The U.S. defense establishment, which is aggressively expanding its military footprint with new bases all across the globe, is paranoid about the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in South America even though there’s no evidence of any military intention behind it. China is “in the ‘red zone,’” Gen. Laura Richardson, the commander of U.S. Southern Command claimed on Aug. 4, during remarks to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., warning that many of China’s economic initiatives can easily be flipped to support a Chinese military presence. “They’re on the 20-yard line to our homeland. Or, we could say that they’re on the first and second island chain to our homeland,” she said, in a dialogue with Kathleen McInnis and Kari Bingen at CSIS titled, “Looking South: A Conversation with Gen. Laura Richardson on Security Challenges in Latin America.”
But, there’s no Chinese military presence in South America, while there are extensive and sometimes provocative U.S. military activities off the coast of China. “There’s not a Chinese base yet,” Richardson admitted. “But I see with all of this critical infrastructure investment with these BRI projects that there could possibly be some [bases] someday.”
China’s embassy in Washington, however, dismissed such concerns as “lies and rumors … and slander.” Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told VOA via email that “To date, over three-quarters of countries around the world have joined this initiative, which has generated 420,000 jobs in these countries and helped more and more countries speed up economic growth.”
