Xi and Putin look to bolster influence in Latin America

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-07-15

Xi Jinping shakes hands with Vladimir Putin in Fortaleza, Brazil, on July 14,
2014. (Photo/Xinhua)

Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin are looking to bolster their countries' influence in Latin America amid rising anti-US sentiment in the region, reports Duowei News, an outlet run by overseas Chinese.

Washington has long viewed Latin America as its "backyard," Duowei said, dating back 200 years to the Monroe Doctrine, a US foreign policy stating that further efforts by European nations to interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring US intervention.

The doctrine, along with the related Roosevelt Corollary from the early 20th century–which states that the US will intervene in European-Latin American conflicts to enforce legitimate European claims on their behalf, rather than having Europeans press their claims directly–have allowed the US to keep its hold on Latin America, treating it as a testing ground for US hegemony and power politics, Duowei said.

According to Duowei, US control of the region began to slip from the 1970s as Latin America began to resent Washington's influence, sparking a "de-Americanization" movement. After the end of the Cold War, Washington tried to increase its economic influence in Latin America by pushing liberal reforms, but the strategy has depreciated Latin American currencies and failed to bring the economic prosperity originally envisioned, leading to an even stronger backlash, Duowei said.

This eventually led to the establishment of regional economic and political blocs, starting with the signing of an economic integration agreement between Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia in the Cuban capital of Havana on April 29, 2006. The Union of South American Nations formed in May 2008, while the Bank of the South was established in September 2009 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. From October 2008, Brazil and Argentina also declared that they would gradually abandon the US dollar in bilateral trade.

The global financial crisis in 2008 also hit the US hard and greatly diminished its international influence, including in Latin America, paving the way for traditional rivals such as China and Russia to make inroads into the region. Latin America, for its part, has been welcoming toward Chinese and Russian investment as a means to speed up the de-Americanization trend, Duowei added.

Venezuela, for example, has welcomed China as an export destination for its oil so that it can lessen its reliance on the US market. China's imports of Venezuelan oil have been rising steadily to the point where China is now Venezuela's fourth largest oil export destination. In June 2013, Nicaragua also approved a bill to grant a 50-year concession to the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company to build the landmark waterway.

Last year, US Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the Monroe Doctrine is "over," but that has done little to win back trust from Latin America, Duowei said, especially when former CIA staffer and whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency spied on phone conversations, emails and voice-over-IP services in Brazil and 13 other Latin American countries, including Columbia and Mexico. This led to Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela offering Snowden political asylum, while Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff canceled her scheduled trip to the US.

Chinese president Xi Jinping raised eyebrows last year when he made a trip to Central and North America as one of his first official state visits and signed deals that showed off China's economic prowess, Duowei said. He will soon be visiting Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba between July 17 and July 23. His Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, in an effort to find new economic partners after being isolated by the West due to the Crimea crisis earlier this year, will visit Cuba, Argentina and Brazil between July 17 and July 23. Both leaders will appear at the sixth BRICS Summit in Brazil on July 15 and July 16.

Washington does not appear ready to give up its "backyard," Duowei says, which is why US vice president Joe Biden made a trip to Latin America between June 16 and June 19 ahead of Xi and Putin's visits, but given the rising tide of anti-US sentiment and the desire to de-Americanize, it appears Chinese and Russian presence in Latin America will only keep growing stronger, Duowei said.