Hugo Chavez could spark a serious crisis
The Venezuelan president is a more effective opponent of the US than his close ally, Fidel Castro, because he sits on enormous oil revenues.
Here's a quick quiz for foreign policy buffs: (1) Who was the first foreign leader United States President George W. Bush journeyed to meet on becoming president? (2) Which foreign country did Bush visit on his first trip abroad as president? And (3) what was the first major international agreement he signed?
The answers are (1) President Vicente Fox of Mexico at his ranch in Texas, shortly before visiting (2) Canada where he signed (3) the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA.) These choices were very far from accidental.
In those innocent days before 9/11, when geo-politics was passé and geo-economics all the rage, Bush entered office believing that his main foreign policy task would be to unite the western hemisphere economically and politically in a world of competing trade blocs.
Under US leadership the FTAA would gradually develop into an American version of the European Union resting on free trade, free capital movement and market-friendly capitalist reforms throughout the Americas.
Its political equivalent would be the promotion of democratic regimes throughout the Americas.
The resulting community of market democracies would increasingly lend the US diplomatic and even military support in its dealings with the rest of the world.
In return the US would pay what seemed a small price - namely, making immigration from Latin America much easier, legalising the mainly Mexican "illegals" already there, and reshaping American institutions and government along multicultural lines.
Yet when Bush laid the foundations for this pan-American conservatism, the omens looked good. Most of Latin America had governments bent on market reforms.
The whole of the sub-continent had democratically-elected governments with the sole exception of Cuba. And even in Cuba the dictator - the sole Latin leader opposing Bush's new vision - was visibly ageing and lacking any obvious successor.
These favourable omens, however, were superficial. They ignored the historical record of political and financial instability in Latin American countries.
They did not take into account that, as V.S. Naipaul pointed out, the real political ideology of Latin America is mimicry - and that "neo-liberalism" was just the latest fleeting imitation of US/European ideological models.
And they forgot that Latin American elites, oriented to Paris, Rome and Madrid more than to Washington, were easily tempted into anti-Americanism.
A rude awakening began with 9/11 and the Iraq crisis. No Latin country gave military assistance to the US at a time when Australia, the UK, Italy, Spain and other countries were fighting alongside the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Several Latin countries obstructed American diplomacy at the United Nations.
Further blows to this illusion have been fast and frequent.
Suspended negotiations
- Negotiations for the establishment of the FTAA have been effectively suspended because most Latin countries dislike Washington's terms. Instead they have been pushing ahead with their own smaller trade deals such as the Andean pact - and with deals between Latin organisations and the European Union.
- Voters have replaced the neo-liberal-minded governments that favoured free trade and the FTAA with left-leaning governments in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Most Latin Americans now live under governments of the Left of varying degrees of unreasonableness in economic policy. Mexico is likely to follow suit in its forthcoming national elections.
- Increasingly, these like-minded governments cooperate to achieve economic and political objectives very different from those of the US. (For instance, the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela have agreed to establish a South American Bank. Since Argentina has defaulted on 75 per cent of its debt and Venezuela is seeking to sell long-term government bonds despite inflationary budgetary policies, it is reasonable to assume that this bank would be the purchaser of last resort for their bonds.)
Overthrow
- In recent months mob violence has overthrown democratic governments supported by the US in Ecuador and Bolivia. A third such government in Colombia is fighting a terrorist insurrection supported from outside.
- And, finally, the Organisation of American States, meeting in Florida recently, voted down a US motion to establish a monitoring body that would "oversee" and protect democracy in OAS members with the help and participation of pro-democracy NGOs.
The sub-continent is returning to its traditional posture of suspicion and hostility towards the US. And because Bush is dismantling immigration controls as part of his pan-American conservative vision, its instability could be exported here.
All that has been lacking for a really serious crisis has been a leader like Castro and a unifying revolutionary ideology like Marxism to exploit and shape this instability. And both may now be available.
Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, is the leading anti-American figure in Latin America who is also forging alliances with anti-American regimes from China to Iran.
He is a more effective opponent of the US than his close ally, Fidel Castro, because he sits on enormous oil revenues which grow daily with the price of oil.
Like Peron, he uses this windfall to buy a temporary domestic popularity through social spending on poorer Venezuelans. Like Castro he assists terrorist movements against pro-American regimes like the Colombian government.
And he is currently building up his military and purchasing weaponry on a large scale.
Yet he enjoys respectability and influence among other Latin American leaders from Castro to Argentina's Nestor Kirchner. He is the most active agent in such schemes as the South American Bank.
And he is rapidly creating a continent-wide leftist movement under the banner of the "Bolivarian Revolution"- a glamorous but not very coherent mish-mash of the revolutionary ideas of the 1960s, the semi-academic "dependency" theories of the 1970s, and the anti-globalisation attitudinising of the 1990s.
Chavez's main political strength is that he was elected democratically; his main political weakness is that he is not governing democratically.
Rather, he is harrying political opponents like the pro-democracy NGO activist who is threatened with prison for accepting a $30,000 (Dh110,000) grant from Washington's National Endowment for Democracy.
It is an open secret that the US motion calling for the OAS to monitor democracy in its members was aimed at Chavez.
But Latin America lined up with him against the US in rejecting it. The Bolivarian Revolution will merely "plough the sea", in the disillusioned words of Bolivar himself.
Still, it has a long way to go before it sinks. Bush's pan-American conservatism has already drowned.
John O'Sullivan, former adviser to Lady Thatcher and former editorial page editor of The New York Post, is editor-at-large of the National Review and a member of Benador Associates.
