China Urges US to Give Up Monroe Doctrine, As Washington Intensifies Its Meddling in Latin America

“China firmly supports the just position of Latin American countries on opposing foreign interference and safeguarding their nations’ sovereignty.”

On August 26, Beijing blasted US-led meddling in Venezuela’s internal affairs, including by spreading misinformation about the recent elections. Three days later, China’s Foreign Ministry took aim at US interventionism in Latin America as a whole. In response to a question from Global Times, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said “the US may have announced the end of the Monroe Doctrine, but the fact is, for the past more than 200 years, hegemonism and power politics, which is intrinsic in (sic) the Doctrine, is far from being abandoned.”

Here’s the full exchange, taken from a transcript of the Lin Juan’s press conference posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s official website:

Global Times: Recently, several Latin American countries expressed their dissatisfaction with and protest against US interference in their internal affairs. In response to the inappropriate remarks by US Ambassador to Mexico on Mexico’s judicial reform, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that Mexico is “not a colony of any foreign nation,” and the US has to “learn to respect the sovereignty of Mexico.”

Honduran President Xiomara Castro condemned the US, saying that its “interference and interventionism violate international law.” Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said on social media that “Cuba is closely aware of the destabilizing activities of the NED disguised in the name of democracy values.” What’s more, Venezuela criticized the US for interfering in its election. Bolivia revealed that it was pressured by the “big northern power” after expressing its interest in joining BRICS. What is your comment?

Lin Jian: We noted reports on that. The US may have announced the end of the Monroe Doctrine, but the fact is, for the past more than 200 years, hegemonism and power politics, which is intrinsic in the Doctrine, is far from being abandoned.

China firmly supports the just position of Latin American countries on opposing foreign interference and safeguarding their nations’ sovereignty. The US should not turn a deaf ear to the legitimate concerns and the just call of Latin American countries and do whatever it likes. We urge the US to discard the outdated Monroe Doctrine and interventionism as soon as possible, stop unilateral actions of bullying, coercion, sanctions and blockade, and develop relations and have mutually beneficial cooperation with regional countries based on mutual respect, equality and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

The US’s hegemonism and power politics runs counter to the unstoppable historical trend of Latin American countries staying independent and seeking strength through unity. Such approaches will win no support and be consigned to the dustbin of history.

One can only hope so, given the enormous amount of damage Monroeism has inflicted on Latin America. But before that happens, Washington seems intent on further stirring things up in its direct neighbourhood.

A Long Time Coming

This response from China has been a long time coming. As we reported in Jan 2023, the US is in a desperate struggle to turn back the clock in Latin America after China has emerged as a major player in the region, even overtaking the US and the EU to become South America’s largest trade partner. A growing list of countries in the region have switched diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China and have signed trade and investment deals with Beijing. As part of its response to this threat, Washington is rejigging the Monroe Doctrine:

China is already South America’s biggest trading partner. The US still holds sway over Central America and is still the region’s largest trading partner as a whole. But that is primarily due to its gigantic trade flows with Mexico, which account for 71% of all US-LatAm trade. As Reuters reported in June, if you take Mexico out of the equation, China has already overtaken the US as Latin America’s largest trading partner. Excluding Mexico, total trade flows — i.e., imports and exports — between China and Latin America reached $247 billion last year, far in excess of the US’ $173 billion.

The US is now in a desperate, dangerous race to turn back the clock.

To do so, it is rejigging the Monroe Doctrine, a 200-year old US foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism on the American continent. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the United States. Now, it is applying that doctrine to China and Russia.

General Richardson, [´´´´commander of US Southern Command], detailed how Washington, together with US Southern Command, is actively negotiating the sale of lithium in the lithium triangle to US companies through its web of embassies, with the goal of “box[ing] out” out adversaries.

One can safely assume that this “boxing out” process applies not only to lithium but to all of Latin America’s strategic minerals and assets, including rare earth elements, lithium, gold, oil, natural gas, light sweet crude (huge deposits of which have been found off the coast of Guyana), copper, abundant food crops, and fresh water — all coveted by the US government and military, and the corporations whose interests they serve.

Last Thursday (August 29), China’s Foreign Ministry finally responded to this reduxed form of “Monroeism” by urging Washington to abandon its policies of interventionism in Latin America. The message came on the same day that the US State Department issued a press release insisting that “Nicolas Maduro and his representatives have tampered with the results of that election, falsely claimed victory, and carried out wide-spread repression to maintain power.”

China has a lot invested in Venezuela’s Chavista government, which the US has spent more then two decades trying to topple, and Beijing is determined to protect that investment. In September 2023, it upgraded its relations with Venezuela to the most important level by designating it an “all weather strategic partner”. China’s President Xi Jinping, together with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, was also one of the first world leaders to congratulate Maduro after the election results were announced over a month ago.

Venezuela is one of two highly resource-rich South American nations to have applied for BRICS membership in recent months — the other being Bolivia, whose government recently suffered an attempted coup d’état, though it is still unclear whether the US played a role. If the applications are accepted, the BRICS will be able to count among its ranks the country with the world’s largest oil reserves (Venezuela) as well as the country with the world’s largest lithium deposits (Bolivia).

Stirring the Pot

In recent weeks, the US and Canadian ambassadors to Mexico have tried to derail Mexico’s outgoing Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador government’s judicial reforms, just months after the US Drugs Enforcement Agency spread unproven allegations that AMLO was on the payroll of Mexican drug cartels during Mexico’s recent elections — to no avail: AMLO’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won by a historic landslide. AMLO has responded by “pausing” Mexico’s relations with the US and Canadian embassies. The move, while largely symbolic, has at least put an end, for now, to the two ambassadors’ very public denouncements of his reforms.

In Venezuela, meanwhile, US meddling continues to intensify. On Friday, the South American country suffered a nationwide power outage that the Maduro government blamed on “electrical sabotage against the national grid.” Like much that is happening in Venezuela right now, it is hard to corroborate the government’s claims, but the idea of the US causing sabotage is hardly far-fetched. Then on Monday, the US seized Venezuela’s presidential plane and flew it from the Dominican Republic to Florida after concluding that its purchase violated its sanctions.

Then there’s the case of Honduras. Last Thursday, the President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, scrapped a century-old extradition treaty with the US after US Ambassador to Honduras Laura Dogu criticised a recent visit by Honduras’ Defence Secretary, Manuel Zelaya, to Venezuela where he met with Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López, whom Dogu accused of being a “drug trafficker.” Zelaya is Castro’s husband as well as a former president of Honduras before being toppled by a US-supported coup in 2009.

Xiomara Castro blasted Dogu’s intervention as a clear violation of her role as ambassador to Honduras.  The next day, Castro warned that a coup d’état was being planned against her government using the country’s armed forces. “We’ve already gone through one coup” in recent years, Castro said:

“We have already lived through what that means: violence, banishment, persecution and human rights violations. I want to promise the Honduran people that there will be no more coups d’état. And that I will not allow the instrument of extradition to be used to intimidate or blackmail the Armed Forces of Honduras.

The interference and interventionism of the United States, as well as its intention to direct the politics of the Honduras through its Embassy and other representatives is intolerable. They attack, ignore and violate with impunity the principles and practices of international law which promote respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples, non-intervention and universal peace. Enough.

While the coup allegations are unconfirmed, it is not hard to see why the US and Honduras’ comprador elite may wish to unseat Castro’s government, just as they did her husband’s.

Xiomara Castro is one of relatively few democratically elected leaders in Latin America to have recognised Nicolás Maduro’s alleged victory in Venezuela’s elections. Her government is also in the process of banning Honduras’ Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs) — controversial special economic zones exempt from some national laws and taxes that were established by previous governments — and has taken steps to exit the World Bank’s ICSID arbitration body, which is assessing an investor-state dispute with an autonomous zone claiming $10.8 billion in compensation for alleged damages.

As news spread that Honduras was walking away from the world’s biggest ISDS court, a group of 85 international economists, including many whose names regularly appear on this site, published a letter in Progressive International “commend[ing] President Castro and the people of Honduras” and encouraging “other countries to follow their lead toward a a fairer, more democratic trade system.” That is not the sort of example that international investors and multinational corporations want a smallish country like Honduras to be setting.

But Honduras’ government now appears to have a powerful ally on its side: Beijing.

“Too Tainted” 

US officials can fret as much as they want over China’s growing footprint in its “backyard”; however, as an article in Latin American Post notes, the reality is that “for many Latin American countries, China offers a welcome alternative (NC: or counterweight) to the US, providing opportunities for development and growth without the strings attached to US aid and investment.” That is why more than 20 of the region’s governments, including some closely aligned to the US, have so far signed up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), with fellow China’s fellow BRICS founding member, Brazil, likely to be next up:

The appeal of China’s model is particularly strong in a region that has long struggled with underdevelopment and inequality. For many Latin American leaders, China’s rise represents an opportunity to break free from the cycle of dependency and assert greater autonomy in their foreign and economic policies. This shift is emblematic of a broader realignment in global geopolitics, as emerging powers like China challenge the traditional dominance of the United States in regions like Latin America.

As NC reader notes in the comments thread, there are many other reasons why China’s development model continues to find adherents in the region, including economic ones (BRICS>G7), technological ones (China’s strong support of digital development) energy-related ones, not to mention, of course, the growing frustration with the whimsical and ever changing Rules-Based Order. Even Foreign Policy magazine published an article last year conceding that “Monroeism — whether in name or as an implicit policy paradigm — is doomed to fail”:

As a term, the “Monroe Doctrine” is too tainted to be redeemed. Invoking the phrase in inter-American relations today is counterproductive. The doctrine cannot shake two centuries of links with unilateralism, paternalism, and interventionism.

Nor does referring to the Monroe Doctrine by another name hide its stench…

And here is the problem. Whatever policymakers believe the Monroe Doctrine to mean, at its core, the doctrine doubts that Latin American countries can chart their own course in the world. Until U.S. foreign policy rids itself of that notion, it will be ensnared in the grasp of Monroe.

The problem is that neither the Democrats or Republicans in Washington appear to have got the memo, which means the race for influence and resources in Latin America is likely to continue heating up.