President Trump and lawmakers should impose new sanctions on Russia if Moscow attempts to establish a base for nuclear bombers in the Caribbean Sea, according to a senior House Republican.
“This country almost went to nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis,” Florida Rep. Ted Yoho, one of the top Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Washington Examiner. “This is no different, it’s just that we’re not focused like we should be on protecting this hemisphere.”
Yoho warned of the “expansion of Russia’s nuclear arsenal” into the Western Hemisphere just days after a pair of strategic bombers flew a 10-hour training mission over the Caribbean. Russian military officials, in the wake of the strategic bombers’ flight, began airing plans to establish a permanent base in the region.
“It is the right idea to include Venezuela in long-range aviation missions,” military expert Col. Shamil Gareyev told Russian media, in remarks quoted by a state-run outlet. “Our strategic bombers will not only not have to return to Russia every time, but also won’t perform aerial refueling while on a patrol mission in the Americas. Our Tu-160 aircraft arrive to their base in Venezuela, conduct flights, execute their missions, and are then replaced on a rotating basis.”
Those flights are taking place amid a controversy over compliance with a 1987 ban on ground-based intermediate cruise missiles, but Russian officials also put them in the context of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s attempt to maintain power in the midst of a persistent food shortage and political crisis. “Since Russia benefits from oil exploration, it wants the Venezuelan regime to stay in place,” Emil Dabagyan, an expert at Russia’s Academy of Sciences, told local press.
Russia could have another plan to harm the United States through Venezuela, according to Yoho.
“The estimate is there’s two million Venezuelan refugees that have fled Venezuela,” Yoho, a member of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee for the Western Hemisphere, told the Washington Examiner. “So now you throw Russia in there. They’re not really going to work to stabilize the refugee crisis. What they’re going to do is what they did in Syria.”
That’s a reference to the belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin provided military support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in part for the purpose of stoking a refugee crisis that would harm European nations.
Yoho suggested a similar dynamic could unfold in Venezuela. “They don’t really give a rat’s ass about the humanitarian crisis,” he told the Washington Examiner. “You can go to Colombia and if you destabilize that, you break down those Western types of democracies and it gives them more credibility of their form of government. Kind of like what China’s doing with their brand of so-called socialism with Chinese characteristics … they empower the dictators at the expense of the people.”
He suggested that U.S. officials should take a hard-line stance against a Russian beachhead in the Caribbean, first through diplomatic channels and then through sanctions.
“[Russia will] say you know what it’s not worth the effort of trying to meddle in the Western Hemisphere,” he predicted. “If we don’t do it today, mark my words, in three to five years, you’re going to see Russian military there, even though it’s against the constitution of Venezuela. It’s not like Maduro’s a good adherent to the Venezuelan Constitution.”
