US Sends Aircraft Carrier, Calls It 'Tensions,' Not 'Gunboat Diplomacy'
The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's most enormous aircraft carrier, has sailed into Latin American waters, signaling the largest US military presence in the region since the 1989 Panama invasion. The Guardian calls this an 'escalation in military buildup' due to 'US tensions with Venezuela.' However, it's worth recalling that numerous US-backed coups and interventions in Latin America, from Chile
to Nicaragua, rarely began with diplomatic overtures, but often with such 'visits.' The 'War on Drugs' framework often served as convenient cover for realpolitik objectives, a pattern observers of US foreign policy might find eerily familiar. One might wonder if 'tensions' are truly a two-way street when one party arrives with a carrier strike group and the other is a nation trying to manage its
own borders. How many 'goodwill patrols' does it take before military 'presence' becomes outright coercion? Apparently, if you're Washington, the answer is always 'just one more really, really big boat.'