What does Puerto Rico have to do with strategic situation with China? A lot

The parts of the United States called American territories aren’t well understood anymore. While a premier component of American superiority in the 20th century, in the age of Howard Zinn’s textbooks in the public school system, our territories now are ignored or simply used as cudgels in hyperbolic attacks against the rare historical experiment of a constitutional republic called the United States.

Of the five populated territories, Puerto Rico is the largest by land mass and population (roughly 3.3 million). The Department of Defense (DOD) gunnery and bombing range called Vieques Island became a cause célèbre for left-leaning personalities such as Al Sharpton in the late 1990s. With the peace dividend looming over DOD budgets in the later years of the Clinton administration and the raging theater and feigned outrage by non-Puerto Ricans, the DOD decision was made to shut down and depart—with dire strategic consequences for U.S. diplomacy and security being felt today.

The off-island activists won, slapped each other on the back, folded their roadshow, and departed, and a devastating economic toll was inflicted upon the residents—$300 million a year departed Puerto Rico in 2004 dollars with the loss of jobs and DOD funding. With the shutdown of Roosevelt Roads Naval Station and the related gunnery range on Vieques, the knowledge, memory, and understanding of Puerto Rico and its relationship to the rest of the United States has begun to fade, while the governance and social conditions across Puerto Rico started a downward spiral.

Puerto Ricans are increasingly frustrated, upset, and vocal about the corruption of state and local government. Hurricane Maria hit and devastated the island in 2017 and was a tipping point for the pre-existing dysfunction. Two more concerning phenomena are also occurring, a spike in fentanyl usage and a disconcerting flight of population (Hawaii also faces similar grave issues, stoked by the similar causal factor of dysfunctional state and local government).

As described to me by former Secretary of State and Puerto Rico Lt. Gov. Elmer L. Román, the “closure of Roosevelt Roads and the lack of a comprehensive U.S. strategy towards Puerto Rico has left the United States exposed in its furthermost eastern flank, weakened its sea control over the Caribbean, and potentially offsetting U.S. dominance in the Atlantic.”

In other words, putting an end to Mahan’s Sea power theory and the Monroe Doctrine.

As a strategic analyst and planner, the proper term to describe what’s going on in Puerto Rico is “vacuum” as in, “A vacuum is developing.” In other words, the situation in Puerto Rico is creating a strategic “vacuum” or offset with destabilizing issues including the loss of population, a surge in criminal activity, and the increase of foreign powers in the region. Nothing good ever comes from a vacuum, except the opportunity for someone else to come in and take advantage of the situation.