A U.S. navy officer confirmed on Thursday that within the past 24 hours, the country's missile destroyer USS Thomas Hudner had arrived in the Southern Command, or waters near Latin America, joining the warship deployment by the command.
According to a Navy release, Thomas Hudner departed Monday from Mayport, Fla., for a scheduled deployment.
This was the second trip this year to the Southern Command for Thomas Hudner, which has been independently deploying since returning in Jan 2024 from an eight-month deployment as part of the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group. Its previous deployment to the Southern Command was in February this year.
According to a Dominican media outlet, several US military aircraft are expected to arrive in the Dominican Republic in the coming days.
The United States claimed the move aims to support its anti-drug operations, but some analysts said the U.S. is using the Dominican Republic as a regional hub for continuously strengthening its military presence in the Caribbean region.
On Nov 26, Dominican President Luis Abinader said his country will allow the United States to use restricted areas of the San Isidro Air Base and Las Americas International Airport to combat drug trafficking.
Abinader announced the measure after a meeting with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the same day. The U.S. will deploy aircraft in the Dominican Republic for "Operation Southern Spear."
On Nov 13, Hegseth announced a counternarcotics military operation called "Southern Spear" in the Western Hemisphere.
The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean has reached its largest scale in more than three decades.
U.S. deploys missile destroyer near Latin America
U.S. deploys missile destroyer near Latin America
Former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on Friday called on China and France to jointly promote multilateralism and cooperation.
Raffarin is currently in the Chengdu City of southwest China's Sichuan Province, the second stop of French President Emmanuel Macron's state visit to China from Wednesday to Friday.
Macron's visit is a significant opportunity for the two major powers to rebalance bilateral trade ties, and also a chance for them to redefine a vision for global governance, Raffarin told China Global Television Network (CGTN).
Noting that China and France are both peace-loving countries, Raffarin said they must work together to contribute to world peace and promote multilateralism. "France and China are peace-loving nations. The Chinese people have never waged a war outside their borders -- they have fought only when attacked. China can speak for peace, and so can France, which managed to make peace with Germany despite the many tragedies that occurred during three wars. We are peaceful peoples, and therefore we must contribute together to world peace," said Raffarin.
"Both China and France support a multilateral global governance system. We want to reform multilateralism because today's rules are still those of 1945. It has been a long time since the UN and other international institutions were created. They must be reformed and modernized, while preserving the ambition of multilateralism to uphold world peace. From this perspective, Sino-French cooperation is in the interest of both countries -- and also in the interest of the world and of global peace," he added.
Raffarin said he expects more cooperation between China and Europe, and called for China's support in ending the Ukraine crisis.
"We clearly need to make progress in China-Europe cooperation. We must also make commercial progress by increasing cooperation between our industries -- including more Chinese components in European products, and more European components in Chinese products. We have progress to make, but the path has been set by the two heads of state. A new path has been opened for more balanced development. And of course, what is very important is that a war is now being fought in Europe -- in Ukraine. We need China's peaceful engagement to help the world find a way toward peace, in this conflict as well as many others. Peace is at the heart of our commitments -- it is China's commitment, and it is also France's," said Raffarin.
Former French PM urges China, France to jointly promote multilateralism, cooperation
