Will Russia Test Obama’s Doctrine?

Will Russia Test Obama’s Doctrine?
Investors Business Daily
As the 25th anniversary of the invasion of Grenada nears, Russia is contemplating permanent bases in the Western Hemisphere. Once again, there’s a bear in the woods.
On the morning of Oct. 25, 1983, America’s armed forces invaded the island of Grenada. The Marxist regime of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop had been overthrown by the even harder-line communist Bernard Coard just 12 days earlier.
We were enforcing the Reagan and Monroe doctrines forbidding foreign bases in our hemisphere.
Coard gave every indication he would continue transforming Grenada into a Soviet-Cuban base. The lives of nearly 1,000 American medical students were in jeopardy. Cuban troops roamed the island. And then there was the matter of that 10,000-foot runway the Cubans were building — a runway long enough to accommodate Soviet bombers and not likely to be used for a sudden influx of Western tourists.
An increasingly belligerent Russia may be about to again test President Obama, as Vice President Joe Biden predicted in the campaign.
On Saturday, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of staff of the Russian air force’s long-range aviation, announced that Venezuela’s thug in chief, Hugo Chavez, had offered the Venezuelan island of La Orchila as a temporary base for Russian strategic bombers.

“There is such a proposal on the part of the Venezuelan president. Chavez proposed to us a whole island with an airfield that we can use for temporary basing of strategic bombers,” Zhikharev told the Interfax news agency. “If there is a relevant political decision, then the use of the island by the Russian air force is possible.”

Zhikharev noted that in 2008 he had been to La Orchila, 110 miles from Venezuela’s north central coast, where the Venezuelan navy has its Antonio Diaz Naval Air Station. With “minor reconstruction,” he said, the airfield there could accept fully loaded Russian strategic bombers. Orchila’s runway is listed at 9,843 feet and is unpaved.

Zhikharev added that Cuba also has facilities that are ideal for use by Russian bombers on long-range patrols. “There are four or five airfields in Cuba with 4,000-meter-long (13,000-foot) runways, which absolutely suit us,” he said.

Last September, two nuclear-capable Russian Tu-160 Blackjack bombers arrived in Venezuela after a 13-hour flight from their Russian base. These aircraft can carry 12 cruise missiles that can be fitted with nuclear warheads. They landed at the military air base Libertador in Palo Negro, 68 miles from Caracas, the day before the anniversary of 9/11. The base has a 10,400-foot runway.
Late last year, a Russian flotilla led by the Kirov-class Peter the Great, a nuclear-powered heavy missile cruiser, paid a visit to conduct exercises with the Venezuelan navy. The ship, armed with SS-N-19 Shipwreck long-range anti-ship missiles, sailed in an area where nine out of every 14 barrels of imported oil, even some Alaskan oil, must transit.
During his confirmation hearings last July, Gen. Norton Schwartz, nominated by President Bush to be Air Force chief of staff, commented on the possible basing of Russian strategic bombers in the Caribbean.

“I think we should stand strong and indicate that that is something which crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America,” he said.

That was then, this is now.
Will President Obama draw a red line? Within hours of Obama’s election, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev tested him by threatening to deploy SS-26 Iskander missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad between our NATO allies Poland and Lithuania.

Medvedev said he would reconsider if we dropped our plans to deploy missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic meant to intercept Iranian missiles. Obama’s administration has indicated a willingness to do just that and trade U.S. security for Russian promises.

Some will say this is a nonstory and point out that the Kremlin later explained that Zhikharev spoke “hypothetically.” But the Kremlin let him speak to Russia’s Interfax so that the word would get to us and make us think.
Obama and Medvedev are scheduled to meet in London on April 2.
Will Obama tell Medvedev to not even think about it? Or will he once again say let’s make a deal?

Wild Thing’s comment…….
Obama doctrine what is that Appeasement before Surrender ???
Obama is a hologram in front of a teleprompter and could not get a clue if it was a post it note stuck on his forehead.

….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67