called the lungs of the world. You have 31% of the world’s fresh water here in this region, and there are adversaries that are taking advantage of this region every single day right in our [sic] neighborhood.”
The “adversaries” are China and Russia. “We are not in competition” with China and Russia, she declared at one point, “we are in conflict” with them, and not just in the information sphere, in the air or sea domain, but in “the whole gamut:” cyber, space, etc.
Richardson views it as a danger that not only are 21 countries in the region participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, but 25 countries have Chinese projects “inside of their country: a metro station, a railway, a highway, telecommunications, a dam, projects under the guise of economics.” Governments want these projects “to show some progress for their countries,” but they end up with “spiraling debts” to China. With no mention of Wall Street or the IMF, and with a straight face, she lied: “We don’t have strings attached to what we do.” We just “help these countries understand where they are, what they need to do"!
