Andrew J. Wight -
MEDELLIN, Colombia—China has quickly established an extensive track record of using infrastructure spending, on everything from stadiums to ports, to secure resources and bolster trade across Eurasia, Africa and Latin America. Security and space industry analysts now say 2018 has already been a banner year for another part of China’s soft power outreach, as it has sold satellites and support systems to Nigeria, Cambodia and Pakistan. China’s space ambitions are closely tied to its Belt and Road Initiative. By the end of the year, it is expected that a basic system of 18 Chinese BeiDou-3 global positioning satellites will serve countries such as Pakistan, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates—all partners in Beijing’s massive infrastructure and development program.
But it is in Latin America that China’s space diplomacy takes on an added dimension. The majority of the 17 countries that still recognize Taiwan are located in the region. While on a recent trip to Latin America, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis oversaw the signing of a new agreement with Brazil to share information about known space objects, including Brazilian satellites. They also discussed an agreement to allow the United States to launch satellites from Brazil’s Alcantara Launch Center. In neighboring Argentina, the Chinese military recently completed a mysterious $50 million ground station in the remote Patagonia region—for what it says are peaceful, non-military purposes of monitoring satellites and other space missions. ...
Seventeen years after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, the “war on terror” is still stumbling along. From the Sahel to the Philippines, governments and international coalitions continue to battle jihadi groups. In an era of mounting international competition, political leaders, generals and spies continue to agree that transnational terrorism is a common threat.
Global organizations like the United Nations cannot insulate themselves from this tendency. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has made consolidating the institution’s counterterrorist activities a priority. Last week, World Politics Review ran a trenchant piece by Larry Attree and Jordan Street of Saferworld, warning that the U.N. must avoid “buying further into the doctrine of counterterrorism” to the detriment of its roles in peacemaking and defending human rights.
The authors are friends of mine. I agree with most of their thesis, which is based on a fine report they wrote with Luca Venciarutti. But I have some questions about where their argument leads. ...
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