Navy Re-Establishes U.S. Fourth Fleet
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead announced today the re-establishment of the U.S. Fourth Fleet and assigned Rear Adm. Joseph D. Kernan, currently serving as commander, Naval Special Warfare Command, as its new commander. Fourth Fleet will be responsible for U.S. Navy ships, aircraft and submarines operating in the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
U.S. Fourth Fleet will be dual-hatted with the existing commander, U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command (NAVSO), currently located in Mayport, Fla. U.S. Fourth Fleet has been re-established to address the increased role of maritime forces in the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) area of operations, and to demonstrate U.S. commitment to regional partners.
“Re-establishing the Fourth Fleet recognizes the immense importance of maritime security in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere, and signals our support and interest in the civil and military maritime services in Central and South America,” said Roughead. “Our maritime strategy raises the importance of working with international partners as the basis for global maritime security. This change increases our emphasis in the region on employing naval forces to build confidence and trust among nations through collective maritime security efforts that focus on common threats and mutual interests. “
Effective July 1, the command will have operational responsibility for U.S. Navy assets assigned from east and west coast fleets to operate in the SOUTHCOM area. As a result, U.S. Fourth Fleet will not involve an increase in forces assigned in Mayport, Fla. These assets will conduct varying missions including a range of contingency operations, counter narcoterrorism, and theater security cooperation (TSC) activities. TSC includes military-to-military interaction and bilateral training opportunities as well as humanitarian assistance and in-country partnerships.
U.S. Fourth Fleet will retain responsibility as NAVSO, the Navy component command for SOUTHCOM. Its mission is to direct U.S. naval forces operating in the Caribbean, and Central and South American regions and interact with partner nation navies to shape the maritime environment.
Kernan will be the first Navy SEAL to serve as a numbered fleet commander.
Article obtained from http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11862
Note, also, the source of the news - this is the United States Department of Defense itself. This is not a rumor floating around the blogosphere, or something penned by Castro and distributed to scare other Latin American nations. Nope, this is the real deal. The United States has officially decided to return to gunboat diplomacy in Latin America. Words cannot express adequately how simultaneously angry and terrified most of the people I know here are. These are people who've already lived through one brutal, repressive military government installed by the U.S. that did a very successful job of running Uruguay's economy into the ground, and to them, the 4th Fleet represents the very real threat of another round of continent-wide brutal, repressive military government.
There is, and I have yet to confirm its validity, a document circulating which states flat-out that the U.S. government has officially stated its willingness to support military governments in the name of advancing its aims for Latin America. So much for the lofty goals of bringing democracy to the world that we heard all about in the march up to, and immediate aftermath of, the invasion of Iraq.
Of course, every government in South Americam, barring Colombia's, has had a cow over the past week, and the military chiefs of Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay) plus Bolivia's had what boils down to a crisis conference in Brasilia to discuss the matter. The U.S. military's response: "It is not an offensive force in any way...The IV Fleet's entire purpose is cooperation, friendship, response to natural disaster, missions of peace and, yes, there will be counter narcotics work, as is traditional." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080515/pl_afp/usmilitarynavylatam_080515224313)
My personal BS-o-meter went off the scale when I read that, barring the part about counter-narcotics. Friendship doesn't come in the form of battleships around here, cooperation generally suggests helping someone in a way that was asked for (ok, maybe Colombia asked for the help), there aren't any major natural disasters going on that a fleet of warships would be able to abate, and one person's "mission of peace" has a way of being another person's "war that obliterated my country" in this day and age.
Now, how about some other possible reasons for the re-deployment?
-Colombia's right-wing, pro-US, heavily US-funded government over 40-year struggle against leftist guerrilla groups. In fairness, the label "narcoterrorist" does fit them to a hefty extent, so a simplified view of them as noble idealists struggling against a foreign-backed oppressive government doesn't work. U.S. naval presence near Colombia facilitates aiding the Uribe government.
-Hugo Chavez. Chavez has done a remarkably good job of infuriating the White House since his near-removal from power by a U.S-backed military coup in 2002. I think Chavez is a corrupt brute and borderline dictator, but one can hardly blame him for not liking the U.S., at least since '02, just based on his personal history and there are a lot of people who find his economic reforms to be admirable, if not his methods of applying them.
-Connected to the above: Venezuela's oil. One of the world's largest oil producers is just across the Caribbean from the U.S., but with Chavez holding back on production and sales to the U.S., its proximity isn't doing much to the help with North American fuel prices.
-The convenient excuse. Colombia is on the brink of war with Venezuela and Ecuador; Colombia has taken to crossing the borders with its neighbors to get at guerrillas hiding there (who are, admittedly, backed by Ecuador and Venezuela), and (not surprisingly) Ecuador and Venezuela aren't thrilled about having Colombian troops and planes enter their countries uninvited. This would be akin to the Mexican military crossing over into Texas, "just for a few isolated, surgical strikes," to take out enemies of the state. Chavez made moves to deploy the military to the Colombian border, an emergency summit was held, both sides agreed to be calm and respectful...and Colombia's still doing it.
-The rest of the region. Since kicking repressive, U.S.-installed-and-backed military governments to the curb in the 1980s and 1990s, South America has been trying to find new ways to do things, especially after the old ways really took a blow in the continent-wide economic crisis of 2001-2002. Argentina and Brazil officially gave the finger to the IMF (which is a tool of US/Western European aims at controlling the world economy to the sole benefit of the US, Canada, and Western Europe), and since 2002, every country, except Colombia, has elected leftist governments on the continent. And...they've made progress. Standards of living are up, economies are growing. It's not all roses yet, but things are improving...but nobody but Colombia is paying court to the U.S., cutting trade deals that benefit U.S. business and no one else. Accordingly, democractically elected leaders, such as Evo Morales in Bolivia and Luiz Lula da Silva in Brazil, have been painted by the U.S. government as villianous, dangerous threats to regional security. What better away to "teach Latin America to elect good men!" (in the words of Woodrow Wilson) than send a fleet down this way to monitor them?
This is going to precipitate, at the very least, a diplomatic crisis, if not a regional war. There is no way that the presence of the 4th Fleet will make the hemisphere safer for anyone, and it is only serving to confirm the convictions of everyone in the Americas who does not have U.S. citizenship that the United States has no interest in friendly relations with anyone, not even its neighbors, if being friendly means not getting its way with everything. This is imperialism. It is the use of force to shove a political agenda down the throat of another continent...and this time, I don't think the U.S. will be able to get away with it. The war in Iraq, beyond its cost in human lives and money, has lost all international respect for the United States - simply put, we don't have many friends. Now, in Latin America, a region that lined up behind the U.S. to support us after 9-11-2001, rather than develop strong, reciprocally beneficial relations with free, democractic governments, we are poised to turn our next-door neighbors into our enemies. Real national security doesn't come from scaring the bejesus out of South America; it comes from being willing to compromise with nations who do not hold ill-will toward you and work for the good of both rather than just your own good, and from that put pressure on the ones who do have it out for you.
Please, if you are from the United States and reading this, even if you think I am a complete liberal, unpatriotic, commie pinko traitor for daring question our national motives, help me get the word on this out. Write to your newspaper. Tell other people. Make this known, so that at the very least we're informed.
Links you should check out:
http://www.fpif.org/papers/latam2003.html http://www.globalpolitician.com/21668-foreign-latin-america
Article obtained from http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11862
Note, also, the source of the news - this is the United States Department of Defense itself. This is not a rumor floating around the blogosphere, or something penned by Castro and distributed to scare other Latin American nations. Nope, this is the real deal. The United States has officially decided to return to gunboat diplomacy in Latin America. Words cannot express adequately how simultaneously angry and terrified most of the people I know here are. These are people who've already lived through one brutal, repressive military government installed by the U.S. that did a very successful job of running Uruguay's economy into the ground, and to them, the 4th Fleet represents the very real threat of another round of continent-wide brutal, repressive military government.
There is, and I have yet to confirm its validity, a document circulating which states flat-out that the U.S. government has officially stated its willingness to support military governments in the name of advancing its aims for Latin America. So much for the lofty goals of bringing democracy to the world that we heard all about in the march up to, and immediate aftermath of, the invasion of Iraq.
Of course, every government in South Americam, barring Colombia's, has had a cow over the past week, and the military chiefs of Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay) plus Bolivia's had what boils down to a crisis conference in Brasilia to discuss the matter. The U.S. military's response: "It is not an offensive force in any way...The IV Fleet's entire purpose is cooperation, friendship, response to natural disaster, missions of peace and, yes, there will be counter narcotics work, as is traditional." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080515/pl_afp/usmilitarynavylatam_080515224313)
My personal BS-o-meter went off the scale when I read that, barring the part about counter-narcotics. Friendship doesn't come in the form of battleships around here, cooperation generally suggests helping someone in a way that was asked for (ok, maybe Colombia asked for the help), there aren't any major natural disasters going on that a fleet of warships would be able to abate, and one person's "mission of peace" has a way of being another person's "war that obliterated my country" in this day and age.
Now, how about some other possible reasons for the re-deployment?
-Colombia's right-wing, pro-US, heavily US-funded government over 40-year struggle against leftist guerrilla groups. In fairness, the label "narcoterrorist" does fit them to a hefty extent, so a simplified view of them as noble idealists struggling against a foreign-backed oppressive government doesn't work. U.S. naval presence near Colombia facilitates aiding the Uribe government.
-Hugo Chavez. Chavez has done a remarkably good job of infuriating the White House since his near-removal from power by a U.S-backed military coup in 2002. I think Chavez is a corrupt brute and borderline dictator, but one can hardly blame him for not liking the U.S., at least since '02, just based on his personal history and there are a lot of people who find his economic reforms to be admirable, if not his methods of applying them.
-Connected to the above: Venezuela's oil. One of the world's largest oil producers is just across the Caribbean from the U.S., but with Chavez holding back on production and sales to the U.S., its proximity isn't doing much to the help with North American fuel prices.
-The convenient excuse. Colombia is on the brink of war with Venezuela and Ecuador; Colombia has taken to crossing the borders with its neighbors to get at guerrillas hiding there (who are, admittedly, backed by Ecuador and Venezuela), and (not surprisingly) Ecuador and Venezuela aren't thrilled about having Colombian troops and planes enter their countries uninvited. This would be akin to the Mexican military crossing over into Texas, "just for a few isolated, surgical strikes," to take out enemies of the state. Chavez made moves to deploy the military to the Colombian border, an emergency summit was held, both sides agreed to be calm and respectful...and Colombia's still doing it.
-The rest of the region. Since kicking repressive, U.S.-installed-and-backed military governments to the curb in the 1980s and 1990s, South America has been trying to find new ways to do things, especially after the old ways really took a blow in the continent-wide economic crisis of 2001-2002. Argentina and Brazil officially gave the finger to the IMF (which is a tool of US/Western European aims at controlling the world economy to the sole benefit of the US, Canada, and Western Europe), and since 2002, every country, except Colombia, has elected leftist governments on the continent. And...they've made progress. Standards of living are up, economies are growing. It's not all roses yet, but things are improving...but nobody but Colombia is paying court to the U.S., cutting trade deals that benefit U.S. business and no one else. Accordingly, democractically elected leaders, such as Evo Morales in Bolivia and Luiz Lula da Silva in Brazil, have been painted by the U.S. government as villianous, dangerous threats to regional security. What better away to "teach Latin America to elect good men!" (in the words of Woodrow Wilson) than send a fleet down this way to monitor them?
This is going to precipitate, at the very least, a diplomatic crisis, if not a regional war. There is no way that the presence of the 4th Fleet will make the hemisphere safer for anyone, and it is only serving to confirm the convictions of everyone in the Americas who does not have U.S. citizenship that the United States has no interest in friendly relations with anyone, not even its neighbors, if being friendly means not getting its way with everything. This is imperialism. It is the use of force to shove a political agenda down the throat of another continent...and this time, I don't think the U.S. will be able to get away with it. The war in Iraq, beyond its cost in human lives and money, has lost all international respect for the United States - simply put, we don't have many friends. Now, in Latin America, a region that lined up behind the U.S. to support us after 9-11-2001, rather than develop strong, reciprocally beneficial relations with free, democractic governments, we are poised to turn our next-door neighbors into our enemies. Real national security doesn't come from scaring the bejesus out of South America; it comes from being willing to compromise with nations who do not hold ill-will toward you and work for the good of both rather than just your own good, and from that put pressure on the ones who do have it out for you.
Please, if you are from the United States and reading this, even if you think I am a complete liberal, unpatriotic, commie pinko traitor for daring question our national motives, help me get the word on this out. Write to your newspaper. Tell other people. Make this known, so that at the very least we're informed.
Links you should check out:
http://www.fpif.org/papers/latam2003.html http://www.globalpolitician.com/21668-foreign-latin-america
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