Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team is “working … to prevent” Russia from establishing military bases in Latin America as the crisis in Ukraine is widening the diplomatic disputes between the former Cold War rivals.
“We, as a hemisphere, do not accept provocations,” State Department Assistant Secretary Brian Nichols, Blinken’s top lieutenant for the Western Hemisphere, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “And those types of prodding by forces from outside our hemisphere are unacceptable.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov gestured toward such a deployment earlier this month, when he said he could “neither confirm nor exclude” whether Moscow would take that step while trying to roll back NATO military arrangements in Eastern Europe. Another senior Russian official downplayed the prospect, which President Joe Biden’s administration has characterized as “bluster,” but Nichols acknowledged that they aren’t ignoring the threat.
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“While I hesitate to respond to every instance of Russian bluster, let me be clear that efforts to destabilize our hemisphere or to inject a conflict from Ukraine to the Western Hemisphere is unacceptable,” he told Rep. Bill Keating, a Massachusetts Democrat. “And we will work with our partners throughout the hemisphere to prevent that.”
Their exchange focused most specifically on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, but the hearing took place on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernandez, at the Kremlin.
“I believe that Argentina could become Russia’s gateway to Latin America to a certain extent,” Fernandez told Putin. “We could be a venue for the development of your cooperation with Latin American nations.”
Fernandez, who will travel from Moscow to Beijing to meet Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping and observe the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, cited Argentina’s provision of Russian vaccines to other Latin American countries as a model for that collaboration. He told Putin that he wanted to reverse his predecessor’s alignment of Argentina with the United States.
“Since the 1990s, Argentina has been strongly oriented towards the United States,” he said, blaming that relationship for Argentina’s indebtedness to the International Monetary Fund. “At first, when our party was in power from 2003 to 2015, we tried hard to get rid of this dependence on the U.S. … I am consistently working to rid Argentina of this dependence on the IMF and the U.S. I want Argentina to open up new opportunities. Cooperation with Russia is vital for us.”
Nichols did not address that meeting in his conversation with Keating, but he underscored more broadly that any new Russian military offensive against Ukraine would provoke economic sanctions that would cripple Russian economic connections in the Western Hemisphere.
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“The types of sanctions that are being discussed are very comprehensive — things that have never been deployed in the past,” he said. “And they will have economic effects throughout the world … including [in] our hemisphere. And we’ve begun the conversation with our partners around the hemisphere about what that would mean for them and how important it is for all of us to stand up for the international rule of law.”
