With #Putin Propping Up #Maduro, Evading #Oil #Sanctions, and Moving Troops Into #Venezuela, #Russia Is Gearing Up for Conflict With #US in #Caribbean

Russia Is Gearing Up for a Conflict With the United States in the Caribbean

With Moscow propping up Maduro, evading oil sanctions, and moving its troops around the coast, Washington needs to rethink its own strategies.

By Ryan C. Berg  October 9, 2019, 2:56 PM (10-13 minute Read) 

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shake hands at the Kremlin in Moscow on July 2, 2013.  Maxim Shemetov/AFP/Getty Images

New conflicts in the rest of the world may be looming large, but one in the United States' own backyard is about to get more dangerous. Despite U.S.-led sanctions on Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), oil from the country is still flowing onto world markets. A central facilitator of the exports is Rosneft, Russia's state-owned oil company, which has been accepting Venezuelan crude as a form of loan repayment. In this way, Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing a leading role in keeping Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro afloat. As long as he does, current U.S. sanctions policy will do little to force a change in Venezuela, which is why Washington needs to rethink its strategy for dislodging the Venezuelan leader—and soon.

As PDVSA's list of clients has shrunk, Rosneft has quickly surpassed all other companies to become the top trader of Venezuelan oil. Whereas the company handled 40 percent of PDVSA's oil exports in July, by August, it was handling 66 percent. Recently, PDVSA even established an office in Moscow to facilitate payments to its Russian client, which has helped reduce its outstanding debt to Rosneft to $1.1 billion. At this pace, outstanding loans to Rosneft could be repaid in full sometime around the end of this year or in early 2020.

Once that happens, Putin's stated excuse for continued engagement with Venezuela will be moot, but this won't bring about the grand geopolitical shift in Venezuela that it otherwise could. That's because, for now, supporting Maduro is a low-cost strategy that allows Putin to burnish his image as a defender of embattled regimes everywhere. Russia's presence in Venezuela—its most significant in the Western Hemisphere since the Cuban missile crisis—will continue long after the excuse of collecting on Venezuela's debts has run its course.

Indeed, recent moves indicate that Putin is eyeing even deeper intervention in Venezuela, both military and financial.
An August meeting of Russian and Venezuelan defense ministers led to an agreement that the two countries' warships could visit each other's ports, possibly in preparation for future collaboration on territorial defense. No doubt, the Russians are mindful of reports that U.S. President Donald Trump is obsessed with the idea of a naval blockade against Venezuela. Combined with Russia's existing naval arrangement with Nicaragua—through which it provides training and equipment in exchange for major port access and permission to operate a global satellite system—the deployment of warships and submarines from Venezuelan ports may aim to deny access to all U.S. naval operations to interdict vessels in the southern Caribbean. Indeed, the Cubans have already requested that Russia escort tankers carrying Venezuela's shipments of free oil to the resource-strapped island.

Meanwhile, Russian troops have embedded themselves in garrisons around Venezuela by the hundreds according to Craig Faller, the head of U.S. Southern Command. With Russia's intervention in Ukraine as a model, Russian soldiers have started donning the fatigues of the Venezuelan Army in an effort to blend in. Russia is also making a concerted effort to get its long-delayed AK-47 plant up and running in the city of Maracay, as well as upgrade the missile defense system it sold to Venezuela, which continues a long-term and worrisome buildup of Russian weapons amassed by the Venezuelan regime. What is worse, the Russians have openly mused about stationing cruise missiles in Venezuela as a response to the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The echoes of the Cuban missile crisis are chilling.

Russia's presence in Venezuela has emboldened nonstate actors as well. The arrival of Syrian security personnel to protect former Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who allegedly oversaw the incubation of Hezbollah inside the country, and the safe haven provided to the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissident members of the FARC are frightening developments for regional security and stability.

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Although U.S. sectoral sanctions have managed to increase the operating costs to Maduro and his cronies, they have not managed to freeze the regime's activities, nor have they managed to deter outside powers such as Russia from lending Maduro's government a hand. Moreover, U.S. strategy has been inconsistent at best…

Read the whole article on Foreign Policy here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/09/russias-putin-venezuela-evade-oil-sanctions-preparing-conflict-united-states/

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