Military Challenges Close to U.S. Homeland

The lack of appropriate coverage on key national security issues facing the U.S. remains a significant problem. This failure is a reflection of the partisanship of most of the major outlets. That negligence extends to military activity within the Americas.

The vast and growing threats from Russia, which now is the world’s most significant nuclear power (it has greater numbers and more modern equipment) China (which already has more submarines than the U.S. and by 2020 will have a larger navy) and Iran, with its arsenal of missiles and budding nuclear program, are magnified by the increasingly intimate relationship between those nations, which form an axis that is now the world’s most powerful military grouping. The danger is being brought close to the American homeland.

This is a roundup of recent dramatic developments that have not received adequate attention:

The Free Beacon disclosed that Moscow is constructing an electronic intelligence gathering facility in Nicaragua. Putin has also sold 50 T-72 tanks to the Central American nation. This is another indication of the dramatic failure of the Obama Administration’s establishing diplomatic relations with the Castro regime, which, bizarrely enough, came just a month after Moscow resumed its naval presence on the island nation so close to the U.S. shore.

The general press has barely mentioned the dangerous and inflammatory move, just as they have failed to discuss at any length Russia’s nuclear patrols off U.S. coastlines, its military to military relations with Venezuela or its large-scale militarization of the Arctic. The socialist governments of Nicaragua and Venezuela have close ties to Cuba.

There are legitimate questions why Nicaragua would want tanks. There are no threats facing the nation, and the military capabilityof its neighbors are close to nonexistent.

The U.S. Department of Defense notes that the presence of terrorist groups, barely ever mentioned in major media outlets, are also a key threat in Latin America. U.S. Southern Command commander Navy Adm. Kurt W. Tidd notes “there is longstanding concern in the region about organizations like Hezbollah — a Shiite Islamist militant group.”
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Paul Coyer, writing in Forbes, China’s growing military presence in the region … is serving to undermine, aided by Washington’s neglect, the United States’ strategic position in its own Hemisphere… Illustrating the anti-American tenor of Chinese engagement in the defense arena is the fact that sales of Chinese military hardware have entered the region mostly through states that share an anti-American foreign policy orientation, particularly the “ALBA” states (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or “Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America”, founded by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez with the aim of countering American influence in Latin America). Chinese resources to these states have allowed such virulently anti-American regimes as Venezuela’s to invite Iranian Quds forces to Latin America, and have indirectly enabled them to give basing rights to Russia, whose goal in gaining such rights is to challenge the United States in the Western Hemisphere…”

The Heritage Foundation’s Justin Johnson, in an exclusive interview on the Vernuccio/Novak Report, expressed deep concern over the 25% cut in the defense budget during the Obama Administration. (Defense spending accounts for about 16% of the overall federal budget.) He has noted that “The U.S. military seems to be breaking. Senior military leaders have made dire statements before Congress, and story after story is revealing the potentially deadly challenges facing our men and women in uniform.” He provided six examples of desperate needs:

The Marine Corps is pulling parts off of museum planes to keep their F-18s flying. Even with that drastic action, only about 30 percent of their F-18s are ready to fly. Not only that, but instead of getting 25 or 30 hours a month in the cockpit, Marine Corps pilots are getting as little as four hours per month of flying time.
Only one-third of Army brigadesare ready for combat. The Army has now fallen to the smallest level since before World War II, while the top Army general says that the Army would face “high military risk” if it were to fight a serious war.
The Air Force is cannibalizing parts from some F-16’sto keep other F-16’s flying and is pulling parts off museum planes to keep their B-1 bombers flying. And half of Air Force squadrons are not prepared for serious combat.
The Navy keeps extending deploymentsof its ships, but still doesn’t have enough to meet demand. While the Navy needs about 350 ships, today it only has 273
Serious crashes of Marine Corps planes and helicopters are nearly double the 10-year average.
The Air Force’s B-52 bombers are an average of 53 years old.

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.