Cuban Analysts: US Military Threat in the Caribbean May Have Unpredictable Consequences

The deployment of US military forces in the Caribbean region, near the coast of Venezuela, constitutes a grave threat to regional security and a clear violation of the international commitments undertaken to maintain the area as a Zone of Peace, declared Cuban analysts in conversations with Sputnik.

Speaking to Sputnik, Doctor of Economic Sciences Luis René Fernández Tabío asserted that this military operation, combined with propaganda tools and internal subversive actions against Venezuela, “constitutes an enormous risk to peace—not only regional but also global—irrespective of its outcome.”

In his view, Washington “intensified its interventionist policy with all its instruments of power to overthrow the government of Venezuela and carry out a so-called regime change that would allow it to regain control over the country’s enormous resources, first and foremost oil, but also other significant natural and mineral wealth.”

The professor and scholar at the Center for International Economics Research at the University of Havana also considered that in this case, “the danger is maximum and the consequences are unpredictable.”

He opined that the current context represents another chapter in the hybrid war which, under the pretext of combating drug trafficking and other false accusations against leaders of governments not aligned with the United States, is being waged against several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

However, he argued that, in Venezuela, pretexts and falsehoods against the democratically elected president, Nicolás Maduro, will not work. “I think the most likely outcome will be another failure of imperialism, just as similar plans and actions have been defeated more than once by Cuba at other moments in history,” he said.

During a recent meeting, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil and the United Nations resident coordinator in Venezuela, Gianluca Rampolla discussed the worrying situation created by the deployment of US military forces in the Caribbean, including warships and a nuclear submarine.

Violations of international agreements
Fernández Tabío pointed out that “threats to use force against a sovereign country are not endorsed by any instrument of international relations,” and added that the United Nations Charter and the Proclamation of Latin America as a Zone of Peace are among the fundamental agreements that prohibit the use of force.

However, the US “has a long history of aggression and intervention of all kinds, especially in our region. These are not endorsed by international law, yet they have been carried out as expressions of imperialist unilateralism, such as Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine.”

In his view, the majority regional and global rejection of such practices will prevail, although there are governments in the region that favor imperialism and will “support the false arguments and try to justify them.”

He added that the world is going through a turbulent period of great conflict. “Despite the enormous risks and bad omens, let us hope that this conflict does not spread and that peace prevails, backed by the effective diplomacy of major powers such as China and Russia, which serve as a counterweight in a multipolar world in the making,” he said.

A new practice?
Pavel Alemán, professor and researcher at the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Havana in Cuba, said in his conversation with Sputnik that the waters of the Caribbean Sea have been used in recent years for illegal trafficking of arms, people, and drugs, and even for money laundering.

He stressed that there is certainly cooperation among the agencies responsible for prosecuting these criminal networks, “but this is not what we are seeing today. Currently we are witnessing the use of the armed forces to exert political pressure on Venezuela, the coercive use of military force to exert pressure on another state.”

He added that Washington does not participate in this type of operation alone, “it generally tries to legitimize that presence with the intervention of other actors that support it. We have already learned that the French government decided to mobilize some of its naval assets to assist the US in this type of international operation.”

In his opinion, it would not be surprising if other European powers with interests in this region—such as the Netherlands or the United Kingdom—joined it. “There are recipient countries in the Caribbean that are becoming more involved in some way, such as Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, which has a territorial dispute with Venezuela.”

He also pointed out that, in the recent past, the United States has used pretexts such as drug trafficking or the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction to launch punitive military operations against sovereign states, with the specific aim of bringing about changes of government and eliminating adversaries.

This was the case in Panama—a small country with significant importance in international trade and maritime communications due to the presence of the inter-oceanic canal—when, in December 1989, the US persecution of then-President Manuel Noriega, accused of participating in drug trafficking activities, led to the destruction of the local defense forces.

On this subject, Ernesto Domínguez, PhD in Historical Sciences, told Sputnik that, although drug trafficking exists in the region, the United States plays a key role in this because it is the main market.

The professor at the Center for Hemispheric and US Studies at the University of Havana said that the current incursion is a continuation of a long history and is consistent with the Trump administration’s discourse on Latin America, since in addition to its stated intention to regain control of the Panama Canal, it has proposed the use of force against Mexico under the pretext of action against drug cartels.

Other recent examples include Plan Colombia in the 1990s and the deployment of the Fourth Fleet of the US Navy in 2008, events that precipitated increased US military presence in the region.