Now The Economist covers the military buildup happening in Puerto Rico (and the US Virgin Islands), examining how a new doctrine will reshape life on the islands, and the rest of the Caribbean:
Bomba drums and reggaeton are classic elements of Puerto Rico’s soundscape. Now, in Ceiba, on the eastern end of the main island, there’s something new in the mix: the howl ofF-35 fighter jets.
Roosevelt Roads, a United States naval base that was shut down in 2004, is being revived. Outside an aircraft hangar young soldiers wander towards a supplies trailer plastered with “We go where you go!” Aircraft sit on the tarmac. TenF-35Bs have been sent to the base as part of a wider build-up in the Caribbean.
Since September the United States has carried out 22 strikes onsmall boatsin the southern Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing 87 people. The Pentagon says the boats and their crews are legitimate targets as they are being used to run drugs to the United States, but the strikes arealmost certainly illegal. American armed forces are also running a pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s unelected leader, buzzing his coast with bombers while Donald Trump speaks regularly and vaguely of striking “the land” as a natural extension of the maritime strikes. On December 8th he toldPoliticothat land strikes would happen “very soon”.
Puerto Rico is at the heart of this build-up. The island provides support to theF-35Bs,AC-130 gunships andMQ-9 “Reaper” drones which operate alongside six destroyers, two cruisers and the world’s most advanced aircraft-carrier: theUSSGerald R. Ford. If the United States does strike Venezuela, Puerto Rico will be pivotal. Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, lies about 800km (500 miles) to the south.
Since 1898, when it seized Puerto Rico from Spain, the United States has maintained a military presence on the island. In the 1990s Roosevelt Roads served as a launch-point for operations in Haiti. Its revival is “much more explicitly about power projection and military dominance”, says Henry Ziemer of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Between concerns of harm and wishes for security, the region still seems somewhat divided on its thoughts of the increasing military presence.
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