It’s about China, stupid.
President-elect Trump’s answer to an ‘I gotcha’ question is capturing all of the headlines – his refusal to rule out military force in the Panama Canal – but many in the media are missing its intended messaging.
Trump and his incoming national security team are putting Chinese President Xi Jinping on notice.
They are essentially telling him and the rest of the world – we see what Beijing is aiming to economically and militarily achieve in the Western hemisphere.
Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and even the Drake Passage at the End of the World are all interconnected. China is their common denominator.
This isn’t about U.S. military conquests of old. Rather, it is solely about telling Xi “hands off!” It is the 21st century version of the Monroe Doctrine – and it is coming at a time when China is increasingly asserting itself on the global stage.
Beijing is working to strangle economically and militarily U.S. maritime and naval sea routes by controlling key choke points and naval transit routes.
Trump’s second term was always going to be more China centric. Xi’s rapidly expanding People’s Liberation Army will be a principal driving factor when his administration rewrites the National Security Strategy as mandated by the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986.
As is his custom, Trump is arguing the case against Beijing in largely economic terms. However, the impetus for his argument is primarily driven by China and its dual track approach to building a global military projection force.
The key word is “dual.” China’s $1 trillion and growing Belt and Road Initiative is economic in construct. However, it is also an alarming modern-day Trojan Horse that is building the infrastructure that will house an increasingly potent global Chinese military presence.
We have seen evidence of this in play. China’s economic investment in Africa led to the opening in 2018 of its first overseas military base in Djibouti and only several miles away from Camp Lemonnier – the U.S. base in the Horn of Africa.
Initially this was about Beijing gaining access to raw materials and then securing sea routes back to mainland China by securing deep water seaports, building artificial islands and deploying military forces to secure them.
Now it is also about Xi threatening vital Western trade routes in the Gulf of Aden and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
Artful or not, Trump’s warnings about the Panama Canal are timely. China is aspiring to economically control the canal. The Landbridge Group, a Chinese company, alongside “Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings, now operate ports at both ends of the canal.”
Greenland may appear to most Americans to be an isolated concern; yet the Danish territory will play an increasingly vital role in U.S. national security in the decades ahead.
Global warming is opening up the 3,500-mile Northern Sea Route that extends from the Bering Sea separating Alaska and Siberia to the Barents and Kara Seas north of Murmansk, Russia.
Aside from NORAD, the U.S. is presently ill-prepared to defend against any Russian and Chinese militarization of the Arctic. By example, the U.S. Navy only has two icebreakers to cover the competing Northwest Passage in Canada.
Currently, the threat is largely Russian. But, in 2018, China declared itself a “Near Arctic State” and launched the “Polar Silk Road” – an Arctic version of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative in partnership with Moscow.
Left unspoken for now by Trump, China’s other ambition lies at the tip of South America in Chile. Retired U.S. Army Gen. Laura Richardson, the former commander of SOUTHCOM, warned Congress in March 2023, that Beijing is attempting to “secure the rights to build dual-use maritime installations near the southern port city of Ushuaia.”
If that happens, China could militarily dominate the Strait of Magellan, Drake Passage and Antarctica in the not-so-distant future. It would also mean that Beijing could strategically check or to block at will U.S. maritime and naval transiting of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
We only need to consider Taipei and Manila to know that Xi is willing to play that card. The PLA frequently encircles Taiwan by sea and air to practice cutting its sea trade routes and the PLA Navy routinely harasses Filipino shipping.
China is challenging us on our own turf. Do we have the determined resolve as a nation to confront them?
