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2 Latin America in step with
China By Cynthia Watson
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA)
increasingly operates as an instrument of
diplomatic statecraft for the country. The PLA, an
arm of the Chinese Communist Party rather than a
national army, is enhancing its ties with various
militaries around the world, illustrated by
military-to-military visits to the United States,
India and other nations, fleet visits to ports
around the globe and various other visits by
senior PLA officers.
The military's role
constitutes just one part of an expanding
presence that China manifests
as a "major power" on the global stage.
In
particular, the PLA's involvement with Latin
America illustrates Beijing's pursuit of a
multi-faceted strategy to expand its global
presence. Latin America, of course, has the
historical overlay of the US Monroe Doctrine of
1823, whereby the United States jealously guarded
the region from "foreign" intervention, often
disregarding the distress of others in and outside
of the region.
Taiwan was the "Chinese"
entity in Latin America for much of the 20th
century, but posed no threat to the Monroe
Doctrine. China's formal relations with most
states in Latin America began - in earnest - in
the early 1970s when Beijing won diplomatic
recognition from Chile and Mexico [1]. At present,
only a handful of states in Central America and
Paraguay still convey diplomatic status to Taiwan
as a sovereign independent state. All the others
Latin American states recognize Beijing as the
legal representative of "China".
One of
the earliest methods for the PLA to make in-roads
in this region came with the opening of the PLA
National Defense University (PLA NDU) in 1985,
with its attendant "foreign course" for militaries
in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. This
course, barred for PLA officers except for
teaching faculty, offered a counterbalance to the
Soviet and US professional military education
(PME) courses that proliferated during much of the
Cold War era. Additionally, it was a manifestation
of China's continuing commitment to the
Non-Aligned Movement principles dating to the
1950s, a posture important to China's desire for
support as a sovereign, formerly exploited state
during the "Century of Humiliation" [2].
The opportunity to study at the PLA NDU is
one that has consistently attracted the attention
of Latin American military officers, as US ties
with the region have ebbed and flowed. Officers
from Venezuela, Bolivia and other states on
less-than-favorable terms with Washington have
attended PME courses in Beijing, brining benefits
to bilateral state-to-state relationships and
enhancing Latin American militaries that have few
educational opportunities abroad.
Twenty
years after the creation of the PLA NDU, its
foreign course remains vibrant for improving ties,
including serving as a channel for continuing and
expanding ties between Hugo Chavez's Venezuelan
armed forces and the PLA. Additionally, the PLA
NDU continues offering PME to Latin American
militaries that would otherwise not have the
opportunity to attend US schools because of the
sheer challenge of securing seats in the de facto
competition with militaries from other parts of
the world where the United States seeks to enhance
its military-to-military ties [4].
New
millennium, new push There is a significant
increase in China's interest in Latin America
during the first decade of the 21st century. As
China's need for energy resources, food and market
access grow, so has Beijing's interest in using
the military instruments of statecraft to attain
its goals. Since the mid-1990s, senior leaders of
the PLA has been making annual visits to and
welcoming reciprocal delegations from the major
Latin American states and the entire region.
These visits began as relatively quiet
affairs meant to "show the flag", but without any
substantial accomplishments, these shows were more
of an effort by Beijing to oust Taiwan's presence
from Latin America. At that time, Beijing was
primarily concerned about Taipei's moves toward de
jure independence, actions likely to require
leveraging support from Taiwan's diplomatic allies
in the region: Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras,
Paraguay, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Beijing trumpeted the success of these military
exchanges without requiring many concrete results,
because they represented a foreign, non-US
presence in the region that did not elicit any
protest from Washington.
Since 2000,
military exchanges have accelerated and are common
throughout the region. The PLA leadership has
brought large delegations to Latin American
states, including Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and
even Colombia. The latter's participation is
particularly noteworthy because US funding for
"Plan Colombia" forms a crucial aspect of the
Colombian government's efforts to finish off
40-year-old guerrilla groups, thus engendering
tremendous loyalty on the part of the Andres
Pastrana Arango (1998-2002) and Alvaro Uribe Velez
(2002-present) regimes.
Velez is
unabashedly US President George W Bush's closest
ally in Latin America, yet military exchanges
between Bogota and Beijing have increased in the
past several years, Colombia's de facto alliance
with the United States notwithstanding, Beijing
has increasingly good ties with Colombia.
Another area where PLA's military
diplomacy has taken a noteworthy role is in the
small European enclave states of northeast Latin
America. The PLA has played a major role in
developing these exceedingly poor states'
infrastructure at precisely the time when these
states are producing more of the primary goods
that Beijing is working so vigorously to procure
around the world.
The PLA has been
providing construction assistance to Suriname, for
example, for the better part of this decade as
China has been increasing trade links. The PLA
interaction also provides these relatively
isolated nations with military exchanges that they
have great difficulty obtaining from other
sources. This factor is often forgotten by those
in Washington critical of Beijing's activities in
the region.
Venezuela: The burr under
Washington's saddle The most visible
increase in PLA's influence in Latin America has
occurred in Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez
makes known daily his hatred of Washington's
pervasive shadow over the
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