An Ominous Convergence

Does the temporal proximity of these two stories not make your blood run at least a little bit cold?

First, the ChiComms are very quietly rolling up our Caribbean "back yard":

[Red] China's move into Grenada clones a pattern it has followed elsewhere in the eastern Caribbean. Exactly the same scenario was played out last year in the neighboring island of Dominique, and some years ago in St. Lucia. Each of these island republics now has a full-scale Chinese embassy, a completed or promised national soccer stadium, and is receiving continuing aid. Dominica, for example, is slated to receive a staggering $112 million in aid, which works out to $1,600 for each of the island's 70,000 inhabitants. Some of this aid was cash, ostensibly to ease the government's cash flow problems. Coincidently, Chinese construction battalions have landed a number of government-funded infrastructural projects in the region, such as a contract to build a storm drainage system in Castries, the capital of St. Lucia.

[Red] Chinese immigration to the region is picking up, and a cultural offensive is underway. The relationships between [Red] China and the islands' ruling parties are increasingly cozy, with leading politicians regularly being invited to [Red] China for all-expenses-paid "familiarization" tours. Those not important enough for the "foreign guest" treatment receive their dose of propaganda in their own homes. Shows touting [Red] China's history, culture, and peaceful intentions are broadcast for hours on the islands' state-owned television channels — all paid for by Beijing, of course. Let a hundred flowers boom, one might say.

But Chinese moneybags-diplomacy is not cheap, and Beijing's rulers are not known for their largess — unless, that is, it serves their strategic interests. So what does Beijing hope to gain from its investments?

The immediate target is Taiwan, of course....But this alone does not explain China's continuing aggressive and expensive efforts to bring these small nations — Grenada has less than 100,000 people — under its sway....

These islands are right in our backyard (the Caribbean has been called the soft and vulnerable underbelly of the United States), and [Red] China's actions in the West Indies are of a piece with their well known activities in Cuba and Panama. While none of these islands have any great military potential for electronic eavesdropping, and none sits aside a maritime choke point, it would be foolish to forget the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis of the early 1960s. Dealing with an expansive [Red] China in the Far East will be complicated enough without having a dozen aggressively pro-Chinese nations sitting in and around the Caribbean basin.

While, at the very same time, the Iranians are cultivating Fidel Castro's Latin American Axis of Evil, which now includes both Venezuela and Bolivia:

When the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna voted to refer Iran's energy case to the United Nations Security Council earlier this month, there were three notable "no" votes. One was from Syria, a predictable supporter of Iran. The other two were from Cuba and Venezuela, two leftist and anti-American regimes that Iran has shown special interest in cultivating. A third nation in Latin America that has attracted the attention of Iran is Bolivia, which recently installed a leftist president, Evo Morales.

These efforts are presumably part of an Iranian campaign to strengthen its relationships with developing nations that might rally to Iran's side as it fends off American and European efforts to halt its nuclear development program.

"Developing nations" strategically situated, both geographically and, in the case of Venezuela, via its oil exports, to make a great deal of trouble for the United States in a part of the world that we are all but ignoring in our understandable focus on the Middle East.

It may be hyperbolic to say that the ChiComms and the mullahs are "encircling" us by these twin (for the time being) diplomatic "pincer" movements into our "soft underbelly," but with the ChiComms also investing in Cuba and Venezuela as well as Panama, and the spectre of a nuclear Iran sending warheads and medium range ballistic missiles to Cuba to re-enact the Cuban Missile Crisis becoming all too plausible a scenario, it no longer seems so far-fetched to think that we could be strategically checkmated from averting the strategic nightmare of nukes in the hands of turbaned madmen who would not hesistate to use them.

This is another reason why Michael Ledeen has been saying, "Faster, please" for the past several years. Is the vacuum into which he - and we - appear to be bitching as "airless" as it looks?