In
recent months there have been mounting tensions between the Bush Administration
and Venezuela’s popularly-elected, if left-leaning, President, Hugo Chavez. If this were the mid-20th
century, Latin America watchers might fear that they were witnessing the early
stages of yet another US-backed coup,
like those that ousted other popularly-elected, if left-leaning, governments in Guatemala (1954, 1963),
Argentina (1962, 1976), Brazil (1964), the Dominican Republic (1965), Bolivia
(1971), Chile (1973), and, indeed Venezuela itself (1948).
Today,
more than 15 years into the “post-dictatorship” era, Latin America is still
struggling to recover 
the disastrous long-term effects of these US-backed
regime changes. These efforts may or may not have warded off socialist
revolutions, but they undoubtedly
produced a hit parade of corrupt, repressive dictatorships. They also persuaded
a whole generation of progressive young Latin Americans that the only route to
social justice was by way of violent revolution, and contributed mightily to
the entire region’s excessive debts and economic regression -- and a surfeit of hostility toward the US.
Fortunately,
those Cold War days are long gone – or are they?
The
latest development in this little joropo came this week, with the
release of a strongly-worded
protest letter from PROVEA, an otherwise highly-regarded, Venezuelan
human rights organization that has often criticized
President Hugo Chavez.
Addressed to US Ambassador William Brownfield in Caracas, PROVEA’s
letter expresses grave concern about a steady stream of increasingly menacing
statements that have recently been emanating from senior members of the Bush
Administration. PROVEA believes that,
taken together, these statements may be
creating a climate of fear threatening
Venezuela’s sovereignty and self-determination:
“We wish to express to you and your
government our concern about the tone, the frequency and the possible
implications of the declarations of high-level officials of the present U.S.
administration regarding Venezuela.”
PROVEA’s letter singles
out recent statements
by US Secretary
of State Condoleeza Rice, Roger Noriega, the Assistant
Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and several right-wing
members of Congress. It also takes
note of a fiction-filled
white paper on Venezuela by the Center for Security Policy, an obscure right-wing think tank that apparently just
cannot get enough of aggressive US foreign policy.
According to PROVEA, these aggressive statements have grossly
misrepresented Venezuela’s situation by using terms like “dictatorship”
to describe the Chavez government, and by implying that he is on the verge of
establishing some kind of
refuge for FARC rebels and al-Qaeda terrorists just
across the Caribbean – worst of all, paid for by our oil purchases.
PROVEA has also reminded US Ambassador Brownfield that, for what
it is worth, the US and Venezuela have
both signed the Articles of
the Organization of American States (OAS) Charter, guaranteeing member countries rights of self-determination. Of course in this Boltonian Era, with this
international treaty and a few bolivars you can buy a café Negro.
The comments by PROVEA
(the Venezuelan Program for Education and Action in Human Rights) are
interesting because it is no mere Chavez mouthpiece. It is a 17-year old NGO
funded mainly by Protestant and Catholic churches, whose work has often been
cited by international human rights monitoring organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Indeed, the US State Department has often relied on PROVEA’s assessments
in its annual “Country Reports of Human Rights Practices,” describing the
organization as “a
highly respected human rights NGO.”
PROVEAs comments also reflect a growing concern among independent
observers that Washington and Caracas may be on the road to confrontation.
Several other recent events have also contributed to this perception.
A TERRORIST HAVEN?
First, there is the recent dispute over the fate of the 77-year
old Cuban-Venezuelan terror suspect Luis Posada Carriles. In late May, he was
arrested by the Department of Homeland Security in Miami. He’d sought refuge after winning an early release
from a Panamanian prison, where he had served 3 years for allegedly plotting to
kill Cuba’s President Fidel Castro.
At first the Bush Adminstration claimed
that it couldn’t find Posada Carriles, but after he turned up on a Miami TV
station, a former FBI agent tracked him
down and took away that excuse. Needless to say, the fact that a notorious,
convicted international terrorist was able to enter the US at will and then
disappear into hiding hasn’t done much for Homeland Security’s image.
As international terrorists go, Sr. Posada Carriles is a poster boy. Venezuela has requested his
extradition to try him again for his alleged role in the 1976 bombing of a
Cuban airplane that killed 73 people, including several Venezuelan
citizens. The Bush Administration is
jumping through hoops trying to dodge this request, which appears to be
perfectly normal under international law – it is, in fact, a right that the US
exercises frequently. At last glance,
an El
Salvador judge has suddenly expressed interest in extradicting Posada
Carriles for unspecified charges in that country, where he reportedly worked with the
CIA during the contra wars and hid
out in the 1990s.
Separately, Castro would also like to try him for his alleged role
in a Havana bombing that killed an Italian tourist, and several others assination attempts. Sr. Posada Carriles, who has a long history of involvement
with both the CIA and anti-Castro Miami
exiles, claims that he is innocent. So far
the U.S. government has refused to hand him over, asserting that the Venezuelan
extradition request is not detailed enough. Both the Castro and Chavez governments have organized massive street
protests over this episode, and Venezuela has threatened
to sever diplomatic ties.
Since the Chavez Government has often been accused – to date, at
least, without proof – of harboring international terrorists
from groups like Spain’s ETA, Colombia’s FARC, and even leading members of
al-Qaeda, this is an especially interesting development. Interestingly, Spain, which also have a huge
stake in fighting several of these groups, maintains warm relations with Hugo.
From Chavez’ standpoint, if there are any terrorists who
just happen to have been hiding out in Venezuela’s vast reaches, this would be a perfect time to do the right
thing and make the trade.
COLOMBIA TENSIONS
As
the guerilla war in neighboring Colombia has escalated, with US
military aid to the Colombian government approaching $3 billion,
there have also been several incidents that have convinced the US, at
least, that Chavez is aiding Colombia's left-wing guerillas.
This issue was highlighted in December 2004, when Rodrigo Granda,
a senior spokesman for the FARC, was seized while attending a conference in
Caracas.
FREE TRADE ZONE
With left-leaning, democratically-elected governments now in place
all over Latin America, and Hugo’s position at home more secure than ever, he
has seized the opportunity to barnstorm the continent to support increased
Latin American integration, and – to Washington’s immense displeasure – to
oppose one of the Bush Administration favorite neoliberal proposals, the “Free Trade Zone
of the Americas.” Chavez alone is not responsible for stalling the treaty –
Brazil’s Lula has also said that it is off the agenda for now. But Hugo’s vocal opposition has not won him
any points in Washington.
OIL SQUEEZE
With oil prices at record levels, and the US relying on Venezuela
for supplying more than 1.2
million barrels per day of oil, up
to 15 percent of all US oil imports, Venezuela has been feeling its oats. The
surge in oil revenues has permitted Chavez to increase domestic spending, shore
up his political base, and “strut his
stuff” all over the continent. The US
still accounts for more than 60 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports. To reduce
this dependency, Chavez has started to negotiate new long-term contracts with
other hungry markets, especially China. This has also not been popular with the Bush
Administration, whose own popularity has been hurt at least as much as Hugo’s
has been helped by soaring energy prices.
OTHER IRRITANTS
Chavez’s close relationship with Cuba in general and Fidel in
particular is another thumb-in-the-eye for US policymakers. Chavez has agreed
to provide the island with oil at subsidized prices – partly in exchange for
several thousand Cuban doctors. Meanwhile, he is also upgrading Venezuela’s
ill-equipped military, ordering 100,000
AK-103s and 10 helicopters from Russia to replace his army’s 50-year old
FAL rifles. Meanwhile, Colombia, one of the few remaining US allies in the
region, makes all the Galils that it
wants under license from Israel, without any protests from Washington.
It is not as if Chavez has only been dealing with Russia and Cuba –
Spain is also selling him fast boats for drug control, and Brazil is selling him Super Tucano
airplanes for border patrol. The US DEA is apparently delighted with these
acquisitions, and with Hugo’s cooperation on the anti-drug front in
general, but it is unlikely to come to his defense in public.
At a news conference in Brazil last March, Donald Rumsfeld, the peripatetic US
Secretary of Defense, commented that “I can’t imagine
why Venezuela needs 100,000 AK-47s.’ Perhaps Secretary Rumsfeld should get
a briefing on the difference between AK-103s and AK-47s. He should also read the
PROVEA letter.
SUMMARY
The stark reality is that, despite its vaunted “superpower” status, the US really doesn’t have much leverage with respect to Venezuela -- unless Chavez does something incredibly stupid, a possibility that we cannot entirely rule out if tensions continue to escalate.
Apart from that,
it really is Venezuela that is the true “superpower” in this
instance. With oil markets tight, the US economy slowing, and the Chinese market waiting in the
wings, this is hardly the time to mess
with a major oil supplier.
Chavez’ popularity has also increased sharply since last year’s
referendum, and this is not just
because of the surge in petrodollars. After fumbling the April 2002 coup and punting last year’s referendum,
the hapless Venezuelan opposition has demonstrated conclusively that it is far better at schmoozing in Miami,
Houston, and Washington than at organizing an effective grassroots political
movement. It should return home, end its gringo ties, and work harder.
As
for “military options,” so long as Chavez keeps his own Army
happy, observes international law, and also maintains popular
support, there aren’t any. Cold War triumphaliists and national
security experts who think otherwise are advised to take a crash
course in Caribbean tanker routes, US refinery economics, and the
capabilities of the latest
generation of Russian anti-ship missiles.
More fundamentally, the real reason that a self-educated populist blowhard like Chavez has managed to win at least four nationwide electoral contests since 1998 is neither because he is a ruthless thug or a brilliant demagogue. It is because the Venezuelan elite that dominated the country’s economy, executive branch, legislature, judiciary, military, press, and church for four decades, with close support from the USG and Wall Street, left the country a debt-laden, corruption-ridden mess. Every time the US government lectures Hugo, muscles him, or tries to artificially inseminate its friends in the “opposition” into Venezuelan history, it merely reminds people of this unfortunate fact.
(C) SubmergingMarkets.Com, 2005
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