Christopher Hernandez-Roy, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, with the Americas Program testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence about the influence of extra-hemispheric authoritarians in Latin America and the Caribbean and the challenges posed to regional and U.S. security.
Chair Pfluger, Ranking Member Magaziner, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, I am very grateful for this opportunity to testify before you today. The views represented in this testimony are my own and should not be taken as representing those of my current or former employers.
The democratic, relatively prosperous and largely pro-U.S. nature of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has been a strategic asset for the United States for decades. Yet, the region today is at a tipping point; there is a significant risk that it could become a liability in strategic competition with China and to a lesser extent Russia in the next decade. In particular, the influence of extra-hemispheric authoritarians, including Iran, has been on the rise throughout LAC. These actors pose interlocking challenges to regional, and by extension U.S. security. While each possesses different capabilities and long-term objectives, they often coordinate both informally and formally to challenge U.S. influence in the region. It is therefore important to view these three actors not in isolation, but how their behaviors reinforce and interrelate. Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran each espouse different geopolitical goals and world views, yet they have shown an alarming degree of convergence when it comes to efforts at fomenting discord and disruption within the United States’ shared neighborhood. Such efforts come both through support for overt authoritarians, especially the dictatorial regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, but also where they cannot totally pull countries out of the U.S. orbit, these regimes seek to peel away once staunch U.S. allies and convert them into comparatively neutral bystanders. This can be seen with the rhetoric of the government of Brazil, ascribing blame to both Ukraine and Russia for the war, and in Argentina, Brazil and longstanding ally Colombia’s refusal to sell Soviet legacy weapons to help Ukraine defend itself. It is noteworthy that no LAC country, save Costa Rica, has joined the international sanctions effort against Russia for its war of aggression.
Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine has caused autocracies the world over to close ranks and sharpen their competition with the United States and fellow democratic allies.[1] Indeed, recent developments in the region, from the docking of Iranian warships in Brazil, to revelations about Chinese espionage activities in Cuba, and overtures to Haiti by the notorious Russian Wagner group, have plainly illustrated the risks to U.S. security that come from allowing dictatorships to proliferate and coordinate their activities. Another comparatively under-appreciated dimension is the role of authoritarian alliances in helping dictators remain in power and repress their populations more effectively, accelerating mass irregular migration to the detriment of the region at large.
The most dramatic example of this comes from Venezuela, where over 7.3 million people have left the country as a result of the profound economic, security, and humanitarian crises brought on by the regime of Nicolás Maduro’s gross mismanagement and repression.[2] Maduro nevertheless remains in power, shored up by arms and intelligence from Russia and China, and a sanctions-evading oil trade with Iran. Nicaragua has also seen dramatic upticks in outward migration, creating an acute crisis in neighboring Costa Rica, while U.S. apprehensions of Nicaraguans at the southern border have multiplied by a factor of more than 50 between fiscal years 2020 and 2022.[3] Even Cuba, the longest-standing dictatorship in the hemisphere, has seen record-setting levels of migration as the country’s economy continues to reel and as the regime further clamps down on dissent following the massive protests on the island in July 2021.[4] Furthermore, the presence of dictatorial regimes within the Western Hemisphere offers a springboard for extra-hemispheric authoritarians to expand their influence, co-opting, coercing, and manipulating other countries in the region to undermine their relations with the United States, often empowering anti-democratic forces in the process.
These challenges should not cause the United States to underestimate the considerable advantages it still possesses when it comes to geopolitical competition in the hemisphere. LAC on the whole still looks to the United States as its preferred partner. If the U.S. seizes the opportunity to present a comprehensive, well-resourced counteroffer, the region will consider it seriously. Crafting such a response however will require a sustained, and forward-looking strategy for engagement with LAC which to date has unfortunately appeared lacking from a United States government which has long turned to the region only in response to crisis and neglected it at all other times.
Facing resource constraints which have only grown more acute in the wake of its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia nevertheless evidences a brazen disregard for international norms and law in its efforts to disrupt the security of the United States and allies, including in the Western Hemisphere. While Russia cannot compete with China or the United States in provision of raw economic assistance, it makes up for this through the sheer diversity of avenues in which Moscow seeks to advance its interests by any means necessary.
Russian influence in the region primarily comes from security ties, fostered through Moscow’s global arms industry which countries across Latin America have relied upon in the past to fill their armories with cheap, reliable weapons and equipment. In June of 2022, Nicaragua renewed the mandate for Russian military forces to operate within its borders. Russia also maintains a number of GLONASS satellite positioning stations, with one outside of Managua and another scheduled to be deployed in Venezuela.[5] The infamous Wagner private military contractor has also set up shop in Venezuela, providing security for Maduro and training the Venezuelan armed forces.[6] The role of this shadowy state-affiliated mercenary group is cause for elevated concern especially as leaked U.S. intelligence reports have indicated the group also explored contracts to provide security in Haiti. More recently, reports have circulated of Cuban citizens living in Russia signing up to fight in Ukraine, while Havana and Russian client state Belarus recently inked a deal for Cuban forces to help train the Belarussian military.[7]
Cybersecurity is another vulnerability which Russia has proven adept at exploiting. This in some respects can be traced to a lack of awareness across the region as to the vulnerabilities faced from infiltration by malign foreign actors. This extends even to regional ministries and national defense institutions. The Brazilian military for instance relies on Russian firm Kaspersky Lab for data protection services, even to the point of renewing its contract the summer of 2022 as the war in Ukraine raged.[8] Russian cyber actors have also used their technologies to interfere in elections in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, among others. This has mostly taken the form of disinformation and amplifying polarizing voices and showcases Moscow’s well-developed mis- and disinformation tactics. Such capabilities are further augmented by ostensibly aboveboard news outlets. RT en español and Sputnik Mundo, Russia’s Spanish-language mouthpieces, have over 30 million viewers in Latin America and the Caribbean, with media agreements to operate in 11 countries.[9] Russia’s ability to exploit mis- and disinformation opportunistically was on display recently when images from Mexico of cartel soldiers wielding U.S.-made AT-4 anti-tank missile launchers began circulating on social media. Russian sources, amplified by Moscow’s embassy in Mexico City, seized on the narrative that these launchers were redirected from U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine, pushing false claims that the war there was fueling Mexico’s internal security challenges.[10]
Russia’s ongoing war has also touched off a wave of migration, as thousands of mostly young, educated Russians flee the country by increasingly circuitous and dangerous routes to avoid being drafted to fight in Ukraine. The number of Russian nationals encountered at the United States’ border quadrupled between 2021 and 2022. Russians seeking entry to the United States often transit through Mexico due to significantly easier visa requirements.[11] While these outflows underscore the unpopularity of Moscow’s war, they create novel challenges for North American security as well. Rising levels of Russian migrants through Mexico open new revenue streams for criminal groups engaged in human smuggling. Those fleeing Russia are not the only newcomers to Mexico, which, according to U.S. Northern Command, is home to the largest concentration of GRU agents outside of Russia.[12] Weaknesses in screenings of Russians seeking asylum may therefore present new avenues for Moscow to infiltrate and disrupt the United States itself, to say nothing of the corrosive effects on regional security Russian espionage has already produced.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) engages with LAC first and foremost through an economic framework. Between 2000 and 2020, the PRC’s share of trade with the region grew eightfold, and China’s signature Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) has successfully garnered some twenty-one signatories in the hemisphere. Nevertheless, viewing Beijing’s relationship to the Western Hemisphere solely as one of trade obscures many of the more nefarious activities which have emerged as part and parcel of expanded PRC engagement.
The PRC’s interests in LAC are manifold. Broadly speaking, LAC is vital to China’s economic development, as it is home to extensive deposits of natural resources, including minerals and metals such as copper and lithium, as well as petroleum products. LAC is also key for China’s food security, with the region representing much of the PRC’s food imports.[13] Increasingly, as China’s economy cools off from its previous red-hot growth, China is turning towards LAC countries not merely for their raw materials, but as a base of consumers eager to purchase Chinese-manufactured products. Geopolitically, China has long been fixated on the region as home to the majority of sovereign states that continue to recognize Taiwan. The PRC has assiduously chipped away at this number, and three Central American countries — Panama, El Salvador and Nicaragua — have switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China since 2017. So too has the nearby Caribbean Island nation of Dominican Republic, and in March 2023, the government of Xiomara Castro in Honduras recognized the PRC, opening an Embassy in Beijing on June 11th; a move which brought the total number of Taiwanese diplomatic allies in the region down to just seven countries. In Guatemala as well, which is headed towards presidential elections at the end of June, outward support for Taiwan may nevertheless belie an internal calculus where recognition is far more contingent. Should recognition of Taiwan slip further in the hemisphere, the PRC will in all likelihood be further emboldened in its rhetoric and provocations directed towards the island.[14]
While the PRC has clear strategic interests underpinning its focus on LAC, China’s engagement in the hemisphere is largely regime agnostic. Nevertheless, high levels of PRC engagement have been associated with worrying trends in recipient countries’ democratic health. China often acts as a “lender of last resort,” bankrolling authoritarian governments when other sources of financing will not touch these. The China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China offered in excess of USD $137 billion to the region in loans to various sectors, Venezuela being the single greatest recipient of Chinese loans at USD $60 billion.[15] Furthermore, China’s public security initiatives have raised concerns after the PRC’s “safe cities” surveillance technology was associated with crackdowns on opposition parties in countries like Ecuador under the Correa government, to say nothing of China’s assistance with social control and digital monitoring in Venezuela.[16]
Military and security collaboration is also a growing aspect of Chinese activity in LAC. China has sold equipment to military and police forces from countries historically opposed to the United States—such as Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia —as well as close American partners like Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador. Venezuela, however, is by far the region’s largest buyer of PRC arms. Between 2009 and 2019, $615 million in weapons was sold to Venezuela.[17] China could be poised to make greater arms sales to fill a vacuum left by Russia needing to keep supplies at home due to its invasion of Ukraine. In addition to military sales, the People’s Liberation Army has a burgeoning presence in the region, which it maintains through training and visits, permitting it greater familiarity with countries’ operational frameworks and preparedness, as well as their strategic doctrine and training routines. China has furthermore exploited a paucity of U.S. police assistance in the region, coupling this with the dire security crises faced by countries throughout the hemisphere, to advance its own model of security assistance.[18]
While China leads with trade and investment, security concerns are never far off, as one report by the Asia Society outlines how China employs “civil-military fusion” in its development projects, ensuring that they are designed to specifications that offer both commercial and military advantages.[19] In Latin America, this manifests in projects like the Espacio Lejano space research station in Argentina, which is effectively off limits to inspection by Argentine authorities. Analysts have noted that, while certainly capable of its stated purpose of deep space scientific research, the station could readily be used for satellite telemetry tracking and control, collecting signals intelligence, and even potentially missile guidance, tools which would serve China well in a potential conflict scenario.[20] Even further south, the PRC is seeking to expand its presence with a new agreement between Chinese state-owned Shaanxi Chemical Industry Group Co. Ltd. and the province of Tierra del Fuego to begin construction on a port in Ushuaia, a key gateway to the Antarctic, and strategic chokepoint along the Drake Passage and Strait of Magellan.[21] In Peru, a mega port is being built by a state-owned company from China which will become a key link between China and Latin America, ensuring Chinese supply chains of metals, critical minerals and agricultural products.[22] General Laura Richardson in recent testimony before Congress has also raised concerns that Chinese-constructed infrastructure along the Panama Canal could be easily turned to military purposes in the event of a conflict or crisis scenario.
Finally, approximately 100 miles off the coast of Florida, the White House has now confirmed the presence of a PRC-run base, replete with long-range radars and other electronic surveillance equipment directed towards the United States.[23] The revelations underscore how the PRC utilizes its economic heft to extract far more expansive geopolitical advantage. Cuba, undergoing its most severe economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, reportedly accepted billions of dollars from China to take over and upgrade the facility in a trade which was likely too good to refuse for Havana.[24]
As with Russia, a growing trend of Chinese nationals seeking respite from repressive policies at home have been pursuing circuitous routes to the United States by way of LAC countries. According to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data, more than 4,000 Chinese nationals were encountered between October 2022 and February 2023 at the southern border, a dramatic uptick from the 421 encounters reported during the same period from 2021 and 2022.[25] Typically, these individuals arrive via countries like Ecuador which does not have a visa requirement for Chinese citizens to visit. From there, they travel a long and often dangerous road, together with tens of thousands of Latin American and Caribbean migrants transiting the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama.
Often viewed as a secondary, or even tertiary player in the hemisphere, Iran’s engagement with LAC exacerbates many of the challenges outlined above. The continued global sanctions regime against Iran limits its tools for influence and has largely relegated Iranian influence in the hemisphere to Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, which are already willing to flaunt U.S. sanctions. Here, Iranian engagement has a complementary effect to more well-established and substantive Russian and Chinese efforts.
The docking of Iranian warships in Rio di Janeiro in March 2023 and high-level visits by Iranian officials to Caracas and Managua and Havana suggest Iran is seeking to project military power throughout the region in addition to economic benefit. Diplomatically, it appears Iranian Foreign Minister, Hosein Amir Abdolahian’s February 2023 tour of the hemisphere’s dictatorships was a preview for an even greater engagement, as President Ebrahim Raisi began making the same circuit of visits on June 12.[26] In the past, Iran allegedly sent members of its Quds Force to help Nicolás Maduro stay in power, including with arms shipments.[27] Informed observers have speculated that in return, Maduro may be shipping Venezuelan-made kamikaze drones, or their parts, on regular triangular flights between Venezuela, Tehran, and Moscow.[28]
Another security concern is the continued presence of Hezbollah in Latin America. The group’s origins in the region extends back decades, where they were originally concentrated around the Southern Cone, especially the tri-border area of Paraguay. Today, Hezbollah operations have shifted northwards, mainly to Venezuela where they have a sympathetic backer in the form of the Maduro regime.[29] The group has been responsible for helping Maduro launder gold as well, with Israeli intelligence revealing in February 2023 the existence of a gold smuggling operation between Caracas and Tehran facilitated by Hezbollah.[30]
All three extra-hemispheric authoritarian regimes recognize that their goals in Latin America are aligned for the time being, and all have a vested interest in sustaining anti-U.S. regimes, and disrupting U.S. security. In many cases, there is strong complementarity between the interests of these authoritarians. China for instance has high demand for cheap oil, while both Iran and Venezuela need to find clients willing to buy their energy exports in the face of sanctions. At other times, cooperation among autocrats gives different regimes the ability to defray costs and deflect responsibility. Russia for example can supply Nicaragua with arms and equipment while entrusting the training of its repressive apparatus to Venezuelan and Cuban officials.[31]
Accordingly, it must be understood that autocrats around the world follow a similar “playbook” of policies for how to take and hold power, clamp down on dissent, and survive in the face of international pressure. Nicaragua’s Foreign Agents Law for instance was closely modeled after Russia’s, allowing it to clamp down and expel dissenting voices.[32] Cybersecurity and the information space more broadly represent key vulnerabilities that malign authoritarians view as entry points for influence, many countries in the region still do not take their data security seriously enough.
Another common thread is the linkage between authoritarian regimes and migration. Dictatorships are associated with a number of push factors for migration, the most basic of which is the simple reality that most people do not wish to live under unaccountable and repressive governments. This is evidenced today by the thousands of Russian and Chinese nationals who have uprooted and risked their lives in an attempt to find better conditions oceans away. Autocracies also drive migration by adopting poor economic policies and channeling resources to inner circles while the rest of the country languishes. Venezuela is perhaps the archetypical case of such gross economic mismanagement producing the world’s largest migration crisis outside of an active war zone. Authoritarianism is part and parcel of the root causes of migration, and ought to be treated as such in any U.S. response.
The 2022 National Security Strategy notes that “No region impacts the United States more directly than the Western Hemisphere.”[33] Unfortunately, resources and political capital have not been commensurate with the scale of the threat posed by the interlocking efforts of Russia, China, and Iran, along with regional authoritarians. A comprehensive resource-backed approach to LAC is urgently needed if the region is to be secure, democratic, and prosperous. This would include, as one example, revising Development Finance Corporation rules to allow financing of projects in middle income counties of the region, especially given the huge disparities in development within different LAC countries.
Strengthen Regional Migration Responses: Irregular migration remains one of the most profound challenges affecting the entire Western Hemisphere. As authoritarian regimes the world over contribute to mass outflows of people, the United States has an important leadership role to play in identifying and advancing solutions to manage migration, protect the security and rights of individuals in transit, and support host countries. At the same time, the United States should encourage countries with visa-free entry policies for Russian and Chinese nationals to reexamine their screening processes to prevent the espionage apparatuses of these regimes from gaining access to the United States and allies under the guise of humanitarian need. The opening of new migration processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala in this respect represents an important step forward. Reports of Russian efforts to negotiate visa-free entry with Mexico and a number of Caribbean states should also come as cause for concern, and the United States should be active in opposing measures which could facilitate the entry of Russian government agents into the region.
Invest in Digital Capabilities: Cyber vulnerabilities not only create practical information security risks that damage the national security of Latin American and Caribbean countries, but a lack of general knowledge on cybersecurity opens the door to malign foreign powers offering facile solutions. SOUTHCOM, in partnership with CYBERCOM, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), can lead training with partner countries to outline key risks, and the elements of a better strategy to counter cyber threats.
Counter the Dictator’s Playbook: As it becomes increasingly apparent that autocrats both within LAC and beyond are borrowing from a shared “playbook” of policies and tactics for maintaining their grip on power, the United States must double down on efforts to coordinate a response among like-minded democracies to counter instances of autocratization. Such a “democratic playbook” should include measures such as helping to strengthen democratic institutions, early warning signs for civil society watchdogs to track, forums like the Summit for Democracies which allow international coordination to pressure dictatorships, as well as a reexamination of how U.S. sanctions policy can be more effectively deployed against dictators and would-be autocrats.
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