Puerto Rico governor supports Pentagon mission in Caribbean

By Howard Hills

Guam is not the only U.S. territory on the front line of U.S. national security.  The historical irony of national defense's dependence on patriotic Americans in the unincorporated territories persists.

While Congress deliberates on the next steps to restore sovereignty and democracy for the people of Venezuela, Puerto Rico's governor, Jenniffer González-Colón, is serving on the front line of civilian leadership support for the U.S. liberation of that nation.

González-Colón, who was elected governor in 2024, is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives who long opposed Nicolas Maduro’s criminal junta. Puerto Rico is now the hub of major missions critical to Operation Southern Spear. 

Not needing a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing, when the Pentagon called, González-Colón did not hesitate to mobilize all federal and territorial resources and capabilities under her jurisdiction to support Operation Southern Spear. 

Puerto Rico was uniquely able to meet the Pentagon's needs, including the use of the fabled Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, as well as smaller naval and air installations that played a significant role in American victory in WWII and the Cold War. 

From the outset of U.S. counter-terrorism tactics to shut down high seas drug running, and continuing during the development of a full range of U.S. options in Venezuela, the governor expedited every local government action required to support Pentagon logistical and operational requirements.

The energetic and hard-driving governor “cleared the decks” for rapid deployment of vital strategic and tactical kinetic warfare assets in Puerto Rico,

including F-35s, the 2,000-strong 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, Tomahawk missiles and aerial refueling tankers.

The soldiers and sailors assembled in Puerto Rico became the point of the spear in the U.S. intervention to extract Maduro. Military teams based in Puerto Rico enabled federal U.S. Department of Justice agents to serve arrest warrants and take into custody for removal to U.S. jurisdiction a heavily guarded and ruthless high-risk, high-value target of federal criminal charges.  

The governor’s support for our military contributes to a broader national policy aimed at restoring a modern-era Monroe Doctrine of hemispheric security. Strategic necessity argues for American power projection not only from the Caribbean south on the Atlantic coast to Cape Horn and points south.

But just as vitally, if not more so, in 2026, a fully realized modern Monroe Doctrine also runs offshore up the west coast of South America and points north, terminating only west of American Samoa, where it lies on the U.S. side of the International Dateline.

This modern-era Monroe Doctrine strategic imperative puts Puerto Rico in a forward position at the gateway to Central and South America. Figuratively speaking, like Hawaii in the mid-Pacific, Puerto Rico is equivalent to having an American aircraft carrier the size of Connecticut anchored in the middle of the Caribbean.   

As the elected leader of 3.2 million U.S. citizens in the territory, the governor of America’s last large territory is proud that her constituents enlist in our country’s armed forces at a per capita rate higher than that of most states. For 128 years, the American flag has flown over Puerto Rico, home to more U.S. citizens than 17 states, and strategically located in the heart of the Caribbean, next door to Cuba. 

Puerto Rico’s strategically located national defense assets were shuttered following a base-closing decision 20 years ago. Accordingly, González-Colón took the initiative to confirm Pentagon access and direct local support for military operations, reactivating former defense sites. 

The governor predicted that the restoration of the rule of law is the only hope for Venezuela to thrive again as a democracy with a market-driven economy. The Maduro junta had become a virtual colony of Cuba, a surrogate for America’s enemies, including Iran, China and Russia.

The removal of criminal thugs from power, in a sense, is a form of decolonization, ending an international empire of evil. The fall of Maduro makes it possible for restorative democratization of Venezuela to begin, and has shown clearly that a strong Puerto Rico makes the Americas safer and stronger from the Atlantic coast east and from Pacific coast west east to the west of the Western Hemisphere.

Howard Hills served as U.S. Navy JAG Senior Legal Counsel on Territorial Status Affairs in the Executive Office of the President (1982-1989), Senior Advisor to Special Presidential Envoy for Compact of Free Association (2000-2023). 

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