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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ISN Security Watch has an article addressing Cuba’s international relations leverage and foreign investment:

When Russian daily Izvestia reported on 21 July that Russian Tu-160 and Tu-95MS bombers had landed in Cuba, it set off a sprint in Washington as analysts and military leaders struggled to understand the situation.

At first, it appeared that Moscow had made a very serious gesture. Russia’s perceived geopolitical maneuver in Cuba, many thought, was in response to the US’ plans for an anti-missile shield defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

By 24 July, after three days of media hype and speculation over Russia’s true intentions, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Ilshat Baichurin, dismissed any intention for a strategic deployment in Cuba.

Two events quickly followed up this announcement. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin arrived in Cuba on 30 July for extended talks with Raul and Fidel Castro. A former KGB operative and known confidant of now-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Sechin was an active operative during the Cold War and enjoyed a deep relationship with the Castros.

Putin then followed up Sechin’s visit with a 5 August announcement that Russia ought to “restore [its] position in Cuba and other countries.”

Observers agree a military presence in Cuba is not in Moscow’s best interests; rather, closer economic ties would behoove both nations. Sechin’s recent visit underlines the latter observation and coaxes Washington into a more open posture toward Cuba, an island nation the next US presidential administration would likely prefer not to lose again to the Russians. [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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Stratfor provides analysis about the current strategic issue in the Western Hemisphere and poses the question: what about subs instead of planes in Cuba?

Summary

With rumors flying (along with subsequent denials) about the potential stationing of Russian military aircraft in Cuba, there is another possibility: the stationing of Russian submarines. It would be a Cold War redux — and an effective way for Russia and the United States to hone their submarine and anti-submarine tactics.

Analysis

During the Cold War — even after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 — Cuba offered an important port for Soviet submarine operations along the U.S. eastern seaboard. Though the rumor mill this week has concentrated on Cuba as a potential refueling base for Russian aircraft — one with no munitions — there is another (unmentioned) possibility worth considering: What about the return of Russian submarines?

U.S. submarine operations in the Barents Sea enjoy not only the use of nearby ports in NATO countries but also rotations facilitated by a fleet of some 50 attack submarines. Russia’s submarine fleet is doctrinally inclined more toward surge deployments in times of crisis than the sustained global presence that the U.S. Navy has been perfecting since World War II. Though Russian subs could lurk in Atlantic waters close to Washington, Russian crews are neither accustomed to nor drilled in such lengthy deployments.

In addition, given the neglect of the 1990s on Russia’s fleet — subsequent maintenance and upgrades aside — reliability remains a concern, and lengthy Russian deployments leave subs much farther from friendly ports than do lengthy deployments of the U.S. fleet.

[Read more →]

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Via Stratfor:

Russian oil firm LUKoil’s plans to purchase a refinery in Cuba are on hold because of the difficulty of investing in crude production in Venezuela. LUKoil founder and CEO Vagit Alekperov said June 26 that without a crude supply for the refinery, the planned purchase would not make sense. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez might change his mind on his country’s prohibitive attitude toward foreign investment in crude production; with various pressures on his regime, Chavez has recently shown the capacity to reconsider past decisions. Otherwise, he will have to count Alekperov among his enemies.

Russian oil firm LUKoil’s plans to expand into Cuba have been put on hold. LUKoil wanted to buy a refinery in Cuba, supply it with crude oil produced in Venezuela and wait for the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba eventually to end. This would give LUKoil the chance to squeeze into the highly competitive U.S. market.

However, this long-term project faces a major roadblock. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s burdensome and investment-unfriendly tax laws make investing in Venezuelan crude production extremely difficult for foreign companies. The U.S. firms have all left Venezuela, but even the companies that came in to fill that void — such as LUKoil — are not finding investment conditions favorable. This means that LUKoil’s plan to ship crude from Venezuela to Cuba for refinement is not going to be feasible under current conditions — not even at $130-per-barrel cost of oil. LUKoil founder and CEO Vagit Alekperov said June 26 that the firm “cannot afford to take the risk of viewing these [Venezuelan] projects as a source of supply of the Cuban refinery. And to buy a refinery without having crude supply logistics does not make sense.”

In other words, Venezuela’s current investment environment is leaving LUKoil with no way to control both the upstream and the downstream assets for petroleum product exports to the United States. Thus, Chavez might have just made a new enemy: Alekperov.

LUKoil, Russia’s most efficient privately owned energy company, has been on a serious campaign of global expansion for quite some time. It moved into the Northeastern U.S. gasoline-station market by acquiring Getty Petroleum in November 2000 and then bought Mobil-branded gasoline stations from ConocoPhillips in January 2004. In total, Lukoil has more than 2,000 U.S.-based gasoline stations, mostly in the Northeast. The idea behind the global expansion is to make a completely separate international arm of LUKoil that would be beyond the Kremlin’s reach. This is Alekperov’s way to insure that he could maintain a major presence in the global energy trade if Moscow nationalized his business in Russia.

A major part of Alekperov’s global strategy consists of expansion into the U.S. market. Considering that LUKoil already has a well-developed gasoline-station network in the Northeastern U.S., it also makes sense to acquire refining capacity nearby. Cuba is a great partner for LUKoil because of its location directly in the shipping path for potential crude production in Venezuela. LUKoil can also get into Cuba’s refining sector before others, because it has the advantage of Russo-Cuban political connections. The deal to buy a refinery possibly follows from reforms under Raul Castro’s leadership that have made Cuba more investor-friendly. Cuba has allowed partnerships with foreign companies as well as private acquisitions of some industrial enterprises. More specifically, one of Cuba’s economic goals is to become a refining hub.

But without Venezuelan crude production, LUKoil is left with few upstream options for crude in the Western Hemisphere. LUKoil could get oil from the spot market or even from Mexico, which is near enough to Cuba to make it work logistically, but in order to compete in the world’s richest and most competitive energy market — the United States — LUKoil needs to find other ways to lower costs, and it needs to be in charge of both upstream and downstream deals in order to make a long-term commitment to the Western Hemisphere. Aside from the Venezuelan crude, there simply are no other real alternatives.

There may still be a sliver of hope for LUKoil: Chavez could always change his mind, particularly ahead of his summit with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in late July. On the agenda for that summit, announced on June 26 , is a proposed agreement on mutual protection of investments, which could signal that LUKoil has managed to lobby both Caracas and Moscow enough to get a break on the taxes it needs to pay. Chavez is also feeling a lot of domestic economic pressure that could make him rethink his policy toward foreign investors.

That said, if the investment situation does not improve, Chavez will have to deal with Alekperov as an enemy. A powerful Russian oligarch who has managed to steer a private energy company from Russia into a position of considerable global success despite the predations of Gazprom and Rosneft, Alekperov has many reasons to hope that Chavez is ousted. And Chavez should keep in mind that Russian oligarchs usually do not sit around hoping that things happen — they usually make sure things happen.

[Photo: LUKoil founder and CEO Vagit Alekperov - AFP/Getty Images.]

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