When President Donald Trump convened selected hemispheric partners to Doral, Florida on March 7 for the Shield of the Americas security cooperation conference, the stated purpose was to solidify a regional alliance against illegal narcotics. But the subtext was clear: to limit Chinese engagement and reduce Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere.
The Doral gathering was overtly at the foundation of the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) positioning the Western Hemisphere as the top regional priority of the United States. While addressing border security, illegal narcotics, and human trafficking and migration flows, the NSS also asserts a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine targeting China. Doral was not a regional summit in the traditional sense; the two largest economies, Brazil and Mexico, were not invited, nor was there much pretense of a broader agenda for economic and financial cooperation. It was, rather, an opportunity to highlight U.S. priorities and an invitation to a select group of regional leaders to support them in anticipation that doing so would redound to their own interests.
That calculus is particularly important. By definition, regional leaders themselves are at the forefront of revising existing relations with Beijing, in several cases their top respective trade partner. While no particular affinity exists for China beyond political or ideological motivations, nonetheless the United States has been virtually absent from the region for years, and nations have diversified relations with those willing to accommodate them.
Rethinking China is a big ask. To this point, a number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have attempted to arbitrage relations with Washington and Beijing, paying lip service to the United States while engaging China at the same time. China directly encourages this so-called “active non-alignment” approach, seeking to create institutional neutrality in a region traditionally viewed as a sphere of U.S. interest while promoting a narrative of U.S. decline coupled with the superiority of the Chinese system.
Washington is now pushing back. Nearshoring to the Western Hemisphere from China is clearly a U.S. priority according to the NSS, although such efforts are only just beginning and results remain undefined. Notably, regulations permitting trade and investment with Venezuela post-Maduro explicitly exclude China. As well, continuation of the USMCA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico will tighten rules of origin requirements to freeze out Chinese inputs. Application of tariffs and conclusion of trade agreements worldwide now take into account third-country relations with China. Not all Latin American and Caribbean nations will benefit equally from nearshoring, however, so seeking concrete actions now in exchange for benefits that may or may not arrive over time is a challenging proposition to make.
There is a path forward on hemispheric cooperation to counter China in at least three specific areas consistent with the NSS: fentanyl, fishing, and fifth-generation telecommunications (5G).
The Doral gathering solidified agreement among the participants to cooperate more actively on counternarcotics, including the use of military assets and personnel. These issues are historically fraught across the region, but the narcotics trade has overtaken and subjugated entire nations in some cases, with the cartels functioning as parallel governments, especially at the local level. To the extent that the illegal narcotics trade is being fueled by, say, precursor chemicals from China, this is a matter ripe for enhanced regional cooperation with Washington. Meantime, on the plus side, across the hemisphere democratic institutions are more secure and human rights considerations are more pronounced than in the past.
Second, China’s industrial fishing fleets now serve as organized “maritime militias” that descend on prime hemispheric fishing grounds and threaten to denude them like a plague of locusts. Their manner of operating—massing just outside territorial waters and routinely turning off geolocational transponders when actively harvesting—has become a significant economic threat to regional economies. China’s despoilment of rich fishing areas, including those surrounding the environmentally sensitive Galápagos Islands, are reducing the catch of commercial fishermen and threatening to collapse the fisheries ecosystem. Ironically, it has yet to receive much national-level attention or pushback. Starting with nations located on the Pacific Coast of the Americas plus Argentina, coordination with the United States on joint coast guard and, where appropriate, naval patrols should be broadened to reduce the threat of Chinese overfishing and the cost-free extraction of natural from the open veins of Latin America.
Third, digital infrastructure is the backbone of the modern economy and runs on 5G. China’s penetration of the Americas is a security nightmare but difficult to lament in the absence of cost-effective Western alternatives. This is an area where the U.S. Development Finance Corporation can play an outsized role, actively supporting regional uptake of appropriate Western technology. As well, undersea cables such as that mooted between Chile and CCP-controlled Hong Kong are a continuing flashpoint and will be at the forefront of Washington’s regional concerns.
Doral was not about the sort of amorphous, comprehensive agenda that has animated previous gatherings of regional leaders only to be ignored completely once the meetings conclude. Neither was it, as some observers derisively claimed, a weak substitute for the previous region-wide Summits of the Americas. It was, rather, focused on concrete steps that willing partners can take together to address regional security concerns, a coalition of the willing.
We need each other to get this done. Actions speak louder than summit communiques. Finding specific ways to work together to address the China challenge in the Americas, beginning with the 3F agenda—fentanyl, fisheries, and 5G—would be a productive and impactful way to begin.
