Even a transcontinental highway project in South America is considered a threat to U.S. security by the U.S. Southern Command. On Sept. 4, Dialogo Americas, the U.S. Southern Command’s “security and defense” publication, published a preposterous attack on the Capricorn Bi-Oceanic Corridor, charging that it increases “strategic dependence” on China. This is not even an audacious rail route, but rather a series of linked highways, bridges, border crossings, logistics centers, and port infrastructure which connects Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay to Chilean ports on the Pacific. The physical side of the corridor was completed this past July with the construction of a key bridge linking Paraguay and Brazil; the Dialogo Americas hit piece suggests that if the U.S. moves quickly, it can control the digital and operational infrastructure which must be completed to fully integrate the route.
The article, written by one Julieta Pelcastre, baldly asserts the Malthusian imperial policy which underlies the Trump administration’s policy of driving China out of Ibero-America and the Caribbean. The author acknowledges that the Capricorn Corridor “marks a new phase in South America’s logistical integration… brings the continent’s interior closer to Pacific ports and Asian markets,” and will facilitate South American trade with Asia—which is, after all, the center of world economic growth. She acknowledges as well that the stated intention of the new highway route is to “facilitate trade between South America’s interior and Pacific ports serving Asian markets … strengthen connectivity … and promote development across the territories it traverses.”
China is willing—and highly qualified—to help build the critical infrastructure required by the region to industrialize and leave poverty behind. The policy of the United States, however, remains that set forth in Henry Kissinger’s infamous 1974 National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200, which asserts that economic development in the nations of the South, with its resulting population growth, must be prevented to save their resources for the Western imperial powers.
The bi-oceanic railway project, although still at an early stage, is also targeted. “In 2025, Brazil’s state-owned infrastructure planning company and a research entity affiliated with China State Railway Group agreed to study the feasibility of a proposed bi-oceanic railway connecting Brazil with Peru’s Chancay Port,” Pelcaste notes. She quotes Jorge Serrano, an advisor to the Peruvian Congress’s Intelligence Committee defending U.S. interests, who warns that “the railway project linking Brazil, the Peruvian port of Chancay, and the Capricorn Bioceanic Corridor must be understood as complementary initiatives within a single regional connectivity strategy in which China has a significant interest.” That, Serrano insists, is “the broader pattern” which must be stopped.
That bi-oceanic rail corridor, which can generate a leap in South America’s scientific and technological capabilities overall, was the centerpiece of discussion in EIR’s Sept. 4 Roundtable, titled “An Alternative to War and Looting in the Americas.” The rail project per se was detailed further in its second panel.
