Both Cuba's Castro regime and Russia's Putin will use this to further extort greater concessions from the Obama Administration in its final days.
It's the dangerous precedent Obama's Cuba, Iran, Ukraine and Syria policies have set.
From Russia Today:
Russian MoD pondering re-launch of military bases in Cuba and Vietnam – Deputy Defense Minister
Moscow is considering plans to return to Cuba and Vietnam where it had military bases in the past, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Nikolay Pankov said on Friday, according to RIA news agency.
“We are working on this,” Pankov said, while declining to elaborate. The Russian Defense Ministry is re-assessing the decisions made in the past to shut down the bases in those countries, according to the defense official.
Previously the deputy head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian parliament, Aleksey Chepa said that Russia “should re-assess the issue of our presence in other regions of the world. I believe that it would correspond with Russian interests to restore the bases in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa that were closed,” as quoted by TASS.
There were Soviet and Russian military bases in Cuba and Vietnam until 2002. The Russian navy was deployed in Cam Rahn, Vietnam, and Russia had a radio-electronic intelligence center in Lourdes, Cuba.
While functioning, the Lourdes SIGINT facility was the largest of its kind operated by the USSR (and later Russia) outside of the country. The facility occupied 73 square kilometers and hosted some 1,500 employees at the peak of its activity.
