An Ecuadorian perspective on Pacific geopolitics in the Trump era
The Peruvian airbase of ‘El Pato’ sits just inland from the Pacific Ocean, a few kilometres north of the remote northern coastal town of Talara. A thousand kilometres west, far out at sea, lie the Ecuadorian-controlled Galapagos, a chain of volcanic islands famous for their uniquely strange flora and fauna, inspiration to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and high-end destination for global eco-tourists.
In a two-part series for the Ecuadorian news website Plan V, academic Luis Córdova-Alarcon looks at how and why both places are being knitted closer to the security architecture of the United States.
There’s been an accelerating pattern of US initiatives and agreements with the governments of Peru and Ecuador over recent years. Córdova-Alarcon puts this down principally to American defence planners’ preoccupation with maintaining or extending US predominance in space and at sea, vital for any future conflict, particularly one in which the Pacific itself might be a theatre.
Investment from the US space agency NASA in ‘El Pato’ could turn it into a major spaceport, helping meet the United States’ overlapping commercial and strategic imperatives in space, where the personal (Elon Musk) increasingly mixes with the geopolitical.
Plan V points to Ecuador’s historically sketchy ability to control of its vast maritime domain – including Chinese fishing fleets operating without oversight around the Galapagos, and a hack of the Ecuadorian navy’s computer platforms – as driving American security fears. In Ecuador, concern about possible militarisation of the islands has increased with a new Status of Forces’ agreement between the two governments.
There is nothing new in the US treating Latin America as its sphere of influence. The Galapagos has hosted an American military presence before, in the Second World War. Some suggest current concerns about the militarisation of the Galapagos are overblown.
But as Donald Trump fires up his rhetoric around Panama Canal and Greenland, could America’s southern gaze to Peru and the Galapagos also develop a harder edge?
Full original in Spanish by Luis Córdova-Alarcon in two parts on 8 January and 13 January 2025, available here and here. A companion article pointing to drug trafficking as the main threat to the Galapagos, and suggesting fears of American military presence are overblown, was published here on 14 January 2025.
Plan V is an Ecuadorian investigative news website.
