As Ukraine Distracts, China Advances in Our Own Hemisphere

With Ukraine as America’s primary foreign distraction, Communist China makes quiet inroads under our southern border.

China is ready to assume indirect leadership of the Organization of American States (OAS), the 34-nation regional entity that the United States created to promote peace, stability, and security in the Americas.

Without the Trump Administration’s quick action, the OAS is poised to elect a Chinese proxy on March 10 to run the organization.

That proxy is Albert Ramdin, the foreign minister of Suriname. Ramdin has gathered the 18 votes necessary to become the next OAS secretary general.

China’s Belt and Road bought influence south of our border

For decades, taking advantage of American neglect, China has slowly made a long march through the Caribbean. OAS was a soft target.

China extended its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to the hemisphere. BRI involves trillions of dollars in logistical infrastructure and development, with other tools to build its own hegemony to displace the U.S.

Almost two-thirds of OAS members have signed on to BRI.

China aims to dominate or replace the institutions that the U.S. created. The OAS was designed after World War II to help the region resist communist expansion by eradicating extreme poverty, fostering economic, social, and cultural development, and devising common defense and security actions.

In the first days after taking office again, President Trump effectively stopped China’s Belt-and-Road expansion at its most strategic chokepoint—the Panama Canal. That sudden clamp suggests more action once Trump’s Western Hemisphere team is in place.

The OAS still holds value for any country seeking to use it. It helped standardize and streamline counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and anti-human trafficking policies to comport with those of the U.S.

Every member country, large or small, has the same vote. Unlike the United Nations, the U.S. has no veto at OAS. Tiny non-Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean region, through a local sort of European Union called the Caribbean Community or CARICOM, pooled their votes to create the largest OAS bloc, with 14 votes.

Suddenly, obscure countries like Suriname and Caribbean microstates built diplomatic value far beyond their size.

China’s OAS takeover

“The Chinese regime backs the candidacy of Albert Ramdin in the OAS to have greater influence in the region,” Infobae, an influential news service based in Argentina, reported in January. If elected to head the OAS, China “would intend to utilize him to control a key organization in the region.”

The U.S. is backing Paraguayan Foreign Minister Ruben Ramirez Lezcano for the spot. Some countries that did not want a CARICOM candidate perceived him as too close to the Trump administration. Regional diplomats told me that if the Trump administration had plans to ensure China’s defeat in the OAS, they never got the message.

China needed only four more votes for the win.

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