WHILE AMERICA SLEEPS

The evidence of looming Chinese power in the Caribbean is everywhere; it's not just because more than $3.5bn in Citizenship by Investment (CBI/CIP) funds were stolen and diverted to Hong Kong, in what I can only described as an organized crime operation, facilitated a group of avaricious local government officials. One can see it in the massive Chinese enclave being carved out in a wildlife refuge in Antigua, which will have its own passports, airline and port facilities capable of servicing warships for Mainland China. It can be seen in the huge Chinese embassies in the region, which are obvious listening posts on the United States. It can be seen in the camouflage-clad, and Chinese-equipped paramilitary police in Dominica, riding around in armored cars built in the Peoples' Republic. It is all that and much more.

Although the increasing Chinese financial influence in the East Caribbean has only been a regular topic of late, due its co-opting and domination of the CBI programs of the region, it has been a long time in development. The US, preoccupied with what it deems more strategic issues in Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, has pointedly ignored the region sinc the Grenada invasion forty years ago. Have we forgotten the lessons of Grenada? Apparently so, for the cost of America's benign neglect of the region is coming back to deal a real blow, literally in our backyard.

Although my field is money laundering, and the consequences of failure to interdict it in real-time, and to control it long term, I feel that I must rise these issues now before people watching sunset in the Key West are treated to a look at a Chinese destroyer in American territorial waters, headed north. Wake up, America; The color of the Caribbean is becoming red.