In Cuba, the Biden administration is faced with another challenge to the Monroe Doctrine.
Nearly 200 years ago, President James Monroe, at the urging of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, warned foreign powers that “we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” In the early 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt, in what has been called the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, reaffirmed and expanded America’s claim to intervene in the Western Hemisphere to protect its interests.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, President John F. Kennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify the naval blockade of Cuba and the demand that the Soviet Union remove the missiles that it secretly deployed on the island. In 1971, President Richard Nixon effectively used quiet diplomacy to force the Soviet Union to abandon is effort to establish a submarine base at the port of Cienfuegos in Cuba.
When President Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was asked last week by CBS News if he raised the issue of the recently revealed Chinese military/espionage base in Cuba, he responded as follows:
I told them [China’s leaders] that this is, um, a serious concern for us…. So we’ve been taking, uh, we’ve been taking steps over the past couple of years, diplomatically, wherever we’ve seen, uh, China trying to create that kind of presence. We’ve been in there pushing back against it. And we’ve had some success in doing that. This is nothing new … but it is something of, of real concern. I was very clear about our concerns with, uh, with China, but regardless of that, uh, we’ve been going, uh, around to various places where we see this kind of activity, uh, trying to put a stop to it.
So, the Biden administration, according to Blinken, is “pushing back against it” and “trying to put a stop to it” because a Chinese military/espionage base in Cuba is “of real concern.” Monroe and his Secretary of State Adams are turning over in their graves.
Blinken’s interview by itself is bad enough, but when you combine it with the debacle of the Afghanistan exit, the strategic confusion exhibited by the administration on whether we will defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion or attack, the Saudi and Turkish tilt away from the United States, the continued appeasement of Iran and loss of American influence in the broader Middle East, earlier Chinese inroads in Latin America (including at both ends of the Panama Canal), and a defense budget that has declined in real terms in the face of China’s continued naval and nuclear buildup, it may not be just the Monroe Doctrine that has ended — but also America’s preeminence in the global order.
It didn’t have to be this way. In the final two years of the Trump administration, the United States finally shifted from engagement/competition to containment. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo — with a bit more gravitas than Blinken — stated clearly that 50 years of engagement of China had failed and called upon the free world to “triumph over this new tyranny.”
Pompeo rejected notions of America’s inevitable decline. “The challenge of China,” he said, “demands exertion, energy from democracies.” “If we bend the knee now,” he continued, “our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party.”
And Pompeo was one of several high-level Trump officials who spoke about China’s challenge in similar terms. The intellectual foundation for the Trump policy was largely the work of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, described as the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy that shifted America’s focus from peripheral wars to great power rivalries.
To be sure, the Biden administration has sometimes sounded tough on China — but actions speak louder than words. Blinken’s interview on Cuba would not be significant if the administration’s actions had conveyed to China that a military/espionage base in Cuba was unacceptable. Saying, “We’ve been in there pushing back against it,” and, “We’re trying to put a stop to it,” hardly inspires confidence here — or fear in China.
To paraphrase Dean Rusk during the Cuban Missile Crisis: We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think we just blinked.
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