Donroe Doctrine is becoming everything China feared

On April 28, the State Department issued a joint statement “in solidarity with Panama” in response to an uptick in detentions of Panama-flagged vessels at Chinese ports, which it characterized as “a blatant attempt to politicize maritime trade.”

This comes on the heels of a targeted lawfare campaign by American and Panamanian officials to dispossess Chinese logistics infrastructure at the Balboa and Cristobal terminals, and within a broader maritime context that has seen the US blockade the Strait of Hormuz, enter a defense partnership with Indonesia and put out aggressive statements about Peru’s Port of Chancay.

The co-signatories on the statement include Costa Rica, Bolivia (more on that later), Paraguay, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago.

It’s difficult to overstate the irony of this about-face on Panama. Just months ago, the US was pursuing a two-pronged strategy of diplomatic coercion via bilateral security dialogues and lawfare through a highly politicized audit of Chinese concessions near the Panama Canal.

This culminated in an utterly predictable Panamanian Supreme Court ruling against port operator CK Hutchinson, resulting in its eviction and replacement with a subsidiary of the Danish logistics firm Maersk.

Recall that the Trump administration’s opening position in these negotiations was threatening to retake the Panama Canal by force, and the State Department’s lofty rhetoric about defending Panama’s “sovereignty” and rejecting “politicization” starts to ring hollow.

The co-signatories joining the US in this declaration of “freedom” may seem random; however, they map perfectly onto America’s long-term economic and security priorities in the region.

Guyana is the world’s breakout producer of sweet light crude and is benefiting from new investments downstream amid America’s blockading of the Persian Gulf, while Trinidad is a major producer of petrochemicals like urea and ammonia.

Costa Rica is a reliable American ally that operates the most technologically advanced port in the Caribbean, and Paraguay is likely in the mix as the only remaining South American country that recognizes Taiwan.

But perhaps the most interesting co-signatory is Bolivia, a landlocked Andean nation that seems irrelevant to defending maritime “security” in the Caribbean – until one considers America’s long-term energy goals.

Bolivia sits on top of the world’s largest lithium reserves, but the high magnesium-to-lithium ratio in its source brine requires capital-intensive (and largely experimental) processes for extraction.

There is also the logistical challenge of moving thousands of tons of lithium across hundreds of kilometers of rough terrain to Chilean ports on the Pacific and, finally, up through the Panama Canal.

To put it lightly, these factors put a massive premium on every ton of lithium bound for export to manufacture electric vehicle (EV) batteries and grid-scale energy storage systems. Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz is clearly aware of this.

His recent decision to replace the head of the state-owned lithium company, Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos, signals that he is willing to break off deals made with China and Russia under Bolivia’s previous socialist government,  provided that Western capital can offer a guaranteed market.

For Paz’s foreign ministry, signing a US-directed statement recognizing Panama as a “pillar of our maritime trading system,” is a low-friction, transactional diplomatic play.

Bolivia’s potential as a commodity export powerhouse depends on cooperation with its longtime rival, Chile, for port access. (Chile has its own highly profitable lithium sector, and is the reason why Bolivia has no coastline to begin with).

By aligning with the United States against China, Bolivia is signaling to countries like Panama and Chile that it is willing to play by the same American-directed rules as everyone else, in exchange for access to their logistics infrastructure.

Of course, America’s diplomatic maneuvering in Panama and Bolivia cannot be understood in a vacuum. In the Persian Gulf, the US military is blockading the flow of flagship light and heavy crude to Asian markets.

Meanwhile, the State Department is working diligently in the Caribbean to dispossess Chinese logistics capital through diplomatic coercion and lawfare.

In this context, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the objective of the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” is not to benevolently integrate the US and Latin America’s economies, but to force capital out of West Asia and back to the Western Hemisphere by establishing new maritime trade routes.

Whether or not the US will succeed is impossible to say, but it should not be assumed it is by accident that the State Department is promoting a new maritime consensus with Latin American countries that produce the primary inputs for energy, agricultural and logistics industries, as well as “green” metal and mineral commodities – many of which have recently rebuffed Chinese investment offers.

At this point, anyone who still views America as a neutral arbiter or policeman of global maritime trade is willingly ignoring reality. The US military is seizing ships in West Asia, while the State Department simultaneously demands that China play by its rules in Central and South America.

The moment Trump abdicated America’s responsibility to defend the Persian Gulf under the Carter Doctrine, the romantic notion of a “free” global maritime commons died.

In the long run, this is likely to be to the benefit of China and other coastal nations, but in the short term, it has created unprecedented instability in the global maritime order, which the State Department is fully prepared to capitalize on in the service of America’s energy, agricultural and mining interests.

Logan McMillen writes foreign policy analysis through the lens of critical political economy and geography, focusing on Latin America. His work has recently appeared in The New Republic, Responsible Statecraft, the North American Congress on Latin America, and Foreign Policy in Focus.