The Mainstream and Alternative Media went wild in mid-January after Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov refused to rule out the potential opening of Russian bases in Latin America in response to a question from a journalist. This prompted US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to dismiss that scenario as “bluster”, though he did threaten that “if Russia were to move in that direction, we would deal with it decisively.” To their credit, RT responsibly sought to manage seemingly uncontrollable media perceptions about this in a very detailed and highly informative piece that they published shortly after. Titled “The Russians are coming? What Moscow could do to make life difficult for the US in Latin America”, it quotes prestigious Russian experts who downplayed the possibility of such bases opening.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did indeed brief the Duma on President Vladimir Putin’s recent calls with the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – his country’s closest regional partners – and told them that they all agreed to comprehensively deepen their strategic partnerships, including in the military-technical sphere. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, denied that President Putin and his Cuban counterpart discussed opening up a military base during their latest phone call. A few days later, former president and current Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev told TASS that “it immediately causes significant tensions, at least in the economic field”, to publicly discuss that scenario, which he also denied was being explored.

This sequence of events suggests that the topic of alleged Russian bases in Latin America is nothing more than media hype. After all, it was a journalist who asked Ryabkov a question about that, to which he answered ambiguously for understandable strategic reasons considering the undeclared US–provoked missile crisis in Europe. The Mainstream Media wants to hype up the so-called “Russian threat” while the Alt-Media Community (AMC) fantasizes about Russia opening up bases all across the world since they wrongly think that it’s an effective form of power projection for the Kremlin. They pursue different political ends but nevertheless curiously resorted to the same means of hyping up what ultimately turned out to be an unrealistic scenario that even RT threw cold water upon.

There’s something about the Cuban Missile Crisis (referred to as the Caribbean Crisis in Russia) that almost evokes a sense of nostalgia among both media factions. The Mainstream Media and AMC seem to want to recreate the scenario in contemporary conditions, again, each for their own political end. Imagining Russia opening up a base in Cuba and potentially deploying missiles there again is too enticing of a scenario for them not to hype up, especially because it generates plenty of clicks from either scared folks like those from the Mainstream Media or wishful thinkers from the AMC. Simply put, it’s politically self-serving and manipulative. Understanding these motivations is crucial to enhancing one’s media literacy in this era of fake news and purposely inaccurate reporting.

What’s most revealing about this media distraction, however, is the second part of Sullivan’s response where he threatened to “deal with it decisively.” This contradicts the US’ insincere rhetoric condemning what it wrongly claims are Russia’s intentions to carve out a so-called “sphere of influence” in Central & Eastern Europe at the expense of those countries’ security. Washington says that such spheres are the legacy of a bygone era yet immediately resorts to thuggishly threatening to “defend” its own such sphere in Latin America simply in response to media hype about an unrealistic scenario there. This observation further reduces the US’ already declining credibility on the world stage by exposing it as hypocritical. “Spheres of influence” do indeed exist and the US actually has the world’s largest.