Toward a More Effective DoD Contribution to Strategic Competition in the Western Hemisphere

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Summary

This monograph focuses on the People’s Republic of China’s engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean, and its impact on US strategic equities in the region, from a US Department of Defense (DoD) perspective. The adverse impacts this monograph details include how:

1. the increasing presence of Chinese companies, products, and people-to-people networks in Latin America—and particularly their presence in digital architectures—gives the People’s Republic of China influence and potential access to sensitive information, putting sovereign decision making and intellectual property at risk;
2. People’s Republic of China (PRC) engagement with illiberal regimes facilitates these regimes’ consolidation and continuation of power, indirectly contributing to the risk they pose as hosts of criminal organizations, terrorist organizations, and anti-US adversaries, such as Russia and Iran; and
3. PRC security engagement in the region and the physical presence of PRC-based companies—particularly in ports and space—give the People’s Republic of China options against the United States during a potential conflict.

Note: This presence and these relationships may also give the People’s Republic of China options in situations below the threshold of war, but the elaboration of such specific cases is beyond the scope of the present work.)

This work argues, to contribute more effectively to the American whole-of-government response to the People’s Republic of China, the Department of Defense must design its response around strategic concepts focused on the effects the department can reasonably achieve through the tools at its disposal, better resourcing and repairing those tools where necessary to achieve the intended effects.

Promising areas include:

1. Using security assistance to help democratic partners succeed;
2. Leveraging the benefit partners perceive in DoD security assistance to strengthen incentives for those partners to continue working with the United States and limit their engagement with the People’s Republic of China;
3. Using DoD presence in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries—and military relationships of trust— to support situational awareness about PRC activities and how best to respond; and
4. Preparing, with partners in the region or alone where appropriate, to respond to likely PRC activities in the region in times of war.

This monograph recommends the Department of Defense:

1. Encourage more thinking within relevant combatant commands, organizations (which are focused on the future war-fighting environment), and academic institutions regarding effects-oriented strategic concepts for countering China.
2. More adequately resource instruments key to the effects these counter-China strategic concepts contemplate, with an emphasis on professional military education (PME) and training and other security assistance.
3. Increase resources and instruments for coordinating with other US government agencies in the conceptualization and execution of counter-China efforts.
4. Accelerate and institutionalize fast-track responses to deliver needed resources to partners in critical security states and political transitions.
5. Streamline planning and programming for partner defense needs.
6. Eliminate, where possible, program taxes and oversight organizations that increase costs and decrease the responsiveness of security-assistance activities.
7. Change the incentives within the foreign area officer (FAO) community and regional security cooperation office teams to decrease risk aversion in initiative taking.
8. Better message the complex value proposition of why working with the United States and minimizing exposure to PRC security and other critical sectors is in the partner’s national interest.

Although many of these issues are recognized within the Department of Defense and the US government, including by senior leadership, a lack of momentum, which needs to be overcome, arguably exists in making and implementing the difficult choices to address these issues