As Ukraine Distracts, China Advances in Our Own Hemisphere China is poised to gain control of the OAS, using Suriname’s foreign minister as a proxy to extend its influence across the Americas, with U.S. support wavering. By J. Michael Waller
https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/05/as-ukraine-distracts-china-advances-in-our-own-hemisphere/
With Ukraine as America’s primary foreign distraction, Communist China makes quiet inroads under our southern border.
China is ready to assume indirect leadership of the Organization of American States (OAS), the 34-nation regional entity that the United States created to promote peace, stability, and security in the Americas.
Without the Trump Administration’s quick action, the OAS is poised to elect a Chinese proxy on March 10 to run the organization.
That proxy is Albert Ramdin, the foreign minister of Suriname. Ramdin has gathered the 18 votes necessary to become the next OAS secretary general.
China’s Belt and Road bought influence south of our border
For decades, taking advantage of American neglect, China has slowly made a long march through the Caribbean. OAS was a soft target.
China extended its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to the hemisphere. BRI involves trillions of dollars in logistical infrastructure and development, with other tools to build its own hegemony to displace the U.S.
Almost two-thirds of OAS members have signed on to BRI.
China aims to dominate or replace the institutions that the U.S. created. The OAS was designed after World War II to help the region resist communist expansion by eradicating extreme poverty, fostering economic, social, and cultural development, and devising common defense and security actions.
In the first days after taking office again, President Trump effectively stopped China’s Belt-and-Road expansion at its most strategic chokepoint—the Panama Canal. That sudden clamp suggests more action once Trump’s Western Hemisphere team is in place.
The OAS still holds value for any country seeking to use it. It helped standardize and streamline counterterrorism, counternarcotics, and anti-human trafficking policies to comport with those of the U.S.
Every member country, large or small, has the same vote. Unlike the United Nations, the U.S. has no veto at OAS. Tiny non-Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean region, through a local sort of European Union called the Caribbean Community or CARICOM, pooled their votes to create the largest OAS bloc, with 14 votes.
Suddenly, obscure countries like Suriname and Caribbean microstates built diplomatic value far beyond their size.
China’s OAS takeover
“The Chinese regime backs the candidacy of Albert Ramdin in the OAS to have greater influence in the region,” Infobae, an influential news service based in Argentina, reported in January. If elected to head the OAS, China “would intend to utilize him to control a key organization in the region.”
The U.S. is backing Paraguayan Foreign Minister Ruben Ramirez Lezcano for the spot. Some countries that did not want a CARICOM candidate perceived him as too close to the Trump administration. Regional diplomats told me that if the Trump administration had plans to ensure China’s defeat in the OAS, they never got the message.
China needed only four more votes for the win.
Those four votes came in quick succession. Last week, Brazil’s leftist president organized a meeting with the leaders of Bolivia, Chile, and Colombia. To them, according to Argentina’s La Politíca Online, “Lezcano could align himself with the White House agenda and put the brake on Latin America’s progressive governments that view the Republican administration with distrust.”
They agreed to join CARICOM in electing China’s proxy as a “counterweight” to Trump. Colombia put Ramdin over the top, pledging support on March 4. The vote takes place March 10.
Chinese Communist Party tool
For years, Ramdin has gushed servile praise on the Xi Jinping regime and its BRI. “A lot of important initiatives have been taken to support the countries; the Belt and Road Initiative is one of them, so I think there is more and more stronger appreciation for the People’s Republic of China in the context of global development,” he said during a 2023 visit to China.
Suriname, he said, has “benefited from the Belt and Road Initiative.” Ramdin likes China as a replacement for the U.S.-led security system for the Americas. “These are very important topics. Security, development, connecting countries is very important.”
“I’m very pleased to see that countries like the People’s Republic are willing to put funds into these initiatives,” he said. Not only for the cash coming in, but as Ramdin reiterated, “The same goes for security.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has been cultivating Ramdin for years. Summing up a 2021 telephone conversation between Ramdin and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Suriname has “always understood and supported” Beijing. With diplomatic understatement, the ministry said, “China appreciates Suriname for abiding by the one-China principle and always standing firmly with China on issues concerning China’s core interests and major concerns.”
Even Antigua and Barbuda got involved
Before Brazil turned the CARICOM bloc into a majority for Ramdan, other CARICOM members had been doing their part for damage control against concerns about China.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne of tiny Antigua and Barbuda, with a population barely touching 100,000, was the second Caribbean BRI signatory after Suriname. His ambassador to Washington, Ronald Sanders, wrote February 28 in a Caribbean news outlet that the OAS secretary general controversy has nothing to do with China.
The OAS leadership campaign, Sanders said, “has been tainted by misinformation and political distortion, particularly on social media. A misleading narrative has emerged, falsely framing the election as a geopolitical battle between the United States and China for control of the Organization.”
This was nonsense. Browne and his cronies have profited well from BRI. China has targeted CARICOM itself for years as a battlespace against Taiwan. The fight continues to this day, with five CARICOM members—Belize, Haiti, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines—still recognizing Taipei.
Beijing expects Ramdin to deliver
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has made it clear what it expects of the Suriname government, and Ramdin in particular.
An official foreign ministry report in 2021 of Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s phone meeting with Ramdin said that Beijing expected Suriname to expand Chinese influence across the Caribbean.
Beijing’s careful diplomatic language blandly listed specific expectations: “China hopes that the Surinamese side will make good use of the Consultative Mechanism between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Caribbean Countries Having Diplomatic Relations with China, the China-Caribbean Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum and other mechanisms, so as to promote the overall cooperation between China and the Caribbean countries.”
Ramdin obeyed. In a print interview with the CCP’s Global Times, Ramdin said that Suriname and China use their diplomatic missions in Washington and New York to “work together.” He called Suriname “a steadfast ally that can assist China” in developing ties “within the CARICOM region.”
After a 2023 sit-down with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Ramdin agreed that Suriname is China’s regional “strategic partner” and part of Xi Jinping’s new Global Security Initiative (GSI).
The GSI, unveiled in 2022, is a framework to reshape the American-led global security architecture in alignment with the CCP’s vision of the world. It includes economic leverage, soft power, military engagement, and arms sales and training.
The primary U.S.-led security architecture in this hemisphere is the OAS. Ramdin announced his candidacy for OAS leader in 2024. Unless the Trump Administration acts now to lobby certain OAS members to change their votes, China will effectively control the OAS by proxy.
Comments are closed.
