Old and Busted: Pacific Pivot. New Hotness: Caribbean Pivot.
trading Croatia for Curaçao
I’m old enough to remember when the Fourth Fleet AOR was the sleepy island of misfit toys. Well, as the irreplaceable Ian Ellis informs us,
America’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), departed Split, Croatia, en route to SOUTHCOM. After the carrier strike group crosses the Atlantic, ~19-23% of the deployed US Navy fleet will be in theater.
As expected, his graphic tells the story.
We are all hearing things and seeing things. Best stick to what is in open source. For every hand you see, there are ten more moving.
At this moment, there is one place the U.S. military is taking consistent military action. That place is in the Western Hemisphere against drug cartels caught in the open sea transporting poison north.
As for Venezuela, it has a population roughly that of Texas, and is about the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined.
We are not going to war with Venezuela. Might we spank Tren de Aragua harder? Perhaps.
Should you keep a weather eye out south? 100%.
CDR Sal, great advice on all counts. Threat = capability times intent, and we have recently displayed an "intent" to enforce red lines previously not seen in this hemisphere (overtly at least) for generations. These actions in the Caribbean have many audiences, domestic, South American, European and Asian. Difficult to tell if we are being reactive to things presently unseen or ensuring that red lines (new Monroe Doctrine?) are totally, unambiguously clear to all. As the second ambassador I worked for said, "You're military. Let me put it in words of one syllable so you don't misunderstand." We'll see.
Commander, kindly ‘splain us how these speedy… things with four 250-hp outboards have enough range to go direct from Venezuela to Conus with a load of fentanyl from not-Venezuela.
Also, what exactly makes it legal for us to use deadly force against civilian non-combatants? You would be okay with the Cubans greasing some of our native toe rags offshore Key West based on the supposition they are hauling something forbidden to that happy isle?
What goes around comes around.