Forget Europe or the hotspots of East Asia and the Middle East, Marco Rubio's first foreign trip as secretary of state took him to one Caribbean and four Central American states. The tour tells us that the Trump foreign policy is focusing on the region closest to the American homeland.
That is bad news for the leftists and hardline regimes in the Western Hemisphere, especially the Republic of Cuba and its new patron, the People's Republic of China. The Chinese military is firmly embedded in a country not far from Key West, Florida.
In June 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that China and Cuba had agreed in principle to establish a new eavesdropping site on Cuban soil. The Biden administration termed the story inaccurate, but two days later the White House declassified intelligence showing that Chinese signals intelligence collection facilities had been operating in Cuba since at least 2019.
Washington had repeatedly tried to downplay Chinese involvement on Cuban soil, and the declassification was, as a practical matter, misleading. It is not clear when China first started collecting signals intelligence, commonly termed SIGINT, in Cuba, but it was evident that the effort began more than a decade before 2019.
"Rumors of China's intelligence presence on the island appear to have begun with Chi's visit," states a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), referring to a trip by then Chinese Defense Minister General Chi Haotian in 1999.
R. Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College told Gatestone Institute that the Chinese may have been engaged in this activity in Cuba since 1993. Some believe that the Chinese military moved into the Lourdes facility, the Soviet Union's largest listening post outside its territory, soon after the fall of the USSR.
Cuba provides the Chinese one an ideal location to surveil America. "Sitting less than 100 miles south of Florida, Cuba is well-positioned to keep watch on sensitive communications and activities, including those of the U.S. military," the CSIS report states. "The southeastern seaboard of the United States brims with military bases, combatant command headquarters, space launch centers, and military testing sites."
The CSIS study identifies four likely Chinese listening posts in Cuba. There are two from the Soviet era, Calabazar and the Lourdes facility near Bejucal. One, Wajay, appears to have been built after the fall of the Soviet Union. There is also a brand new one, El Salao.
China wants to do more than just collect SIGINT. "China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops and other security and intelligence operations just 100 miles off Florida's coast," reported the Wall Street Journal in June 2023.
The base in Cuba would be part of the People's Liberation Army's Project 141, an effort to expand global operations.
China denied the Wall Street Journal reporting, calling it "totally mendacious and unfounded." In any event, since the paper's article, there has been no confirmation that the Chinese military has actually built or obtained access to such a site.
Perhaps one explanation is that the Biden administration pressured both Havana and Beijing to back off. As a White House official at the time stated, the Chinese government "will keep trying to enhance its presence in Cuba, and we will keep working to disrupt it."
Could China and Cuba, which last year declared an "unbreakable friendship," use their SIGINT cooperation as a foundation for what CSIS calls "a more overt military and defense partnership with Havana"?
At the moment, Cuba needs Chinese cash and might therefore accede to granting China greater access to the island. The Cuban regime, after all, is enduring its worst economic crisis since at least the Soviet collapse. Russia, its old patron, is tied down by the war in Ukraine and troubled by recent setbacks in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin, therefore, is not able to help much.
China's ruler Xi Jinping has considerable resources at his disposal, but he also has costly ambitions and his regime is groaning under the weight of what Yale's Paul Kennedy famously termed "Imperial Overstretch." Worse, Xi's seemingly mighty economy is suffering. China's slowdown is more serious than any other since the Cultural Revolution, which ended in 1976 with the death of Mao Zedong. It is not clear, therefore, how far the Chinese friends will go in rescuing their Cuban comrades.
China made great strides in the Caribbean when the United States was not paying attention. No American president since the beginning of the 20th century — Trump 45 included — focused on the area as much as Trump 47.
Rubio, however, is focused on the Caribbean basin, as the itinerary for his first trip shows. Moreover, the new secretary of state is apparently willing to use raw American power to strong-arm countries.
On his first stop of his first trip, Rubio told Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino that the U.S. was taking a new approach to the canal. America's top diplomat, according to spokesperson Tammy Bruce on February 2, "made clear that this status quo is unacceptable and that absent immediate changes, it would require the United States to take measures necessary to protect its rights under the Treaty."
Whether or not Rubio was threatening to use force — the United States, in what is called the Neutrality Treaty, reserved the right to do that in the Canal Zone — his words produced immediate results: Mulino announced that Panama would not renew its Belt & Road memorandum with China and might even end the existing deal prior to its scheduled expiration.
The United States is unlikely to use force against Cuba over listening posts, but President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are not about to let the Chinese military take control of a country so close to the American homeland. Cuba should expect intense pressure, so China is probably at high tide in that country.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.
