We have this issue in Latin America where the region is going towards a much more autocratic direction and Russia China around are positioning themselves to take advantage of all that.

Joseph Humier is Executive Director of the Center for a Secure Free Society and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

An expert on asymmetric warfare, he has for 20 years been looking closely at Latin America.

In this episode we dive into how the China-Iran

Russia Coalition is influencing the region and North America. The C no Iranian

connection in many respects is probably the most dangerous one even more so than the

the cino Russian connection which is more talked about I think in foreign affairs

fundamentally China is making Latin America a region more inhospitable to the United States.

This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Jania Keller.

Joseph Humier, so good to have you back on American thought leaders.

It was a pleasure to be back.

So when we sat down last time, we were planning to talk about the Chinese influence in South America, the impacts on the U.S.

Also how Iran fits in there.

This is another area of your expertise

and of course increasingly Russia.

But in the end we ended up talking about the Venezuelan election, which had just happened.

Can you kind of update me very briefly on what the situation is since we talked about a month ago?

Well, I think we talked right after the election.

So right after the election, there was an effort by the opposition

Venezuela, Marie Karina Macharo and Mundo Gonzalez to rally international support and I think

they did a good job. I think they basically got about two-thirds of Latin America to either recognize

in Mundo Gonzalez as the president-elect of Venezuela, which is, you know, per the results of the ballots that she demonstrated,

...