Don't be overly concerned by Russia's apparent plan to establish an air base in the Caribbean. The U.S. can deter, and if necessary defeat, any threat that aircraft at the base might pose.
Still, Russia is excited by the prospect of its Tu-160 strategic bomber warplanes being stationed on Venezuela's Orchila island. Tu-160 aircraft trained in the area last week, and the Kremlin's TASS media notes that Col. Eduard Rodyukov "told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that 'the arrival of Russia’s Tu-160 strategic bombers to Central America is kind of a signal to Trump to make him realize that abandoning nuclear disarmament treaties will have a boomerang effect.'"
Wrong. Russia blatantly breached the treaty that Rudyukov references, and the U.S. is right to threaten withdrawal from it. Even then, the Orchila deployment doesn't make sense for Russia beyond simply aggravating the U.S. The deployment will further stretch Russia's already heavily stretched military budget without broadening Russia's strategic threat to the U.S.
For one, Orchila Island is still 1,320 miles from the closest continental U.S. territory, Florida. That's closer than the Tu-160s' home bases are to the U.S., but it's still a long way to travel.
Moreover, the Tu-160 is an old aircraft that is highly vulnerable to interception by even the older U.S. fourth-generation fighters such as the U.S. F-16, let alone the fifth-generation F-22 or F-35. While Russia could deploy fighter jets to support the Tu-160s, the Su-35 jets that would be necessary to provide any kind of effective combat air escort are expensive to use and deploy. That cost would be further enhanced by the fact that Su-35s flying from Orchila would need air-to-air refueling aircraft. That is, unless they landed on Cuba, which would almost certainly result in damaging U.S. countermeasures against both Cuba and Russia. So the Tu-160s are likely to operate alone without air escort. That renders them about as useful in threatening the U.S. as beef stroganoff is useful without beef.
In short, we should watch Russia's Orchila Island deployment closely, without being overly concerned. China's interests in Venezuela are of far more long-term strategic concern to the U.S.
