Heine Quoted in Article on the US-China Power Struggle in Latin America
In a CNN article titled China has spent decades making inroads in Latin America. Will the ‘Donroe doctrine’ push it out? by Simone McCarthy, Ambassador Jorge Heine, former Chilean diplomat to China and professor at the Pardee School, was quoted on his thoughts on the reverberations of the United States’ intervention of Venezuela and the removal of President Maduro.
The intervention comes at a time when the Trump administration aims to remove China’s influence across Latin America in an attempt to assert dominance in the region. What has now been nicknamed the “Donroe doctrine,” an update to an 1823 statement by President James Monroe warning European colonial powers to respect the US’ sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere, has now been seen as a way to one-up China in the global power competition. Experts now wonder if the US will further escalate their grab for power with tactics like tariffs or sanctions to try to strong-arm other countries into choosing Washington’s interests over China’s.
As Heine noted, “There is no doubt that the pressure is on, and the countries are vulnerable to it … and in foreign ministries, people are planning different ways of how to handle this”
In the last few decades, investment from China has enabled Latin American infrastructure, trade, and contribution to global economics to flourish. Now with the current dependence on China, experts have said it would be impossible for Latin American countries to break ties and go back to the ways things were with no other solution offered from the US. Heine went on to say,
Now, what is the message? The message is – you stay underdeveloped. You continue to be hewers of wood and carriers of water, forever. We don’t want you to have digital advancement. We don’t want you to have railways. We don’t want you to have up-to-date ports… don’t industrialize and don’t advance any further… That seems to me a very difficult thing to sell to governments in the region.
The full article can be read here.
A former research professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Jorge Heine is a diplomat, international relations scholar, and lawyer. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute. He has served as an ambassador of Chile to China, India, and South Africa. Heine has written over fifteen books, including The Non-Aligned World: Striking Out in an Era of Great Power Competition (2025), which provides insights on how the Global South can navigate the changing diplomatic landscape amid the U.S.-China rivalry.