Russia plans to dispatch the Russian Navy to the Caribbean Sea before the end of the year, Deutsche Presse Agentur reports. Apparently Moscow plans to use warships and planes in joint exercises with Venezuelan forces—at a place and time that is liable to increase animosity between Russia and the United States, which has heavily criticized Moscow’s invasion of Georgia. dpa further reports:

Russian Foreign Ministry official Andrei Nesterenko said the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great, one of the world’s largest warships, and a unit of long-range anti-submarine aircraft would enter Venezuelan waters “before the end of the year.”The Russian statement came after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced the planned arrival of Russian ships on national television Sunday, saying they would dock in the South American country by late November.Chavez, who has spearheaded an alliance of non-aligned states against the United States, has sought closer ties with Russia, including by making several large weapons purchases in recent years.Nesterenko told journalists the exercises were “not connected to the present crisis in the Caucasus,” over which Moscow and Washington have traded accusations. …It will be the first time Russia has held maneuvers in waters patrolled by the U.S. Navy since the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said the joint exercise was agreed to in July, but the timing of the announcement, Chavez’s virulent anti-Americanism, and Russia following through with the deployment in the middle of the Georgia crisis indicate the news is meant as a response to Washington’s deployment of warships into the Black Sea in support of Georgia. Stratfor reports that rumors are circulating of Moscow basing maritime patrol aircraft in Venezuela. It also points to the possibility of Russia basing submarines in Cuba or Venezuela, putting an outside power’s military right in the middle of the Western Hemisphere and bringing on the prospect of a second Cold War scenario.

Watch for tensions between Moscow and Washington to increase as Russia builds and exercises its political and military power within the Caribbean Basin. Russia will not attack America, however; its intent appears to be to “reshape Washington’s strategic environment,” as Stratfor points out (September 8).

Watch for Washington to lose ground in its existing theaters of military deployment as the U.S. is forced to further extend its already-overstretched defense capability to cope with the pressure being increasingly applied to its perimeters by a resurgent Russia.