On Saturday, a Russian Air Force chief said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered an island as a temporary base for Russian bombers, who are also toying with Cuba as a strategic landing place. While the Kremlin insists that the whole situation is only hypothetical, independent military analyst Alexander Golts sees the announcement as a retaliatory gesture aimed to counter the August 2008 patrolling of U.S. ships in Black Sea waters. Indeed, Russia has nothing to gain strategically from basing long-range craft within relatively short range of U.S. shores, as Russian bombers are already capable of reaching the United States without the aid of stopovers. Rather, as analyst James Joyner makes clear in the New Atlanticist, Russia's incentive is to "tweak the Obama administration" (particularly as rumors fly that the Cuban embargo will soon be overturned), as well as leverage the value of the Latin American propaganda.

Given the strong bond shared between Venezuela and Cuba as well as their mutual hatred of the U.S., recent overtures to both by Russia's leadership should not be lightly dismissed.

Threatening non-state actors also have a strengthening foothold in Latin America, as Center for Security Policy's Nicole Ferrand makes plain in an excellent report that describes the radical Islamic terrorist groups dispersed throughout the region. They include the "Jamaat al Muslimeen" (JAM) operating in Trinidad and Tobago, Hezbollah in Venezuela and the Tri-Border Region (intersection of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina), Al Qaeda in Brazil and parts of Central America, and Al-Gama' at Islamiyya in Brazil.