China deepening ties with El Salvador: Should the U.S. be worried about another Cuban Missile Crisis episode?

By Syed Bahadur Abbas – June 6, 2021

The U.S. has now begun to loudly question China’s push to establish its economic and political influence through lucrative Belt and Road Initiative business offers and infrastructural development projects in the Central and South American region. Admiral Philip S. Davidson, Commander of U.S Indo-Pacific Command stated in front of the U.S. Senate Committee for Armed Service that China’s economic and strategic foothold in Central America indicates a rising challenge in a region that has traditionally been in the U.S. sphere of influence.

A wave of Central and South American countries has emerged in recent years that are willing to establish diplomatic ties with China in favor of Taiwan. Latin America and the Caribbean region is an important bastion of support for Taiwan. Nine of the fifteen countries that still maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan are in this region. With PRC’s increasing influence and economic ties, it has become evident that the support for Taiwan is going to decline in the coming years resulting in a tougher scenario for the U.S. in its backyard.

One country that stands out as China’s recent focus of attention in Central America is El Salvador. The formal diplomatic relations between the two countries are fairly new, as El Salvador recognized the People’s Republic of China in favor of the Republic of China (Taiwan) only in August 2018. The same year, El Salvador’s President Salvador Sánchez Cerén surfaced his ambitious plans of designating 14% of the countries land and almost half of its coastline for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Chinese state-owned companies were first to jump on this offer and to acquire vast land and islands to start building megaprojects and ports. China is proposing to expand the port of La Unión, which is located in the Gulf of Fonseca at the intersection of Salvadoran, Honduran, and Nicaraguan territory.

The U.S. sees the region of Central America as its backyard. The U.S.’s influence on the small states of Central America and its grip on the most important strategic choke point in the world, the Panama Canal, has never been challenged in a long time. However, almost sixty years ago, in the October of 1962, the world came close as it could to a first full-fledged nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, an event that was dubbed as the “Cuban Missile Crisis”. At the heart of that conflict, lied Cuba, a country 939 nautical miles away from Washington and loaded with Soviet Union’s nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. Cuba played a vital role as a forwards operating base for the Soviet Union to assert substantial military pressure all the way around on the other side of the globe.

The intensifying relations between China and El Salvador may look very economic-oriented from the surface, where China is investing heavily in infrastructural development of the country that includes building football fields, water treatment plants, libraries, bridges, and roads. But what does the poverty-ridden, crime-infested, and poorly managed country of El Salvador has to offer in return, apart from severing its recognition of Taiwan?

The small population of El Salvador is definitely not a unique market for Chinese products, the country also does not have exceptional natural resources or a mighty military that can help China’s People’s Liberation Army. The only viable reason why El Salvador is China’s favorite in the Central American country is its strategic location. San Salvador, the country’s capital city, is 889 nautical miles from the Headquarters of SOUTHCOM, the Southern Command of U.S. Military in Doral, Florida, it is 943 nautical miles to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, which houses SOCOM and CENTCOM headquarters, and 1049 nautical miles to Houston, Texas. The region that acts as a supply depot for military bases all around the U.S. and El Salvador’s 190 miles long coastline in the Central American region can provide China with a significant strategic advantage.

El Salvador is not the only Central American country to side with China to share the “One China” vision. The Republic of Panama and the Dominic Republic also recognized China instead of Taiwan, in the year 2017 and 2018 respectively. Apart from the BRI projects that are already underway, China’s ambitious Central American plans may also translate into the long speculated, Nicaragua Canal. A 270km long canal to connect the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean and provide an alternative route from Panama Canal.

Note: The above opinions are the personal views of individual authors or contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IRIA.