
The US military has been steadily massing a large number of troops, naval and air assets in the Caribbean over the last two months, conducting training missions off the coast of Venezuela, reopening a military base in Puerto Rico that had been shuttered for decades, and attacking speedboats carrying suspected drug traffickers from Venezuela and Colombia.
As of Tuesday, a significant percentage of all deployed US naval assets globally are also now located in US Southern Command, the US military’s command responsible for operations in the region, according to a fleet tracker published by the United States Naval Institute’s news portal.
That includes the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group and the 22nd Marine…