This week brought us the latest example of the old rule about believing them when they tell you who they are. Following the recent tumultuous elections in Honduras and unrest across much of the region, Honduran President Xiomara Castro had been sparring with other Central and South American leaders. But now she’s announced another, potentially more disturbing change. She instructed her Foreign Affairs Minister to open a dialogue with China, seeking to establish diplomatic ties with the Chinese Communist Party. This will come as welcome news to Xi Jinping, who has been seeking to expand the CCP’s base of power in the region. But it will be extraordinarily bad news for the people of Taiwan, who had maintained similar ties to Honduras which will now presumably be cut. This would leave Taiwan with only 13 countries around the world that recognize the island state.
Honduras President Xiomara Castro announced Tuesday that her government will seek to establish diplomatic relations with China, which would imply severing relations with Taiwan. The switch would leave Taiwan recognized by only 13 countries as China spends billions to win recognition for its “One China” policy.
Castro said on her Twitter account that she instructed Honduran Foreign Affairs Minister Eduardo Reina to start negotiations with China and that her intention is to “expand frontiers freely in concert with the nations of the world.”
Castro said during her presidential campaign in 2021 that she would look for ties with China if elected, but once in power, her government backtracked on those comments.
I suppose we have no right to be shocked by this odious development. Castro said while campaigning for the presidency that she planned to seek diplomatic ties with China. (Hence why we should believe them when they tell us who they are.) But after her election, she appeared to think better of it and stick with the status quo throughout the past fourteen months. Now, however, it would seem that the worm has turned yet again.
This is a rather big deal that should be drawing more attention from the legacy media than it is today. Honduras is part of the Northern Triangle states in Central America. They have a fairly direct line to the Mexican border and from there to the United States. Honduras is also the source of many of the illegal migrants that flood into our country.
How have we let yet another former partner (such as they are) slip away into the embrace of China’s growing push for global dominance? Wasn’t our Vice President and Border Czar just in Honduras last January meeting in person with Xiomara Castro? I’m positive they talked about some sort of international cooperation to fight poverty and stem the flow of migrant caravans or something. While she was cutting deals with Honduras, did part of that deal involve Castro jumping ship and moving into the orbit of our greatest global adversary and threat?
Both in South/Central America and across the western Pacific, China seems to be pulling the rug out from under us at every turn. Our foreign policy situation has turned into a complete mess since Joe Biden took office. I’m not sure whether that’s more through negligence or poor policy decisions, but things are heading in the wrong direction and we need to get this ship turned around and sailing on an even keel.
We’ve discussed this here in the past but the situation continues to deteriorate. If China does eventually decide to go into Taiwan and we have to stop them, who will stand with us? The truthful answer is that we will be standing virtually alone because our NATO allies are weak on defense and obsessed with Ukraine anyway. And our list of allies is growing thin.
Discussion about this post