Chavez??? Fourth Fleet established/Navy Deploys/Latin America

Time to Keep an Eye on Things Down South

It’s now official: The Pentagon is going to resuscitate its Fourth Fleet, with the mission of patrolling Latin American and Caribbean waters. Created during the Second World War to protect traffic in the South Atlantic, the structure was dissolved in 1950. “By reestablishing the Fourth Fleet, we acknowledge the immense importance of maritime security in this region,” declared Adm. Gary Roughead, head of the Pentagon’s naval operations. Based in Mayport, Florida, the fleet will operate under the double orders of the American Navy and the Army’s Southern Command, responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean. Vice Adm. Joseph Kernan will command the fleet, which should include a nuclear aircraft carrier.

According to Alejandro Sanchez, an analyst at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a research center on Latin America based in Washington, “the reestablishment of the Fourth Fleet is more of a political than a military gesture, designed to confront the rise in power of left-leaning governments in the region.” The Pentagon does not trouble to camouflage its intentions: “the message is clear: whether local governments like it or not, the United States is back after the war in Iraq,” Sanchez explains.

“New Threats”

De facto,, Washington’s military influence in the region has diminished considerably since September 11, 2001, and the launch of the “war against terrorism.” Concentrated on the Middle Eastern arc of crisis, the Pentagon did not pay much attention to the political upsets in its own backyard. Leftist governments, now broadly in the majority in Latin America, reproach the United States with the support it gave the dictatorships that reigned over several decades and to the ultra-neo-liberal policies those dictatorships applied.

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