From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - China's Taking Over Latin America, Why You Should Be Worried

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Twenty years ago, China had a negligible presence in Latin America. Today, China is South America's top trading partner. So, why has China's interest in the region grown so heavily in recent years, and should America be concerned? According to national security expert and Center for a Secure Free Society Executive Director Joseph Humire, there's more than enough reason to sound the alarm. In his complex conversation with Rachel and Sean, Humire explains how China is growing its influence in Latin America to 'diminish their geographic disadvantage with the United States,' why it's urgent America respond to this threat, and how other countries like Iran are strengthening ties in Latin America with ill intentions. Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some things require a lot of work to grow, like plants, hair, babies, or your savings. But when you run a business, you already have enough on your plate. Scotiabank's Right Size Savings for Business account can help you grow your savings with ease. For a limited time, open a new account and earn up to 4.65% interest for the first six months. Before you know it, your savings will grow without you even noticing. Ooh, which reminds me, I need a haircut. Conditions apply. Ends December 15th. Rate is annual, calculated daily, and will vary based on account balance. Visit scotiabank.com

slash rightsizedsavings for full details. Hey, everybody. Welcome to From the Kitchen Table. Hey everybody, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. Sean is traveling today, so I'm doing this broadcast by myself. But we have an incredible guest. His name is Joseph Umide. He is an author. He's a national security expert because we're going to be talking about China and Latin America. So we definitely want him here. He's also the director of the Center for a Secure and Free Society. Joseph, great to have you on. You know, there's a lot of talk about Chinese that are coming over the border. Americans seem to be very concerned about that. And obviously, an 800% increase. But China and its influence in Latin America is something that's been happening for a while, but it has been picking up steam. And so I thought it'd be

great to have you on, Joseph, and to talk to our audience about what is going on there and how and why it should matter to Americans citizens. So let's first just break it down. What should Americans know about the presence of China in Latin America from your point of view? First, Rachel, thank you for having me on the podcast. It's great to be with you. So everything that you hear or see or learn about China in the South China Sea in the Indo-Pacific or in Africa with Djibouti and Zimbabwe, the same thing is going on in Latin America with one major difference. It's very close to the United States. It's happening within miles of our shore. It's coming up to our southern border.

And so here's the thing that I think everyone needs to take away. China's main weapon of warfare isn't their military, it's economics. Economics has been their weapon of warfare for the last 50 years, and they have used it specifically on the developing world, mainly Latin America. If we go back 20 years ago, China had a negligible presence in Latin America. They weren't the top trade partner of any country in the region. Today, they are the top trade partner of nine out of the 12 sovereign nations in South America. Most of South America pretty much prefers to trade with China than the United States. And 14 of the 33 countries in Latin America, they're now focused on Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. So what does that mean? So if it was just trade, if it was just normal trade

investment, I don't think we would worry about that. If it was New Zealand, for instance, we wouldn't be alarmed by it. But China hoodwinks these countries by saying that they want trade and investment, and they do have some of that. But the real intent is military in nature. They have military ambitions. So what China wants to do is they want to diminish the geographic disadvantage with the United States. They want to position naval and military assets in the Caribbean and the the Western Hemisphere, the way that they have in the South China Sea. And they're very close to accomplishing that. I'm actually here in Honduras.

I'm actually in Honduras right now. And in Honduras, this is the last country that actually took away its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. Latin America used to be the last bastion of diplomatic relations for Taiwan. Honduras is the most recent country that took away that diplomatic recognition and now recognized the PRC. And China is now buying up everything in Honduras, telecommunications, critical infrastructure, ports. And they're actually trying to drive out U.S. investment. So I think the main message here, Rachel, just to begin the conversation, is that China has a warfare strategy for Latin America. They hoodwinked Latin America. The thinking was all about trade, money and investment. But what they're really doing was pre-positioning themselves to have a

military presence, which they're very close to having. So Joseph, you're a security expert, but we, I hope, have security experts in our government, in our State Department, in our Pentagon. Are you, from your perch and what you're seeing in Latin America, and you're there often, and as you said, you're in Honduras right now, are you seeing the alarm bells going off with the U.S. government? Are they as concerned or as concerned as they should be? Are they as concerned as you about what China is accomplishing in terms of its soft power

and its ultimate hard power ambitions? So when it comes to our national defense, meaning our U.S. military, they are very concerned. If you read the posture statement of the commander of Southern Command, that's the combatant command that has responsibility of Latin America and the Caribbean. If you read their annual posture statement that they say before Congress, multiple commanders, including the current Commander General Laura Richardson, but previous commanders as well, have always highlighted China as our main threat inside Latin America. They did it at different scales, like in the past, maybe 10 years ago, saying this is creeping up. But the last statement is basically saying if we don't do something urgently, we're going to lose our southern flank. We're going to lose our ability to actually protect ourselves from our southern hemisphere.

So they are very concerned. But DOD is just a policy implementer. They don't make policy. They just implement what policy comes from the Hill or comes from the White House. And that's where my concern is. The White House is actually doing everything to essentially drive our Latin American partners into the arms of China. I'll give you a great example. Guatemala is a good example of this. Guatemala is a country that is, one, a staunch defender of Taiwan, a staunch defender of Israel. They have been geopolitically aligned with the United States for a long time, and they're also very important for combating drugs and human trafficking.

The Biden administration has done everything possible to wedge Guatemala, to drive out any type of ally in the country that would actually try to work with us on some of these issues. And now the new president of Guatemala is a president that I know because I met with his team and his staff is sympathetic to China. Now, he's not going to blatantly say he's going to just open up relations with China. But I have a feeling that they're going to be the next country that's going to break diplomatic relations. Taiwan embrace China. But I have a feeling that they're going to be the next country that's going to break diplomatic relations with Taiwan, embrace China. They're also going to embrace the group of the Pueblo and the regional socialist autocratic network in the region. And so the Biden administration has been very weak at helping our allies combat these challenges. And one last thing on that, Rachel, you know, we have we have a kind of a wave of hope inside

South America, particularly, which is Argentina with the election of President Javier Malay. And Argentina is one of those critical countries that China has really, really gained on. They actually have a colloquial term in Argentina. They call it Argent China because of how much China has been able to come into the country. I'll give you two data points on that. One is on satellite space stations. This is one of the top concerns of Southcom, of our combatant command that watches Latin America. China has only three deep space stations in the world. Two are on mainland China. The third is in South America, in Argentina. South America is the largest space infrastructure for China in the world.

They have 11 satellite ground stations. Now, if you ask China, they're going to say this is to explore the far side of the moon. This is for deep space exploration. But the reality in South Khamnos is this is to shoot down our satellites. This is to increase our spy infrastructure throughout the Western Hemisphere. This is to intercept our communications. And the main station for all this is in a city called Nauken in the southern part of Argentina. So I'm going back to the negligence of the Biden administration, because in President Javier Millay, we now have an opportunity to counter that. But instead of working on that as a primary issue, they're concerned that Javier Millay spoke at CPAC, or he hugged President Trump or whatever other things that could perhaps look in the optics of

the imaging instead of what's in the U.S. national interest. Yeah, I did hear that they were really angry, the Biden administration with Bukele and also with Millet, that they would dare to go to CPAC, that they would dare to show any affinity to Trump. And you're right, they have such greater issues to talk about of real grave national security concerns. You mentioned earlier that we're actually driving out, you know, interests with America in Latin America. How are we doing that? What what are what is America doing that's making China seem like a more attractive partner? So I say there's two things, there's probably multiple, multiple things, but at least two that come to mind. The first is that I have not met a government in Latin America, except for the autocrats, the dictators, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia. Put those aside because those aren't democracies.

But in any democratic country, I've not met a democratic government in Latin America yet to say we really like China. We visit there multiple times. We like the culture we like the interlap interactions they like their officials what happens is china understands the nature of uh getting around the red tape and what the united states has done is they built more red tape in our relationships with latin america so i think that's the first thing that we made we built it in a very bureaucratic way that we put all these conditions on these Latin American countries, that they look at China not as the better option, but the easier option. And that's where they go. Give me an example of that. Help me understand what that red tape might

look like. Yeah, I'll give you a great example. So like in the case of like Argentina, I'm gonna go back to the Southern Cone. In the case of Argentina, you know, we have a lot of strategic interests on things like lithium, on things like poor infrastructure. And what the United States did is they try to put like political conditions on some of our trade. We don't have a free trade agreement, but political conditions are some of our bilateral projects that we would invest in to say, like, if you do this, you also have to do some DEI, diversity, inclusion. do this, you also have to do some DEI, diversity inclusion. You also have to do this on women's empowerment and all these conditions that from the sake of the Latin American government, they're like, we're not interested in that. We just want to build a port or we just want to build a road. And China would just jump on that opportunity and just give them the money to do

whatever you want. Obviously, they don't care about human rights. They don't care about some of the other things that are important. But we did this also to Brazil. President Bolsonaro was a strong partner of the United States. I mean, I was in the Blair House when President Bolsonaro had his first visit, official visit to Washington in March of 2019. We had a state dinner with President Bolsonaro at the White House. And he, in that one visit, signed more agreements with the United States than the previous three presidents of Brazil combined. This was under President Trump and President Bolsonaro in 2019. This is his first visit. He signed a multitude of agreements, including space agreements.

But instead of embracing President Bolsonaro as a strategic partner of the biggest country in Latin America, the Biden administration gave him, basically shut them aside and said, if you don't do this, if you don't do that, if you don't embrace this, if you don't embrace embrace climate change if you don't actually adopt your whole policies to focus on climate change then we're not going to consider you a partner and that pushes them into the arms of china so that's the first big thing that i think that i've seen is that we basically put all these conditions on these countries the second thing rachel is sanctions because we have been very hypocritical with sanctions in latin america they're just sanctioning anybody that they they think corruptionruption is endemic in Latin America. You could throw a rock and you'll hit

a corrupt politician inside the region. That's not new. But when you sanction certain politicians only of conservative flavor, but ignore other politicians that are equally or greater corrupt because they have an ideological affinity, then that shows inconsistency and incoherence in your sanctions policy. I'll give you a great example. They recently sanctioned the former president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, right? I'm not going to put my hand in the fire and say he didn't involve in corruption. Maybe he did. But what happened to the sanctions of Cristina Kirchner, who's convicted of corruption and was the vice president of Argentina? The sanctions on Rafael Correa, who's convicted and sentenced for corruption in Ecuador and was freely moving around the region.

So the Brazilian president as well. Well, he was he was released from prison to become president of Brazil. He was convicted on two times on massive corruption, the largest corruption case in Latin America. So that's another one, Rachel, our inconsistent application of sanctions has driven Latin American governments into the hands of China. So, yeah, I mean, when I've talked to other other people from Latin America, they've said exactly what you're saying, that our State Department is actually thumbing their their noses and and distancing themselves and and frankly pissing off different Latin American countries who would naturally be allies of us because they don't necessarily enthusiastically embrace LGBTQ, climate, abortion rights, and some of these other sort of pet policies of the left. So who is that within the State Department? Or is that actually

a White House directed policy in Latin America to prioritize these social policies over partnerships that are so important regarding commerce, infrastructure and national security? that are so important regarding commerce, infrastructure, and national security? So I think that putting these social policies above our national interest is essentially something that's unique to this administration. It's unique to the Biden administration and his appointees inside both the State Department and I would also say USAID, our Agency for International Development. So this wasn't happening under, say, Obama? So under President Obama, we had a different problem, but we didn't necessarily have that. agency for international development so this wasn't happening under say obama so under president

obama we said we had a different problem but we didn't necessarily have that we didn't necessarily have the social policies as becoming a sense of a condition for our arrangements what we did have was uh essentially a rapprochement with dictatorships like cuba which actually sends a horrible signal in latin america you remember Rachel, 2015, rekindled with Cuba. But actually, you bring up a point that I also want to mention, because the problem with China, it goes beyond the Biden administration as well. I mean, it's going to the Obama administration, even the Bush administration. And it had to do with a miscalculation that President Trump actually corrected

under his national security strategy. The mistake was we thought collectively as the United States government that we could bring China into the fold of the international community through international trade. We thought that the more we trade with them, the more they're going to be like us, the more they're going to be pacifist and we're going to be able to have a peaceful relationship. And what we realized is China the whole time was just playing us. They were using their economic trade and development to be able to position themselves for these military ambitions that are going to come down

the pike. And in Latin America, that's no truer statement than what happened in the region. The story of China, Latin America is a story of malign intent and U.S. neglect. I'm going to explain this very quickly. And it's actually told to me by a prominent U.S. official that was doing stuff in Latin America. Malign intent is because, as I mentioned before, China never had the interest of just coming to Latin America and buying up all these materials to help these Latin American economies. But what it did is it came to Latin America under the commodity boom to buy up these raw materials, not to help their economy, but to help their defense industry. As China's economy starts to slow down, and it's slowing down now with the

housing crisis and the inflation and population crisis as their economy slows down their defense industry grows and all these minerals whether it's lithium whether it's uh uh rare earth minerals whether it's these metals all these things they need it not so much to grow their economy they need it so that their defense industry uh becomes the blossom so that's the first thing the second thing thing is in 2008, back during the financial crisis, there's a major lending institution for Latin America. It's like a mini world bank. It's called the Inter-American Development Bank. The Inter-American Development Bank, because it had some of the banks that were tied to the financial crisis nationwide in particular, it basically crashed. It went a billion dollars in the red. It was bankrupt. It went a billion dollars in the red. It was bankrupt. And since the United States is 40 percent shareholder of the bank, we're the largest shareholder of the Inter-American Development Bank. They went to the United States to recapitalize. We turned them down because we had other priority. We're bailing out all these other big banks. And so that was the door for China. China came in at a minority shareholder of the Inter-American Development Bank in 2009. I'm talking about 0.004%, very small percent shareholder compared to 40%, which is the United States. But for the first time in the 60-year history of that

institution, that multilateral institution, they paid what's called an entrance fee. And you can guess how much that entrance fee was. It was half a billion dollars. So they basically paid an institutional kickback to the largest lending institution that the United States is a majority shareholder to come in and basically begin their economic endeavor in Latin America. And what was the condition? China said, if we're going to give you this half a billion dollar bailout, what you need to do is every loan that the Inter-American Development Bank gives to specific countries that China designates has to be coupled with Asian infrastructure bank loans. So we're 40% shareholder of this bank.

So it's not an exaggeration to say that the U.S. co-financed China's rise in Latin America by misguided policy. So that's the other part of this. There was a misguided policy that thought we can embrace China, that we could grow with China, that we could partner with China, and we helped them take over Latin America inadvertently. I don't think we did this willingly. I think we did it because of bad policy. And now you add in the other stuff that the Biden administration is doing. Well, it's actually, it's frightening. And I like the word neglect, because I think that's true. There's been a lot of neglect on the US part. In Latin America, a lot of misguided policies. I'm going to ask you something that's a little bit political. I don't know if you want to answer it or not. But, you know, in America, we talk a lot about, you know,

the relationship that Joe Biden has with China, that his own family is potentially compromised to China because they know all the dirty deals that they have potentially done. Right now, the House Republicans are looking into that. As you look at Latin America and the decisions that have been made by the Biden administration, and you yourself said that they're very unique in their neglect and some of these bad policies that they're making. Could any of it be, I mean, I get the social justice angle, like I'm sure those people are embedded in our government and pushing LGBTQ and abortion rights and climate because they're true believers. But could any of this neglect in your estimation, in your analysis, be tied to the fact that our president might be compromised to China and unable to really take the hard line position that, say, a Donald Trump took? Yeah, there's certainly a concern with that. And I would say

that concern isn't necessarily these countries we're talking about that have, let's say, Democratic underpinnings, but they're being attacked from left and right and all over. I would say the more autocratic countries, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia, the United States under the Biden administration's relationship with those countries needs to be examined because I don't see any logic to lifting sanctions on Venezuela, to basically taking your foot off of the pressure mechanisms and giving them all the carrots before they've done anything, supposedly to go free and fair elections. You could extend that to Cuba as well, as there's been many attempts by the Biden administration to soften our pressure mechanisms

on Cuba. So the question is why? And what I'm going to point to, Rachel, is something that's uncomfortable, but I think it's something that we really need to get a handle on. And it's not just related to Latin America, but I'll give it within the Latin America context, which is counterintelligence. We need to really beef up our counterintelligence capabilities to know which one of our officials are actually working on behalf of U.S. national interests and which could be potentially compromised. I'll give you the case of Ambassador Manuel Rosales. This is a very prominent case that just came out of, I think, months ago. The Department of Justice arrested this ambassador who was a former ambassador who used to be the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia.

He was a career foreign service officer, had been in the State Department for 30 plus years. What turns out, they arrested him because the whole time he was working for Cuba, the whole time he was a spy for Cuba. He didn't become a spy as a foreign service officer. He was recruited from college, inserted into the State Department as a spy, rose to the rank of ambassador. And get this, he's the ambassador that actually, in many ways, we thought it was a mistake, but it might have been more than a mistake now, that allowed Evo Morales to come into Bolivia and become the dictator of that country, because he's infamously known for 2002, where he said, when he was ambassador, he said a very non-diplomatic comment.

He said, if Evo Morales wins his congressional race, the United States will take away our support of Bolivia. And that actually helped Evo Morales win a congressional seat. We thought that was a diplomatic snafu, that he made a mistake, he spoke out of turn. Maybe he was actually helping Evo Morales get into office. But that's just one case. And we have the Ana Montes case in the DIA from many years ago. My point to that is to say that we need to do a careful examination of who our officials are, what potential foreign interest they may have. And if they do, we need to basically make sure that they're not administering or guiding U.S. policy. We'll be back and much more. Available now at

foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Interesting. When I spoke to you at an event not too long ago, you said something to me that I had never really thought about before,

which was you brought up Iran and the work that Iran is doing with China and how China is using Iran to do its dirty work. Could you unpack that for us? I think many of our policymakers have always siloed these three main international actors, which are adversaries of the United States, China, Russia and Iran. They looked at them as individual actors within an international system. But what I've seen, because I focus on Latin America, and I can say at least Latin America, what I've seen is these three actors increasingly build joint capabilities and interdependency.

So I'll give you a data point, right? In Latin America, there is an actual alliance that they work with. They work with and through an alliance. It's called the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, the ALBA for short. That consists of 10 countries, but the main five countries are Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela, and it used to be Ecuador, not anymore. So what China did was it snap linked itself to those five countries. And if you look at this data point, I call it the 75% standard. 75% of China's credits and loans, not its investments in trade, that goes everywhere. It's credits and loans. The governments it props up are with those

five countries, particularly Venezuela. Venezuela is the largest indebted country to China in the world at $1.60 billion. But let's shift over to Russia. 75% of Russia's foreign military sales are to those same five countries, namely Venezuela and Nicaragua. And 75% of Russia's foreign military sales are to those same five countries, namely Venezuela and Nicaragua. And 75% of Iran's bilateral agreements are with those same five countries. So what does that show me? That shows me strategic cooperation at the high level where these three big international actors snap-linked themselves to an autocratic alliance and began to cooperate to shift the region, Latin America, away from the United States and closer to their foreign policy objectives. And so what I've seen in Latin America is I've seen those three working hand in glove, specifically China and Iran. China and Iran have a special

relationship because it predates the empires of the past. It goes all the way back to the original Silk Road, the original trade routes of the Persian empire that went into the east. So they are an eastern framework that's much different than the western framework. And even Russia, for all of its autocratic nature and kleptocratic tendencies, the Marxism at the end of the day is a failed western ideology. It doesn't fit into the oriental framework. But China and Iran do have that same framework. And what is Iran doing, you know, in Latin America? What concerns you the most? So, oh, wow, a lot of things. Well, I guess I would say the first thing that concerns me the most is what you guys are seeing with the Houthis and what they're doing in the Red Sea, choking up the Bab al-Bandab Strait into the Suez Canal, basically

an economic attack on global shipping, but specifically on Egypt. That's going to come to Latin America. I guarantee you, Rachel, in a matter of months, be prepared to see Houthi rebel-like tactics employed by Venezuela in the Caribbean, particularly as it starts to take aggression against his neighbor, Guyana. Why? Because Venezuela has prepared this whole time to basically take over its neighboring countries. First politically, like it's done with Colombia, but then militarily, like it's about preparing to do with Guyana.

Which has huge oil resources, correct? Largest oil discovery in the 21st century, 11 billion barrels discovered on the coastal waters of Guyana. But that's the key, Rachel, because that's what Venezuela says is their territory. They say that's our territorial waters. So they're going to basically try to annex that. But they're going to use fast attack craft, drones and missiles all provided by Iran. You could draw a parallel from Iranian armament going to Yemen and the Houthis to Iranian armament going to Venezuela

in the Caribbean at the same time between 2014 to today. That's been the strategy because Iran has always known that it's going to spark two conflicts in two parts of the world to basically wedge the United States. And China benefits from that. China doesn't have the, they don't want to risk political and economic capital. They actually have real capital in Latin America. They're trade partners. I mean, these countries, Iran has nothing. If Iran gets caught planning a terrorist attack or giving missiles to one of these countries, like if people catch them doing it, they're like, oh, well, that's Iran. I mean, what do you expect them to do? That's what they do. So China actually benefits from Iran doing all that's what I mean by the dirty work, doing

all the dirty work, because even if Iran gets caught, China has plausible deniability says we're not going to be involved. But China is absolutely involved in that effort. As I mentioned, Venezuela was the largest indebted country to China. And people had this mischaracterization of the China Venezuela relationship. They thought it was all about money. They're just pouring money. That makes no sense. Not what everybody was pulling their money out of Venezuela. Economic basket case, highest inflation in the world. Well, all the international business community is pulling their money out of Venezuela, economic basket case, highest inflation in the world, while all the international business community was pulling their money out of Venezuela, China wasn't dumb enough to say, we're going to put more money in. They weren't making an economic investment. They were buying a country. And they bought the sovereignty of a country to be able to use it in the future.

And I think that features now. And they're using sort of all the corruption and the sort of tendency of many of the elites in Latin America to, you know, take from here, take from here, care more about maybe the generational wealth of their family than their own patriotism for their country. And so they're also, I mean, they're not, their ambitions aren't limited to Venezuela. As you've laid out, they're trying to gain that hold all over the Western hemisphere. I have so many questions. So help our listeners understand why.

I mean, a lot of people are very America-focused, and they don't think a lot about Latin America. Help our listeners, our viewers understand why Latin America matters to Americans, not just in terms of sort of, you know, our own sort of global hegemony, but like, literally, how could this affect your daily life if China takes over the way it is in Latin America? Well, let's just think about this kind of from the individual level, right? Like, let's say we buy a house and we live in a neighborhood. If I have a very nice house, which I invested a lot of money and time and my labor into helping develop in a horrible neighborhood, what's going to happen to my house? Eventually, they're going to attack it. And so it's impossible to have a very nice house in a horrible neighborhood. And Latin America is our neighborhood. That's where we live. It does not make any sense for the United States on foreign policy to have priorities or big plans

and strategies in every part of the world except the one we live in. It's like the equivalent to China having a foreign policy for Africa and Latin America, but nothing about the Indo-Pacific. Of course they don't do that. Of course they don't. Russia not caring about Eastern Europe and Ukraine. We have had a failure on U.S. foreign policy of a magnitude proportion, and Venezuela is just the symptom of that. That's the embodiment of that. And the immigration and the border crisis, that's the embodiment of that failure. So what I would say to all the listeners is that the phrase that I think a lot of the America First movement has embraced, the make America great again phrase, you cannot make America great again unless the Americas is great.

You have to have a neighborhood of stability, of prosperity, of security, or else eventually it's going to come back to essentially attack your interests. And one last point on that, Rachel, the border crisis. So many people look at that as a crisis of cartels, of insecurity, of black border policy. It's all that. But I'm going to tell you right now, and we've done a very careful study on the ground in many countries in Latin America about this, everywhere from the Guatemala-Mexico border, our border, to the Darien Gap, to the Colombia-Venezuela border, that is not an organic crisis. That is absolutely deliberately carried out by Russia, China, and Iran with Venezuela. We don't hit the numbers that we hit today on our southern border

until the largest mass migration in the history of the Western Hemisphere and today the largest in the world, which is Venezuela, over 8 million Venezuelans that have left that country, until that migration starts to move north. It didn't move north when it began in 2014. It basically over flooded all of South America. But in 2021, in 2020, it began a little bit. But in 2021, it started moving north because of two reasons.

Because the state-owned airlines of Venezuela, the Maduro's airline, which is called Gombiasa, started flying more flights to Mexico than any other country in the world, shuttling the migrants. And two, because they've started funding the NGOs in Panama to start building what was once called the Darien Gap into the Darien Bridge to move all the migrants to there. Who was funding that? Because I thought that was the UN with our money doing that. Who is funding that? Sure.

I mean, the UN is like a useful idiot in this because they end up putting the money where the bad guys pour the money in the basin. Just like I mentioned that how they co-opted us at the Inter-American Development Bank. That's another example of that. But the catalyst for the immigration border crisis was actually Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela. I'll give you a data point on that. In 2018, it was really when it started to bubble up with the caravans from Central America. I was in Guatemala when that took place in October 2018. I get a call from a high-ranking Guatemalan official. He's like, Joseph, we're having a problem. I said, I can see it on TV. We have thousands of migrants. He's like, no, no, we understand the migrants.

We're having a problem with the press because we're trying to tell them that this isn't normal. This isn't organic. This isn't just poor migrants, and they don't want to listen to us. I said, well, how can I help? So I basically looked, I traversed the whole route of the caravans from the Aguas Calientes Port of Entry of Guatemala, Honduras to the Tecunaman Port of Entry of Guatemala, Mexico. This is the first caravan, big caravan. It went from 180 Central Americans to 7,000 in a matter of 10 days. So when I did the, I'm going to fast forward to the conclusion. So what, when I did the field research of this, I found out that there were specific NGOs

in Honduras that were financed by Venezuela to essentially create these caravans, to basically create the posters, the university events, to create the marketing, to drive these caravans. One of them is called Pueblos Sin Fronteras, as people without borders in Spanish. The mission's

in the name. I've heard of Pueblos Sin Fronteras. You're saying that's a Venezuelan-funded social justice group? Yes, because the founders of Pueblos Sin Fronteras are tied to who is now the current government of Honduras, the leader party, and the former president, Manuel Melzalaya. And Manuel Melzalaya took many trips to Venezuela to organize these caravans and start to think about how they can weaponize migration as a way to pressure the West. This is Maduro's maximum pressure campaign. This is his way of getting back at the United States. We sanction him. He can't sanction us. He can flood us with migrants. So I think people don't realize that it's not the NGO. The UN is absolutely doing all the wrong things on this. The Biden administration's policies are actually

incentivizing the pull factors. But you don't get this number until Maduro decides now is the time and starts creating all those flights and all those bridges to push the migrants north. They already flooded South America. And the worst border, Rachel, in the Western Hemisphere, if everyone wants to see what can potentially happen to our border,

study the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Study that border. Because the last time I went to that border in 2022, it's not just the migrants and the cartels. It's Russian radar systems. It's Chinese satellite tracking station. It's Iranian drones doing low-level overflights over that border. That's what's going to come.

And this is what I think our congressional members need to understand. It's great power competition on our border. It's not just illicit networks. Illicit networks are used as tools to basically erase a sovereign border. It's not just illicit networks. Illicit networks are used as tools to basically erase the sovereign border. They're doing it with Colombia right now, and they're looking to do it with the United States. This is just positively frightening. You know, I brought you on to kind of try and unpack a little bit of what China is doing. This is absolutely more than I ever thought was going to happen in this interview.

So I talked to you earlier about the 800 percent increase in Chinese nationals coming over the border. What do you think that is about? What is what do they want to do here? Are these you know, there's a lot of speculation. Are they economic migrants? Do they have the other intentions? What's your view on this? Do they have the other intentions? What's your view on this?

Any threat analyst that's worth a cent knows that migrant routes historically have always been infiltrated with clandestine actors. Rat lines, it was called during World War Two. Like this is not new. This every time there's a refugee movement, internal displacement, clandestine actors follow those routes to mask themselves, to hide their movements. So it's absolutely positively confirmed that there are going to be bad actors that are going to come in through our U.S. southern border just because of the magnitude of the people that are coming. Now, our specific relation to the Chinese chinese nationals which my understanding is about 90 of them are military age males and that a lot of them are coming in through uh very guided border crossings my concern and i don't have this definitive but i'll say it as a concern my concern

and i think that this not just relates to china, but also to Russian actors that have crossed the border, Ukrainians and obviously Venezuelans, is that they're creating subversive networks inside the United States as a deterrent for any potential future conflict that's probably on the horizon, whether it's with Ukraine or U.S. to Ukraine or if something happens to Taiwan, they're going to light us up from the inside. How will they do that? Well, if you look at past as precedent, the way they do that is they basically look to destabilize the neighborhoods. They look to empower the division that already exists inside the country and empower the agitation network that already exists. So when you saw in 2020 Black Lives Matter or Antifa basically light up cities,

like 20 cities in a matter of days, that's going to happen times 20. And it could actually become much more destructive, not just on commercial real estate and buildings. It could poison our food supply. It could poison our water supply. These are professional agents of war. I mean, it doesn't take a lot of them.

It takes about a platoon size of PLA special operations operatives to come in and they'll know how to basically radicalize and weaponize an indigenous population. Our special forces do this as well. Our special forces know how to go to another country, train

a group, a northern alliance in Afghanistan. They're professionals too. So China has these people. And that's my biggest concern. My biggest concerns are not sending just terrorists or criminals, that they're actually sending professional, subversive military operatives that are going to train cadres of people inside the United States to take action in the case of a conflict. Will nothing be, I mean, but you're kind of blowing my mind here.

It's just so much deeper. So you have all this information. Who on Capitol Hill is listening to you? Will nothing happen until Joe Biden leaves because they're just so interested in in social justice and maybe he's compromised or they're just distracted by, you know, election politics? or they're just distracted by, you know, election politics. I mean, I can't understand why there's not like a five alarm fire going on right now in the Pentagon and in the State Department to stop China and to undo what they're doing with Iran in Latin America. So what's the next step? What can we do? Because I know we have some countries now that are partners. But ironically, you know, Bukele in El Salvador might, you know, could have a to turn Latin America back to the West? And who within our government is on this? Or do we just have to wait until a new president comes into office?

Well, obviously, a new president would help quite a bit. And we had a lot of movement and momentum that was happening under the Trump administration, who is the first president to take Latin America seriously in terms of the threats, the first president to actually try to tackle the Venezuela challenge, the Venezuela problem. But let me say, let me move. So three things. One, I think people new need to start looking at what the Defense Department is doing on Latin America because they have probably taken the lead.

And even the DEA and law enforcement have done good stuff as well. But the Department of Defense has been raising this alarm multiple times. If you just read their congressional testimonies, they'll say we're extremely concerned about what China is doing, what Russia is doing, what Iran is doing. They're moving in to our neighborhood at alarming rate. And if we don't do something quick, they're going to take it all over. So do look at what the Defense Department is saying. So that's the part of government I think that's the most ahead of the curve on this and in conjunction with some of our partners. that's the most ahead of the curve on this and in conjunction with some of our partners.

The second thing is, and this is something that the left in Latin America has understood very well, that power doesn't just reside within state institutions and ministries. Power resides in networks. So we need to build a network. And the reason that I was at CPAC this past week was because I wanted to bring together some of our Latin American friends to meet some of the former Trump administration officials and America First personalities because we need to know each other. A lot of them don't know each other. A lot of these, you know, Eduardo Bolsonaro, Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal,

and so Javier Malay's security minister, Patricia Burich, who's a friend of mine, has come over, and I said, you need to meet the Heritage Foundation. You need to meet the America First Policy Institute. You need to meet all these people so that we can start to build networks because it's the networks that transcend government that build those relationships that we need to basically push forward. And then the third thing is probably the most important thing, and I'll plug my role in this a little bit.

We need a strategy for Latin America. The United States has not had a grand strategy for Latin America, ironically, probably since the Reagan administration, but that was really just containment on the Soviet Union. You go back to JFK with the Alliance for Progress. Those are the last two times we had anything that assembled the national strategy, grand strategy for Latin America. We have had nothing since. And so we need to have a grand strategy for Latin America.

So I participate in something that it's a coalition of conservative organizations that the Heritage Foundation leads. It's called Project 2025. And what it basically does is basically to help write a government plan for the next conservative administration if President Trump's able to win the presidency or any Republican can win the presidency in the election. So on day one, they have policies that they can guide them. I helped write the Latin America chapter for that project 2025. And I'll give you the crux of what I designed or what I wrote. In order to break China's South-South strategy, so China has this foreign policy globally to connect what they call the global South, Middle East, Africa, South Asia and Latin America. They want to connect it as one big network to attack the West.

So in order to break that, we need to redefine North-South relations. China wants to define South as Mexico down. redefine north-south relations. China wants to define south as Mexico down. They literally define south on our border. On our border, everything south of that is south. Since when is Mexico a southern hemisphere country? That doesn't make sense on any inside the world. Not even the Mexicans would agree with that. And so I say to break the China south-south strategy, we need to develop a partner in the south of south america i think that partners argentina and javier malay if we're able to redefine north-south relations by having a partner in the south that's going to partner with us to deal with these challenges and then on top of that redefine what is north america i'll tell you something rachel central

america is not a real region it's a sub-region that all for all intents and purposes economically politically connected to North America. The Caribbean is called the third border. And I would argue even Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador are part of North America because North isn't defined by geographic landmass. North is defined by the oceans, North Atlantic. Look at the equator. Look what's north of that. That's North America on the Western Hemisphere. So if we redefine a great North America, if we redefine what our area of affinity is, develop a partner in the south, we will finally have a strategic underpinning to break China's south-south nonsense that they went through their Belt and Road Initiative or whatever that they're trying to push throughout the world. We'll have more of this conversation after this. station after this. But it sounds to me that you think that these changes, these policy changes that would protect us as Americans, national security wise, economically, that they will only happen with a conservative in office. I'm confused because the national security concerns that you bring up should be bipartisan. I mean, I have to believe, I mean, I don't like Joe Biden.

I don't like all the, you know, the hacks, you know, the social justice hacks in his administration. But I have to believe they don't want China to be able to attack us. They don't want China to have a foothold in Latin America to do that to us. How is it that we can only make these changes, only sort of that this administration isn't interested in that? How do we make this a more bipartisan effort? Well, I think the China piece is very bipartisan.

Ironically, Iran was bipartisan until Obama. Obama is the one that polarized the Iran conversation with the nuclear deal. Because the nuclear deal, Iran was like since 1979 iran was an enemy of the united states and it wasn't a controversial thing to take yeah and then all of a sudden because they wanted a nuclear deal which was a very bad deal uh we ended up having to basically if you if you support uh prying sex applying sanctions on iran then you're a a conservative if you don't you're left but i i'd'd say you're right in the sense that this is national security policy. There's no security interest that transcends any side of the political spectrum.

Obviously, I do believe that if a change administration happens, that would position us much better in order to do this. If it doesn't, then we need to pressure the current administration. And part of pressuring the current administration is working with the partners that do exist, because they'll listen to the countries in Latin America more than they'll listen to its own citizens, ironically, about our foreign policy. So if the Brazilians or the Argentinians and I'll use the Argentinians now because the Brazilians right now is probably more aligned with China under President Lula da Silva. But if President Malay says, look, State Department, U.S., we want to help on the China issue, but we're going to need to work on this together. That's a more powerful message. So a lot of the work that we've done at my center and with SFS is to basically build non-governmental relationships with many of the actors in Latin America

so that we can have kind of this kind of synergy that then transcends into government. But I'll be honest, Rachel, China's coming in with everything. So if we don't have a change in administration, it will be much more difficult. I know I don't want to take too much of your time. I just have a couple more questions. Mexico. So I agree. Millet presents an opportunity, certainly in Argentina. But Mexico is literally like right on our border and the border is open. So can you talk to me about what China's role is in Mexico? Are they gobbling everything up in Mexico the way they are, you know, with ports and mines and everything in Latin America? What's the relationship between China and Obrador, the president of Mexico? And then if you could include the cartel element, which I'm sure is aligned with China and also Iran.

And lastly, as the cartels, I mean, the cartels, I understand, control over 40 percent of, you know, the landmass of Mexico. How does how does their strength and the strength they've gained through human trafficking and how rich they've become? How is that playing into it as well? I know I'm giving you so many questions. I'm sorry about that. Let's start with Mexico. Mexico is the geopolitical prize for all these countries. If you capture Mexico, it's almost checkmate against the United States. And so they always knew that.

They always wanted to grab Mexico, but they understood the challenge of that. So they built a South to North strategy. They captured the South, South, South America and capture South America in a way to build leverage to capture the North. Right. So what is the opportunity come? The opportunity comes when Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador becomes the president of Mexico in 2018 because that was the guy they needed. He's not new to the political scene. He tried to run for president many times and failed, but he finally made it across the finish line. And that was the guy they needed. He's not new to the political scene. He tried to run for president many times and failed, but he finally made it across the finish line,

and that was the golden opportunity. He creates something called the Grupo de Puebla, which is like basically a socialist progressive network, and he aligns himself with the former president of Argentina. The former president of Argentina, Alberto Fernandez, was his partner to create the Grupo de Puebla, and then he started inviting all the autocrats, Cuba, Venezuela, into the fold inside politics.

And that's what China needed. So China needed this opportunity in Mexico, and they've capitalized on it. Now, what would they want to do? They would want to position themselves in Mexico the same way they position themselves in Venezuela, but Mexico is a much more complicated country. It's institutionally much stronger than Venezuela was. It's much more connected to the United States on defense, on law enforcement,

and it fundamentally is the largest trade partner of the United States. So it's not easy for China to do that, to break it. And they haven't done it, which is why AMLO wanted to have another term. He wanted to change that. He denies this, but we all know he did. He wanted to change the Constitution of Mexico to run for another five-year term. He was not able to do that. So the real catalyst now is going to be the Mexican elections, which is happening this year. If his candidate wins the election, which is Claudia Scheinbaum, who's the mayor of Mexico City, and she's from Morena, which is AMLO's political party, it's going to give China another chance. However, Claudia Scheinbaum is in AMLO, right?

Maybe she does the exact same thing as AMLO does, or maybe we can pressure her to do other things. When AMLO was president, when President Trump was president, he had a lot of ambitions to erode the relationship with the United States, to weaken our positioning so that he can invite China. But he didn't accomplish all of that. And it wasn't by mistake. He didn't accomplish all of that because we had very experienced, skilled diplomats, military officers, and government officials that basically had a very frank conversation with Mexico and said, we want to be friends. We want to be friends, but you have to make sure our friendship serves our interests. And that's how you get the remaining Mexico policy. That's how you get

the third country safe agreements. That's how you get USMCA. And that's how you get China still trying, but not always succeeding at pushing into that. But then it goes into the real, I think you asked a big question, which we didn't talk about this yet, which is the cartels and the fentanyl and the drugs, right? That's a big deal because there's been a lot of debate within national security circles back in Washington about how much China's involved in this, right? Like the government of China, the PRC, because it's Chinese mafias, Chinese criminals that are the ones that are trafficking. Basically, they're the ones that ship the precursor chemicals from China to Mexico to sell to the cartels. But the key to making that connection with the government is the financial aspect of it,

because it's called bankers and brokers. The bankers and brokers that facilitate the financial flows from China to Mexico that move all those precursor chemicals are run by Chinese state-owned banks, particularly the Agriculture Bank. They're run by Chinese state-owned banks to be able to basically position, because nothing happens in the Chinese banking system that the PRC doesn't know about, or more specifically, the CCP, the Communist Party doesn't know about. So they turn a blindfold eye to the stuff that makes sense for them, and they clamp down on when they need to clamp down on things that hurt their ambitions. So in the case of Mexico, China's banking system, some of China's state-owned banks, and more specifically the bankers and the brokers that were within the network, revolutionized the money laundering industry for the cartels.

That's the untold story about the fentanyl thing. That's how the fentanyl really starts to pour in. How do they do that? Because before the Chinese money launderers, the way the Mexican cartels laundered the money was through Lebanese. They used the Lebanese system and the Lebanese would charge them up where a 15, 16, 17 percent commission for moving that money that was tied to the drugs. The Chinese do it at two to three percent. They do it at two to three. So they undersold the Lebanese. They do it at three percent because they use a courier network they use a they use the chinese uh neighborhoods basically what do you call the

chinatowns uh they use all these casinos and these china shops and they move courier systems that allow them to move bulk cash smuggling a massive money laundering and then they couple that with a trade-based money laundering that they already have existed uh through all the ports and things like that so that's the untold the underserved way you connect the PRC, the CCP to the Mexican cartels is through the banking system. Our authorities know that. And there have been some prominent cases that have come up in recent months and years that have clamped down on some of that. Well, over to those, the candidate, the female candidate who's running from Obrador's party in the next election this year, who is she likely to win or is her opponent? How does that look like? It could shake out because it sounds like whoever wins that election, it might make a big difference to us.

It will. It will. So the two main candidates is Claudia Scheinbaum, who's from Morena, the political party of Lopez Obrador. who's from Morena, the political party of Lopez Obrador. She's about 20 points ahead of her rival, which is Xochitl Galvez, which was from the Pan political party, the same party of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon, former presidents of Mexico. So she's a bit of an underdog. I don't want to count anybody out because we've seen crazy things happen in elections in the past. Javier Malay was about 30 points down at the beginning of the year and last year. And then he ended up turning it around and winning the election. So nothing can be counted out. But sure, probably the favorite right now is Morena candidate Claudia Scheinbaum. But like I said, she's not AMLO. I'm not going to say that I have a lot of optimism that she's going to do things that are going to be in the United States interest. But AMLO was a radical. AMLO was revolutionary. AMLO

comes from that Cuba-Venezuela network. He was indoctrinated by that. The way he speaks is a lot about that. There are some people inside Claudia and Scheinbaum's circle that come from that same network that we need to watch out for. But the real first intent, the first goal wasn't for Scheinbaum to be the candidate. It was for AMLO to get reelected, but he needed a constitutional amendment he did not get. So they're already working on a plan B. This is their plan B. This wasn't their plan A, which already, I think in some sense, positions us a little bit better. But again, if we have weakness in the White House, you know, it doesn't matter. You can put Donald Duck in the presidency of Mexico and they're going to run the table on us. So we really need to start to prioritize that relationship

and show our strength. Okay. Close this out for me, Joseph. What do you think is the biggest takeaway for those who are listening to this podcast concerned about Latin America and the fact that China is gobbling it up? So I would say my biggest message to your listeners, Rachel, is that Latin America is the top priority for U.S. foreign policy. There is no region in the world that affects us more than what happens in our southern neighbors. It's actually the region where most Americans travel, where most Americans trade. It's where we go on vacations when we need to go on vacations. However, for whatever reason, over the course of decades, many successive U.S. presidents have decided not to focus on it. And I get it, 9-11, the Middle East, I served in Iraq as a Marine, so I understand.

But fundamentally, we need to go back to the basics. We need to go back to the beginning. If you look at President Andrew Jackson, with what I call the Second Revolution, with the Battle of New Orleans, he helped us understand that the South matters. Because you remember during the Revolutionary War, after the Revolutionary War,

all our troops were moving north because we thought the Brits were going to invade from Canada. They started to come in through Texas, and that's how we ended up saving this country. You look at Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonian foreign policy, basically putting out no entanglements with foreign allegiances and focusing on our hemisphere, or the famous Monroe Doctrine that talked about not having foreign intervention inside Latin America, and that's a sphere and an area of affinity of the United States. We need to go back to the basics of what U.S. foreign policy always was, which was having a prosperous, stable,

secure hemisphere. And that would allow us to project strength abroad. If we fail on that, we will fail everywhere else. Joseph Umere, he is an author, he's a national security expert, and he is obviously a national security expert. And he's the executive director of the Center for a Secure, Free Society. I think you're a national treasure. I hope that people are listening in Congress. I promise you, I'm going to send this to my favorite members. I'm going to send this to a lot of people because I think that you're just naming the number one problem we have right now in terms of foreign policy. Boy, are we distracted. Joseph, thanks so much for giving me this time. I'm extremely grateful. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. It was a pleasure to be on. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts

and Amazon Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Kudlow on Fox Business is now on the go for podcast fans. Get key interviews with the biggest business newsmakers of the day. The Cutlow podcast will be available on the go after the show every weekday at foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.