Don’t Read Too Deeply Into A Russian Parliamentarian’s Proposal To Base Nukes In Latin America

The Deputy Chairman of the Defense Committee’s proposal is expected to be more of a benefit to Russian soft power than a liability to its interests or those of the three possible hosts that he mentioned despite nothing likely coming of this idea.

Deputy Chairman of the Duma’s Defense Committee and leader of the Rodina party Alexei Zhuravlev told local media that he’s long been in favor of their country basing nuclear missiles and associated submarines in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. His proposal came in response to the US’ reported plans to base its own nukes in the UK, which he said won’t change the military-political situation since that country already has its own such weapons.

Nobody should read too deeply into his proposal, however, since it’s unlikely to happen. For starters, Russian nuclear submarines don’t have to be based in the Caribbean for their second-strike capabilities to be credible, so formalizing their presence in a regional port is unnecessary and could be provocative. This leads to the second point about how nobody should assume that those countries want to risk riling the US in the first place when they’re already struggling to defend themselves from its subversive plots.

From there, the third point is that the US would certainly respond in a quasi-kinetic way by escalating its existing Hybrid Wars on whichever of those previously mentioned countries agrees to this in order to maximally pressure them into reconsidering. After all, it’s unimaginable that a deal of this sort could be agreed to without the US first catching wind of it before the submarines and/or missiles are permanently deployed to the Western Hemisphere.

Fourth, even if one of them were to agree to this for whatever reason and the US inexplicably doesn’t find out about it until after the submarines and/or missiles arrive there, then it could just easily replicate the Cuban Missile Crisis gameplan by blockading that country and threatening to invade. The final point is that Russian policymakers don’t have the political will to risk World War III over this, hence why they’re disinterested in this proposal since it’ll lead to another withdrawal, which isn’t in their interests.

Nevertheless, Zhuralev’s proposal still serve the purpose of advancing some of his country’s soft power interests by tickling the imagination of its regional supporters and reaffirming their perception of Russia as the US’ chief geopolitical rival nowadays, which is one of the reasons why so many folks there like it. At the same time, however, his proposal risks being exploited by anti-Russian hawks to justify escalating the US’ existing Hybrid Wars on Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela on a faux deterrence basis.

All things considered, the US’ military capabilities are more limited nowadays than they’ve been in recent member after it depleted a lot of its stockpiles for Ukraine’s sake over the past two years, which was one of the reasons why Venezuela made its move in Essequibo late last year as explained here. The US is also busy trying to simultaneously contain Russia, China, and Iran, with there being a real chance that the regional Israeli/US-Iranian proxy war escalates after the lethal attack against Tower 22 in Jordan.

For these reasons, Zhuralev’s proposal is expected to be more of a benefit to Russian soft power than a liability to its regional interests or those of its three partners that he mentioned. The most that the US might do is encourage some of its media to fearmonger about Russia’s speculative plans, but the resultant information warfare products won’t tangibly change anything either way. At the end of the day, the US has limited means for escalating its Hybrid Wars in the region, which bodes well for multipolarity.