by Ray Walser and Mackenzie Eaglen | The Heritage Foundation

Almost half a century after the Cuban missile crisis, the Russian navy is coming to the Americas. While the mood in Washington is far from panicked, neither is it mirthful. There is a sense of discomfort and dissatisfaction with the voyage of the Russian flotilla and concern about where U.S.-Russian and hemispheric relations are headed.

In the coming weeks, media attention will focus on the passage of the Russian squadron into Caribbean waters, where in November it will conduct joint exercises with the Venezuelan navy. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez extols growing military ties with Russia as a means to escape from under the thumb of U.S. hegemony and to build a multi-polar world. Subsequently, one can count on Chávez to maximize the publicity value of the Russian fleet’s presence in American waters and to continue flaunting his anti-American agenda and growing connections with Russia. Incidentally, state and municipal elections will take place on November 23 in Venezuela. For the Russians, the naval maneuvers appear to be a form of payback for U.S. support for the democratic nation of Georgia and for the presence of U.S. warships in the Black Sea.

Showing the Russian Flag (Again)

On September 22, four surface warships departed from Russia’s Northern Fleet home base in Severomorsk for the 15,000-mile journey to the warm waters of the Caribbean. The fleet is led by the nuclear-powered guided missile battle cruiser Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great).When fully armed, it is a formidable warship able to carry at least 400 missiles and anti-submarine warfare weapons, including 20 P-700 Granit (SS-N-19 “Shipwreck,” according to NATO), which are heavy supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles with a maximum range of 300 nautical miles. The SS-N-19 can be armed with either a 750-kilogram conventional or a 500-kiloton nuclear warhead. The battle cruiser can carry three helicopters and has an endurance of 60 days and a maximum speed of 32 knots.

Sailing with the battle cruiser is a destroyer, the Admiral Chabanenko, whose main armament consists of eight supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles of the P-270 Moskit (SS-N-22 “Sunburn”) type with ranges of approximately 120 kilometers and capable of carrying either conventional or nuclear warheads. [Read more →]

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The New York Times reports Russia has provided Fidel Castro’s protégé Hugo Chavez and Venezuela a $1 billion military loan. Venuezuela’s pursuit of military hardware and modernization is tilting heavily the military balance in Latin America in its favor. NYT further elaborates:

Russia stepped up efforts to project its increased might on the world stage on Friday, welcoming President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela by signing a $1 billion military loan to Venezuela and announcing wide-ranging plans to modernize its nuclear deterrence.

[...]

The $1 billion loan for arms purchases and military development was announced in a Kremlin statement released Thursday night. The statement said Mr. Putin and Mr. Chávez had spoken on enhancing economic cooperation and trade in commercial goods as well as military technologies.

The $1 billion loan will help finance programs related to military-technical cooperation, the statement said. The Kremlin would not elaborate on the details of the deal.

Between 2005 and 2007 Venezuela has signed 12 contracts for weapons purchases from Russia for a total of more than $4.4 billion, the Kremlin statement said.

The move is the latest gesture of military friendship between Russia and Venezuela, two counties that have increasingly positioned themselves as mavericks vis-à-vis the West. [Read more →]

Sphere: Related Content

Tags: Caribbean, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Latin America, military balance, military loan, military technologies, multipolar world, nuclear deterrence, President Hugo Chavez, Russia, technical cooperation, transport helicopters, Venezuela, venezuelan navy

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The Eighth Defense Ministerial of the Americas: End of the Line?
by Ray Walser
Heritage Foundation

The Canadian government will host the Eighth Defense Ministerial of the Americas (DMA) September 2–6 at Banff in the scenic Canadian Rockies. The purpose of the meeting is the promotion of regional defense and security cooperation in the Americas and the strengthening of ties among 34 invited nations. It is a ministerial event in search of a diplomatic and strategic meaning—and at present lacking both.

Harbinger of Security Cooperation

The first DMA took place in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1995. It began as a defense and security counterpart for the 1994 Miami Summit of the Americas. The U.S. launched the DMA in the proximate aftermath of the Cold War at a time when the U.S. and Latin America appeared to be moving with unity of purpose toward strengthening democracy, expanding free trade, guaranteeing basic human rights, and deepening defense reform and security cooperation.

An underlying assumption of this DMA process was that as the world’s sole superpower, the U.S. was uniquely positioned to mentor the Hemisphere’s armed forces as they set out to discover new roles and relationships in an altered geopolitical environment. The threat posed by the Soviet Union and its proxies had vanished, and Cuba had sunken into nasty but largely isolated dotage.

Among the fundamental “Williamsburg principles” were calls for defending democracy, broadening civilian control over the military, increasing transparency in defense matters, and enhancing confidence-building among nations. These were to become benchmarks for building a better, more unified, and safer Americas. The DMA was also seen as a forum for encouraging non-traditional roles for militaries and strategies to meet emerging transnational threats.

History Returns to Latin America

While its principles remain sound, the DMA today has lost cohesion and much of its rationale for convening. Latin America, thanks to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolution, is engaged in its own version of “the return to history,” to quote conservative strategic thinker Robert Kagan.[1] Signs of this return include a mixture of ethno- and resource-nationalism coupled with a reappearance of Péronist-style populism in Venezuela and elsewhere. For the fervent U.S.-bashers in Latin America, Chávez is the new Fidel Castro, a David striking out at the imperial U.S. hegemon. [Read more →]

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By Jerry Brewer via Mexidata.info

Totalitarian dictatorships still exist and, as a matter of fact, they are very much alive in Latin America. Democracies throughout the Americas must immediately address their governments’ counterintelligence missions, and their strategic long and short range vision to monitor aggression and other forms of insurgency within their homelands.

Cuba’s intelligence and spy apparatus has been described as a “contingency of very well-trained, organized and financed agents.” Too, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has adopted the previous Soviet-styled Cuban intelligence service (DGI) as his model for Venezuela’s security service, known as the DISIP, utilizing Cuban intelligence counterparts and advisors.

What is the history of Cuba’s communist trained spies?

Cuba has trained thousands of communist guerrillas and terrorists, and has sponsored violent acts of aggression and subversion in most democratic nations of the southwestern hemisphere. U.S. government studies within the intelligence community documented a total of 3,043 international terrorist incidents in the decade of 1968 to 1978. Within that study, “over 25 percent occurred in Latin America.”

Recent reports are that Cuba has been expanding intelligence operations in the Middle East and South Asia. This reported by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

Cuba has consistently maintained a well-organized and “ruthless” intelligence presence within Mexico, as have the Russians. Much of their activity involved in U.S. interests that include recruiting disloyal U.S. military, government, and “private sector specialists. [Read more →]

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Time posits the question whether a new Cold War is brewing in the Western Hemisphere:

The headlines of the past week have underscored the extent to which U.S. hegemony in the Caribbean has faded. Whether it’s Russia reportedly threatening to reestablish a military presence in Cuba, Iran cozying up to U.S. nemeses like Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega or U.S. free-trade partners such as the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica jumping into energy alliances with left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Washington seems increasingly on the sidelines of a region the Bush Administration once called America’s third border. “The U.S. let its guard down in the Caribbean after the Berlin Wall fell,” says Johanna Mendelson-Forman, a senior associate for the Americas at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “As a result, we’ve gone from unipolarity in that region to multipolarity, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but we’re in a real learning phase as to how to deal with it.”

[H/T: 1913Intel]

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Charles Tannock, a British Conservative foreign affairs spokesman in the European Parliament, has written the following article published in the Tiapei Times about a new troika comprised of the presidents from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico and their quest for regional stability.

The rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages who had been held for years by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas marks more than a turning point in Colombia’s long war against its drug-running, Marxist guerrillas. It also confirms the emergence of a new troika of Latin American leaders — Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Mexican President Felipe Calderon — who are set on finishing off Latin America’s destabilizing drug cartels and guerrilla movements, as well as isolating the region’s demagogic upstart, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Uribe’s status as one of Latin America’s historic leaders was assured even before the rescue of Betancourt and the other hostages. Uribe won an unprecedented re-election two years ago with an absolute majority in the first round of the vote. But it is Uribe’s resolve not to negotiate with the FARC over kidnappings, and instead to pursue relentlessly the armed insurgency that murdered his father. In the process, he transformed a country that was in the grip of drug barons and on the verge of becoming a failed state.

The professionalism of Colombia’s armed forces, coupled with Uribe’s popularity and a growing economy, has delivered, for the first time in three decades, normality to Colombia’s cities and, increasingly, peace and the rule of law to much of its vast jungle regions. Uribe’s relentlessness has brought on waves of defections from the FARC, which is now down to 9,000 guerrillas from a peak of 16,000 in 2001. Indeed, many FARC defectors now prefer to fight for their cause at the ballot box under the new left-wing Polo Alternativo Democratico.

But the benefits of Uribe’s apparent defeat of the FARC extend far beyond Colombia. The hostage rescue has also forced Chavez, still recovering from his failed power-grab referendum of last year, onto the defensive. The Uribe-Lula-Calderon axis appears set on keeping him there.

[Read more →]

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