Captain Jim Fennell

The Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians and the Cubans have been stealing our resources and the resources of the people of Venezuela.

No, the Chinese foreign ministry today came out and rejected our claims about the Western hemisphere is the United States and that we can do, you know, we can take care of our hemisphere.

And they said that this would be dividing spheres of influence and creating geopolitical confrontation that will bring, not bring peace to the world.

So they're basically saying we're starting a war by declaration of that.

But the reality is it was the Chinese that have declared

that the South China Sea is their sovereign territory.

It's the Chinese in 2007 that told Admiral Keating, the commander of PACOM, that they wanted to divide up the Pacific between the East and the West and China would take the Western side of the Pacific and we could have the Eastern side.

So the Chinese claims about we can't have influence in our hemisphere, where we're not claiming sovereignty over the Western hemisphere, we're just claiming that we have influence there and we're not gonna allow outside influence to come in

from nations, whether they're from Europe or from the likes of China or Russia.

Well, we're not taking ownership and saying we're occupying and we're running things like the Chinese want to do in the South China Sea.

The Chinese believe that the South China Sea is their sovereign territory and they don't care about the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei.

They're disregarding them.

We're not saying that we...

are disregarding the existence of Venezuela or any other Caribbean nation.

We're just saying that we're not going to allow outside influence to come in and steal resources and prop up dictators and narco-dictators like Maduro.

So I think that's the real difference is we're standing up actually for the smaller nations, whereas China, if you go back to 2010 at the ASEAN summit, their foreign ministry said, we're a big country and we can do whatever we want.

That's not what America is saying to the countries of Latin America.

We're not saying we're a big country and we can do whatever we want and you'll obey us.

What we're saying is we're trying to free you up so that you can have access to your own resources, you can be sovereign nations, and we will protect you from rapacious nations like China, Russia, Iran, and others, and Cuba.

So that's the real difference.