Washingtons self-defeating obsession with China in Latin America

Washington’s national security establishment is once again gripped by familiar hysteria: China is “expanding” in Latin America, and America must respond.

The opening of the Chancay port in Peru, China’s release of its third policy paper on the region, and growing military exchanges between Beijing and countries like Brazil have triggered predictable alarm bells among the foreign policy blob.

But this reflexive panic obscures a more fundamental question—do Chinese activities in Latin America actually threaten core American interests, or are we manufacturing a crisis where none exists?

The recent developments that have Washington policymakers hyperventilating are indeed substantial. China inaugurated a $1.3 billion deepwater port in Chancay, Peru, cutting shipping times between China and South America by ten days. Beijing pledged $9 billion in new investment credit at the China-CELAC summit.

Trade between China and Latin America has increased tenfold over two decades, with China now the region’s second-largest trading partner overall and the largest for South America specifically when Mexico is excluded. Twenty-two of 26 eligible countries have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

From a realist perspective, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. China is the world’s second-largest economy with massive demand for agricultural goods and minerals. Latin America has abundant commodities and underdeveloped infrastructure.

This is basic economic complementarity, not geopolitical conspiracy. Yet the US foreign policy establishment insists on viewing every Chinese port investment through the lens of “dual-use” military facilities and every trade deal as a sinister bid for hegemony.

Consider the hand-wringing over Chancay. US Southern Command’s General Laura Richardson warned that the port sits on America’s “20-yard line,” as if Peru were a football field and Beijing’s ability to efficiently ship soybeans constituted an imminent threat to Miami.

The concern that commercial ports could be “converted for military purposes” is technically accurate—virtually any infrastructure can theoretically serve dual purposes. But applying this standard consistently would require us to view every foreign investment everywhere as a potential military threat, a paranoid worldview that bears little relationship to strategic reality.

The military dimensions of China’s engagement, while growing, remain modest. Beijing has expanded defense attaché presence in the region and conducted joint exercises with Brazil. China’s policy paper explicitly commits to enhanced military training and police cooperation.

But context matters: China’s military footprint in Latin America consists primarily of training exchanges and equipment sales, not bases or troop deployments. The scale pales in comparison to America’s extensive military relationships, installations, and operational presence throughout the hemisphere.

What truly drives Washington’s anxiety is not Chinese military power in Latin America—which remains negligible—but the erosion of American economic dominance and the ideological affront of countries choosing Chinese partnership over American primacy.

This explains why US concerns focus heavily on economic infrastructure: ports, telecommunications networks, trade agreements. These aren’t military threats; they’re commercial competition that challenges America’s traditional economic leverage.

The irony is that Washington’s confrontational approach is counterproductive to its own interests. By framing every Chinese engagement as a zero-sum threat requiring American “pushback,” we drive Latin American countries into more, not less, dependence on Beijing.

Countries like Argentina under Javier Milei initially distanced themselves from China based on ideological alignment with US preferences, only to pragmatically reverse course when faced with economic reality—China is Argentina’s second-largest trade partner and renewed a $5 billion currency swap line when Argentina desperately needed it.

This reveals the fundamental flaw in Washington’s approach: treating economic interdependence as a problem to be solved through geopolitical competition rather than accepting it as a feature of global commerce.

Latin American countries aren’t choosing between Washington and Beijing based on ideological affinity; they’re pursuing their economic interests. When the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and adopted increasingly protectionist trade policies, it created a vacuum that China naturally filled.

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy dedicates four pages to the Western Hemisphere, emphasizing pushback against Chinese influence. Yet the strategy offers little beyond familiar rhetoric about countering Beijing and supporting democracy.

Where are the competitive trade agreements? The infrastructure investment initiatives that might match Chinese offerings? The development finance that doesn’t come with the conditionality and bureaucracy that makes Chinese loans attractive by comparison?

American policymakers seem to believe that Latin American countries should reject Chinese investment out of solidarity with Washington’s geopolitical preferences. This is magical thinking.

Peru benefits from Chancay port reducing logistics costs and improving trade efficiency. Ecuador can now export perishables to Asia profitably. Brazil accesses capital and technology for infrastructure development. These are tangible economic benefits that abstract appeals to shared values and hemisphere solidarity cannot match.

Moreover, the military concerns are largely manufactured. The notion that China might use commercial ports in Peru or Brazil for naval operations against the United States requires scenarios so implausible they border on fantasy.

In what conceivable circumstance would China risk conflict with the United States by deploying military assets to South America? How would such forces be sustained across the Pacific? What strategic objective would justify such exposure?

Even the “espionage” concerns about Chinese port operations, while more plausible than military scenarios, are overwrought. Yes, port operators gain insight into commercial shipping patterns.

But this is hardly unique to Chinese-operated facilities, and the strategic significance of such information is marginal. The United States conducts far more extensive surveillance and intelligence gathering globally—are we really in a position to protest Chinese port companies collecting shipping data?

The real issue is that American foreign policy has become untethered from actual security threats and national interests. We’ve constructed a global framework in which any diminution of American influence anywhere constitutes a “threat” requiring response. This conflates American preferences with American interests and treats any loss of relative power as an absolute security problem.

A genuinely realist approach would distinguish between core interests—actual threats to American security, prosperity, and sovereignty—and peripheral preferences about global influence. Chinese commercial engagement in Latin America falls squarely in the latter category.

It may complicate American diplomatic leverage, but it doesn’t threaten Americans’ physical security or economic wellbeing. Indeed, to the extent it improves Latin American economic development, it reduces migration pressures and creates more stable neighbors—outcomes supposedly aligned with American interests.

The path forward requires Washington to accept reduced hegemonic control over the Western Hemisphere as the new normal, not a crisis requiring escalation. This means competing economically rather than demanding geopolitical alignment, offering attractive trade and investment terms rather than expecting countries to reject Chinese engagement out of solidarity with American preferences.

It means focusing American military resources on genuine security threats rather than inflating every Chinese commercial activity into a national security emergency.

Latin American countries will engage with China because it serves their economic interests. No amount of American hand-wringing or geopolitical pressure will change this fundamental reality.

The question is whether Washington can accept this with strategic maturity or will instead pursue a counterproductive strategy of forcing countries to choose between economic development and American approval—a choice that, predictably, many will resolve against us.

The obsession with Chinese “expansion” in Latin America reflects the inability of American policymakers to adapt to a multipolar world where US preferences no longer automatically prevail. Rather than acknowledging this reality and adjusting strategy accordingly, Washington persists in treating declining hegemony as a security threat requiring confrontation.

This approach will fail because it misunderstands both the nature of Chinese engagement and the interests of Latin American states. Until American strategy distinguishes between actual threats and mere preferences, between core interests and peripheral influence, we will continue squandering resources and credibility on manufactured crises while real challenges go unaddressed.

The competition in Latin America isn’t a test of military resolve or geopolitical will. It’s a question of whether America can offer something Latin American countries actually want. So far, the answer is no—and blaming China for our own failures of imagination and policy won’t change that.

Thisarticlewas originally published on Leon Hadar’s Global Zeitgeist and is republished with kind permission. Become a subscriberhere.