The Decline Of A Regional Troublemaker

Hugo Chavez is recovering in a Havana hospital.  He was operated upon for an abscess on his pelvic bone.  The operation was a success as is attested to by a photo of the Paratrooper Turned Socialist Revolutionary standing next to his semi-senescent spiritual mentor, Fidel Castro, and the not-quite-drooling Raul.  There has been no word as to whether or not the Soviet trained Cuban surgeons operated on Hugo's larger and more deadly abscess, the one located in his brain housing group.

Sr Chavez is probably not in too much of a hurry to get back home to Caracas, a city so deadly as to make Juarez appear as peaceful and tranquil as, say, Geneva, Switzerland.  Not only are the bullets flying in greater number than antisemitic slurs in a Cairo mosque on Friday but the economy of Venezuela is heading down the tubes at an ever greater approximation of warp speed.  Further, the grand ambitions of the one-time sergeant to be the Mr Grande of South America are resting in ruins, crushed by the always victorious treads of the ultimate panjandrum--reality.

The oil powered, bribe based diplomacy of Sr Chavez has been ended by the declining production of his country's aging and poorly maintained production fields and infrastructure.  With the ending of the financial inducements has come the ending of Chavez's influence outside of a handful of ideological kinsmen: Ortega, Morales, Correa, and Cristina Fernandez.

While relations with Columbia have improved, this is no fault of Sr Chavez.  The Bolivarian dictator, however, does bear responsibility for the deterioration of relations between Brazil and Venezuela.  Even Peru's new president, who was widely seen prior to his election as a natural ally of Chavez, has repented of his enthusiasm for the Bolivarian Socialist Revolution.  The meltdown of the Peruvian stock market in the immediate wake of his election convinced Ollanta Humala to recast himself instantly as a fan of former Brazilian president Lula de Silva's pro-business philosophy.  (Of course the change may prove to be short-lived, rhetorical, and cosmetic.)

Perhaps, most critically, a recent public opinion poll covering eighteen Latin American countries shows Chavez with the second lowest favorable rating.  (In the coveted position of most unfavorably viewed, one finds Fidel.)  The most recent poll gives Chavez the lowest rating to date of the twelve years he has been running and ruining Venezuela.

Ruining seems almost too kind a word.  Venezuela has an official inflation rate of twenty-three percent.  Its government debt is rising at a rate compared to which the record of the Obama administration appears to be one of pronounced fiscal restraint.  As if those numbers were not bad enough, unemployment runs at a minimum of fifteen percent--double that among youth aged fifteen to twenty-five.

Then there is electricity.  Or, more properly, the lack of electricity.  Venezuela is a green energy heaven with very significant hydro capacity.  Due to the usual suspects--deferred maintenance and inept management--the country now has rolling blackouts and periodic unannounced and unscheduled power outages.  The applied ideology of Chavez and his cronies is solely responsible for this lamentable fact.

The same applies to the flight of capital--both financial and human--from Venezuela to neighboring countries, most commonly Panama.  The middle class, the techocrats, the skilled managers, the small to middling men of commerce and business have left Venezuela in ever increasing droves for the past several years.  Short of building a Berlin Wall around the country, Chavez and his fellow Bolivarians have no means of stopping the crippling losses of money and talent.

Chavez faces reelection in 2012.  Having failed in his repeated attempts to change the constitution so as to allow him to become president-for-life, the Little Man On Horseback must seek another term in office courtesy of the much abused Venezuelan citizenry.  Of course, the man may seek to short-circuit the demands of constitution and democratic process alike.  He has a paramilitary force not unlike the Iranian Bands of Thugs.  He has used this capacity previously to silence dissent and prevent opposition to implementation of his policies, opposition which has come from his own "base" and not the "counterrevolutionary elements."  There is no doubt but his running buddy, Ahmedinejad, has counselled this approach.

The redoubtable dictator has renewed his call for a purely Latin American counterpart to the OAS which would exclude the US and Canada.  This move can be seen as a centerpiece for a nationalistically focused reelection campaign.  Chavez will portray himself  as the embattled foe of the American run imperialistic neo-colonialism.  He will invoke the specters of globalization and the IMF, multinational corporations and the World Bank, Yanqui imperialism and economic exploitation.  All the usual villains will be enlisted to aid Chavez.

The US should pay a bit more attention to South America as Ms Clinton has suggested.  However, there should be rational limits to our attempts to cozen our way back to influence in the region.  We should not, for example, sacrifice our relations with the UK to flatter Ms Fernandez's grand ambition to gain the Falkland Islands.  This still leaves a wide scope for new demarches including a retraction from the Era of Globalization and Privatization lingering on from the time of Bill Clinton.

Retracting from the excesses of globalization along with a new, due regard for the status of the original inhabitants of South America would go a very long way to lowering the appeal of the Bolivarian Revolution and, thus, its emblems such as Hugo Chavez.  We might even make him wish to return to the hospitality of Fidel's own hospital.