Latin America on the Geopolitical Periphery

 

Latin America is always seen as a peripheral geopolitical field that Western actors neglect and Eurasians try to enchant.

The United States and Europe have a cultural advantage over the Eurasians, i.e., Russians, Turks, Arabs, Persians, Indians, and Chinese, but the latter do their best to enter, understanding that the ability of Latin American elites to corrupt themselves facilitates entry, but also affects them in terms of return on investment. This is happening not only in that region, but also in Africa.

Therefore, any progress must be made with a firm step and, like the West, but in a different register, the Eurasians have a kind of due diligence and compliance policy. They invest, but they also demand their own. The Chinese are the best. The others are still linked to either religious ethnic communities or mafias, both of which are insecure and have little penetration.

China is doing the work that needs to be done and is doing it in a more sustainable way by appealing to the most respectable business elites, but the West still has the advantage that Latin America is part of the West thanks to the Iberian Peninsula, and that continues to weigh.

This can be seen in the struggle over Venezuela and Argentina, but also in the investment dynamics within Brazil or the doubts in Peru about the scope of the partnership with China.

In the Pacific they always know that the link with the Asians is key, clarifying that it is a reciprocal relationship and even Peru, with the Chinese stuck up their noses, is weighing it up. Build the port, they say, and then we will decide. China does not have the capacity to force Latin Americans to comply with its designs. The United States does not, much less a power without a global navy.

Therefore, the ground is leveled, and the region remains in a kind of undecided point in the geopolitical battle that is taking place on a global scale, trying to make the best of it despite the ideologized foreign policy of each president in office.

In the end, the elites, the real power in a democracy, have a wide range of choices to make without being ideologically driven like the totally changeable presidents in office. They have decided to make the most of the West and Eurasia.

Interestingly, Trump will join this trend if he wins the presidency. Nearshoring in this sense would not be such if he agrees with the Chinese to manufacture in the US itself.