A U.S. Navy submarine has arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a show of force as a fleet of Russian warships gather for planned military exercises in the Caribbean.
U.S. Southern Command said the USS Helena, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, pulled into the waters near the U.S. base in Cuba on Thursday, just a day after a Russian frigate, a nuclear-powered submarine, an oil tanker and a rescue tug crossed into Havana Bay after drills in the Atlantic Ocean.
The stop is part of a “routine port visit” as the submarine travels through Southern Command’s region, it said in a social media post.
Other U.S. ships also have been tracking and monitoring the Russian drills, which Pentagon officials say do not represent a threat to the United States.
I have no knowledge at all, but this is what makes the most sense to me. I don’t have a high opinion of Russia’s strategic military decisions (and the truth is I have no idea what this is about), but I know that countries have ships that travel around, it is normal, and I just can’t imagine any country that is run by adults that would think that sending ships to Cuba in this way would be any kind of anything provocative or whatever.
But I can easily believe that the US news media would see the words “Russian ships” and freak out and start writing all kinds of stories about it. I mean, people are clickin on it. Mission accomplished.
The article was also pretty non-inflammatory in my opinion.
They (governments) don’t do it because it’s taken as threatening, but more because it’s not. It’s a very specifically not belligerent way to push back on a country. “I can wander in here right up against your borders because your zone of exclusive control isn’t as big as you claim”.
We do the same thing with China to push back on their claims that certain waterways belong to them. (Ours looks a little different since we routinely patrol shipping lanes, so a more overt ship but also more common to just see tooling around looming at would be pirates, so it’s not the same message as if a Russian missile destroyer showed up off the Florida coast. We send that message with a carrier group.). By overtly and openly using a waterway we say “LOOK AT US JUST NORMALLY USING THIS PUBLIC ROUTE LIKE A NORMAL SHIP IN PUBLIC WOULD DO WHEN THEY WEREN’T VIOLATING CHINESE TERRITORIAL WATERS”.
We would rather other nations not send military vessels near the US mainland. Russia would rather not have a bunch of stuff happen that we regularly facilitate. So they discreetly give us the finger by doing the tamest version of what we don’t want while still having a perfectly normal excuse.
I think the only big thing to note is I don’t think Russia sends ships elsewhere all that frequently. Their navy is a bit of a joke. It’s still not provocative, but it is different.
I’m assuming the us showed the sub as a signal saying “we were right there with you. Did you even detect us? You don’t stand a chance, so don’t start anything.”