“Imperial Russia never left, to be blunt,” Stephen Blank, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council said as quoted in Deutsche Welle. “What they’re looking for in Latin America is great-power influence, they have never forsaken that quest”

Russia’s Threat in the Americas

by Joseph Klein

President Obama dismissed Russia as no more than a “regional power” in remarks he made to the press in The Hague on March 25th, where he was attending a summit meeting on nuclear security. “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors not out of strength, but out of weakness,” he said.

True, the Russian Federation is a shadow of the Soviet empire in its heyday. And Russia is not driven by a global Communist ideology that it seeks to spread to every part of the world in opposition to the capitalist democratic model, as the Soviet Union tried to do. But that does not make Russia a weak neighborhood bully posing little threat beyond its “immediate neighbors,” as President Obama seems to think. Mitt Romney was right when he said during the 2012 presidential campaign that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.”
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Russia is also on the march far from its immediate neighborhood and much closer to the United States. According to Gen. James Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command, who discussed his concerns regarding the increased presence of Russia in Latin America at a Senate hearing earlier this month, there has been a “noticeable uptick in Russian power projection and security force personnel. It has been over three decades since we last saw this type of high-profile Russian military presence.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced last month plans to build military bases in such countries as Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, as well as outside of Latin America including Vietnam, the Seychelles, and Singapore. “The talks are under way, and we are close to signing the relevant documents,” Shoigu said. Russia is also on the lookout for refueling sites for Russian strategic bombers on patrol.

Russia is already a major arms supplier to Venezuela, whose navy has conducted joint maneuvers with Russian ships. At least four Russian Navy ships visited Venezuela last August, the Venezuelan daily El Universal reported.

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