World leaders think Jimmy Obama is a joke: Russia eyes bomber bases in Latin America
Anonymous Infidel - the anti-political talking head
It could be bluffing or it might be payback – Russia says it's 'ready
to fly' bombers to Venezuela and Cuba.
By Fred Weir | 03.15.09
MOSCOW – A top Russian military official has confirmed that the
Kremlin is thinking of parking some of its strategic bombers in Cuba
or Venezuela, within easy range of the continental United States.
That’s just one of several options currently under discussion in
Moscow that, if carried out, would see Russia’s armed forces take up
positions around the world on a scale unseen since the cold war ended
almost two decades ago.
Venezuelan President Hugo “Chavez has proposed to us a whole island
with an airfield that we can use for temporary basing of strategic
bombers,” Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of Russia’s strategic
aviation forces, told journalists on Saturday.
“There are four or five airfields in Cuba with 4,000-meter-long
runways, which absolutely suit us,” he added. “If the two chiefs of
state display such a political will, we are ready to fly there.”
In late 2007 Russia resumed its cold war-era bomber patrols along the
North American coast, using lumbering 1950s-vintage turboprop Tu-95
Bear bombers as well as a few needle-nosed supersonic Tu-160s, which
were introduced in the 1980s.
But Russian generals complain that in the absence of refueling and
maintenance facilities in the western hemisphere, the planes are able
to remain as little as half an hour on station before beginning the
long flight back to their bases in Russia.
As the Monitor reported recently (see story here), two Tu-160s visited
Venezuela last September as part of joint war games that included a
large flotilla of Russian warships and a visit to the region by
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Last week, the two Georgian breakaway statelets of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, whose de facto independence was established by Russian
military intervention against Georgia last summer, offered long-term
leases for the construction of Russian military bases on their
territory. South Ossetia has offered basing rights to Moscow for 99
years, while Akhazia says it is ready to lease facilities for 49
years. Russian media reports suggest those bases, housing thousands of
troops and naval facilities on the Black Sea, are likely to be
completed by year`s end.
The two statelets’ self-declared independence has been recognized only
by Russia and Nicaragua, while Georgia, with the support of most
Western countries, insists that it has full sovereignty over the
territories under international law.
“Russian troops are the only factor supporting the independence of
South Ossetia, which is why they should stay there for a long time,”
Alexander Khramchikhin, an expert at the independent Institute for
Military and Political Analysis, told the Moscow daily Novye Izvestia
last week.
And Moscow has recently been in talks with former Soviet allies about
re-establishing cold war-era naval bases at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam
and Tartus in Syria (see the Monitor’s recent story here) as well as
taking steps to beef up its own regional security alliance with
several countries of the ex-USSR.
But some experts suggest that the noises coming out of Moscow about
basing nuclear bombers in Cuba or Venezuela could be just a propaganda
gimmick in advance of forthcoming US-Russian negotiations for a new
strategic accord (story on treaty discussions here).
“Talking about building Russian bases near the US is a good way to get
Washington’s attention, and drive home the point that this is exactly
what they’ve been doing to us for years,” says Irina Zvigelskaya, an
expert with the independent Center for Political and Strategic Studies
in Moscow.
She says that Moscow still has an institutional memory of the stinging
diplomatic defeat suffered by the USSR in 1962, after Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev deployed medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, and
no one in the Kremlin today is likely to repeat that mistake. But for
Moscow, she adds, US intentions to station strategic anti-missile
weapons near Russia’s borders and the continuing Washington-backed
drive to include Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, are seen as similar
encroachments on Russia’s strategic comfort zone.
“We are hopefully going to see some rethinking of the US-Russian
relationship, and so we are positioning our arguments. The talk of
basing Russian bombers in Cuba is more of a bargaining ploy than a
real plan,” Ms. Zvigelskaya says.
Scotius
anti-political talking head <messi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>A new Cuban missile crisis? Russia eyes bomber bases in Latin America
Which they wouldn't have bothered with if the Bushites hadn't
been crazily pursuing a policy of making NATO allies out of former
East Bloc countries. Place the blame where it lies please.