Speaking before the Aspen Security Forum July 18. Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, delivered another of her rants against China and Russia, but particularly against Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere, complaining that “Team U.S.A.” and “Team Democracy” are having a hard time competing against China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the region. She depicted the BRI in ominous terms, in which “state-owned enterprises by a communist government” build “dual-use” critical infrastructure—deep-water ports, 5G, cybersecurity, space, etc.—which, she “suspects,” could be flipped to “a military application” very quickly under crisis conditions.
Notably, Richardson admitted that the U.S. isn’t having much success in competing against China. U.S. companies and investors aren’t offering anything comparable to what the BRI does, especially in terms of large-scale infrastructure investment. Since the U.S. or its allies “don’t have those kinds of tools in our kitbag … really, in terms of this region and the strategic competition that we have, which is very stiff … we can’t get around fast enough.” In the absence of a more aggressive presence from “Team U.S.A.,” Richardson said, the only thing that local officials see “are the Chinese cranes and all the development and the Belt and Road Initiative projects.”
She of course threw in the usual shibboleths about Chinese loans being a “debt trap,” weighing countries down with unpayable debt, and forcing them to “give up some sovereignty.” And, she lamented, there’s Chinese President Xi Jinping who is committing the offense of “picking up the phone and calling these leaders and meeting with them and corresponding with them all the time. We should do more of that.”
