According to a press release by the US Southern Command on Monday, March 27:
"A U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group will deploy from the U.S. east coast to the Caribbean Sea to conduct Operation Partnership of the Americas from early April through late May 2006." The strike group will be composed of "aircraft carrier USS George Washington with embarked air wing, Cruiser USS Monterey, Destroyer USS Stout, and Frigate USS Underwood". This means that the US Navy will be sending 4 ships, one of them carrying 60 fighter planes,
and a total of 6,500 soldiers on a major military exercise in the Caribbean starting in the next few weeks. (see: U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group to make
The stated aims of this exercise are: "enhancing military-to-military relationships with regional partner nations, improving operational readiness, and fostering good will." By "fostering good will" what is meant is sending a strong message to Venezuela and Cuba. The commander of the US Southcom General Bantz Craddock has on many occasions attacked the Venezuelan government. The decision to send this unusually large force to the Caribbean was announced just two weeks after General Craddok spoke at a US Senate committee hearing in which he called the Venezuelan government a "destabilizing force" because of its moves in the international arena, as well as ongoing efforts to purchase weapons, particularly from China. "The purchase of military equipment has not been a transparent process. This is a
destabilizing factor in a region where nations are making joint efforts to face international threats, rather than fighting each other," he stated. And
he added: "We are not fully convinced that such ample and large purchases have an origin in Venezuelan national defense concerns."
In a press conference during his visit to Uruguay in June 2005 he was even more specific: "I do not see Cuba as a military threat to the United States, I do not see Venezuela as a military threat to the United States, what I do see is an influence in Latin America that creates, potentially creates instability and uncertainty, because in Cuba, obviously it is a totalitarian state, a communist state, and in Venezuela it appears that democratic processes and institutions are at risk. That has great opportunity to create, again, instability and uncertainty throughout the region if those processes are exported. So we are concerned, and we believe the neighbors in the region should also be concerned." In a thinly disguised threat of military intervention, General Craddock added: "The military aspect is to create conditions to allow other solutions to work, economic, political, social". (http://montevideo.usembassy.gov/usaweb/paginas/431-00EN.shtml).
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