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.

Chavez Continues To Prove The Obvious

Some people just don't ever learn. High on the list of those who are learning impaired are socialists. Topping that heap is Hugo (The Mouth of the South) Chavez whose Bolivarian Revolution--"Socialism for the Twenty-First Century" is coming an every bigger cropper with each passing day.

While Hugo's weekly hours of rant on Venezuelan radio/television remind one of Castro's original brand albeit with a sense of humor, the paratrooper-turned-strongman is not simply a clown with delusions of adequacy. He is a potential danger to the stability and peace of at least a portion of South America as his recurrent threats and bloviations against neighboring Columbia make clear.

He is also a potential menace to the security of the US. Some of the potential menace is indirect, the consequence of Venezuela becoming a major drug shipment center. But, the real potential for danger arises from the ever closer relations between Chavez' government and that of Iran, and, even more important in the emerging threat category, the use of Venezuela by Hezbollah and Hamas personnel.

The combination of drug smuggling; the presence of dedicated, well-trained specialists in terror and asymmetrical warfare; Iranian money and other resources; Chavez' personal, visceral hatred, fear, and loathing of the US; and the collapsing Venezuelan economy does not bode well for American national interest or security. The apparent instability of Chavez' psyche coupled with the evident erosion of the Venezuelan social compact under economic stress does nothing to reassure one that the Hero Of The Bolivarian Revolution might not continence, even foster a clandestine strike against US territory even before launching an adventure into Columbia with his new Russian supplied weaponry.

The implosion of the economy in Venezuela, the fifth largest source of US oil, has reached levels which must be alarming to the Vaca of Caracas. Inflation is reported at thirty-five percent--and rising as if Hugo is bent on imitating his mentors in Iran. Rolling blackouts caused by the decaying nature of the country's hydroelectric system and complicated by the decay of its oil fired power plants hit all the country's larger cities for several hours (or more) per day.

The darkened streets of Caracas must be a boon to the criminals of the city. Caracas has a homicide rate which surpasses even that of Cuidad Juarez where the murders are so commonplace that they are now lumped together in the "other news" section of the daily papers. Given the loss of employment in Caracas, the growth of crime and murder is not surprising.

Somewhat more surprising is the fact that Venezuela's downhill slide started a couple of years ago during the period of record high oil prices. This counter-intuitive condition can be attributed simply and solely to the sheer incompetence and total ineptitude of the socialists who have taken over so much of the country's extraction and manufacturing base and a fair chunk of its agricultural products distribution system.

While South America is generally on a fast road to recovery from the Great Recession with Peru, Chile and Brazil pegged to have growth rates this year at or above four percent, Venezuela is projected to have a contraction of at least two percent and perhaps as much five. This decline comes on top of last years negative growth of 3.3 percent.

All the decline can be attributed to the moribund nature of the private sector coupled with the exceptional inefficiency of the nationalized industries and businesses. In short, Chavez has been proving once again the sad stories of Cuba and other adopters of the socialist brand of command economies: Socialism does not work.

Chavez loudly and almost without letup pins the rap for the failure of his Bolivarian brand on the sinister manipulations of the US. To make sure his message is the only one heard, the Mouth has closed all opposition outlets, jailed dissidents, and, most recently, launched a risible counterattack on Twitter. But no matter how creative and insistent Chavez might be, the combination of oppression and propaganda can neither conceal nor reverse the structural realities at home.

Money blown on weapons cannot be spent on urgently necessary repairs to and improvements of the country's degenerate infrastructure. Efforts directed toward militarizing the nation's youth, suppressing dissent, excoriating neighbors, pouring vitriol on the US and other evil capitalists cannot go toward identifying and rectifying such basic, enervating difficulties as the flight of the middle class, the technically competent, the educated, the people whose energies and talents are so vital to the collective success of the nation and the state.

Looking ahead, it is necessary to ask, "Sr Chavez, when the verbal mongering of war proves insufficient, when the blame game fails, when the bottom continues to fall out of your revolution, what then?"

The underlying anxiety must be that Chavez will resort finally to the reality of war in a desperate attempt to rally a disenchanted population around the national flag--and his leadership. A "splendid little war" perhaps. One with Columbia might do. Or a border dispute with Brazil, or even a tiny naval contretemps with the US. All these are notional at the moment, but none are impossible, particularly should Chavez' party come out on the short end of the vote in the parliamentary elections next September.

The popularity of the volatile Chavez is currently lower than that of President Obama in the US. Hugo is aware of this unpleasant and most inconvenient of truths; so also are his satraps, lackeys, and goons whose phony-baloney jobs are at stake. Balancing this is Hugo's experience based awareness that elections can be jiggered even with Jimmy Carter looking on.

But jiggering and the inevitable post-jiggering criticism from without and dissent from within can take the fun out of being Strongman-For-Life. It is at trying times like this that a re-elected dictator needs some help from his friends. Something to take away the pain of all those accusations, all that finger-pointing and name-calling. A little balm for the embattled soul of a man dedicated to his people.

Sure, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua will leap to the call. They all are, after all, the most fraternal of states, all possessed of a weak, socialist economy; a politics of victimization; and united in a common distaste for the US. But, their sympathy might not be enough to offset the difficulties in which Hugo stands.

He may need heavier guns in his corner. A more potent--and successful source of succor.

Ah, yes, there is a friendly country which meets that description--Iran. Tehran has a fine record of staring down the US and the rest of the Security Council. It sure would be comforting to get a bit of understanding and support from that quarter.

In answering, Iran may call for a bit of the old quid pro quo.

For the quid of diplomatic, military, and economic support, Hugo might be asked, politely of course, by someone from Tehran, "Say, Sr Chavez, how about giving our guys from Hezbollah a little fraternal assistance on a trip to the Land Up North?"

That one could hurt--us.

Hey, Chief! What About Chavez The Terrorist?

President Obama and (as he loves to put it--repeatedly) "his team" had best take a second, longer, and much closer look at Hugo Chavez and his merry crew of friends and colleagues both inside and without the "Bolivarian Revolution." The president's previously expressed view that Hugo (The Mouth of the South) Chavez does not represent a threat to the US or its interests just does not square with reality.

The finding the other day by the Spanish judiciary holding a direct linkage existed between Chavez's regime, the narco/criminal/insurgent group FARC, and the Basque separatist insurgent entity ETA is but one more (almost superfluous) nail in the Obama version of the Rodney King Dictum: "Can't we just all get along together?" Mr King's plaintive cry was both touching and justifiable; for the president of the United States to echo it in practice is destructive of national interest and appropriate only to someone living in an alternative reality.

For reasons both personal and political Hugo Chavez must oppose the US, must be hostile to its interests, must operate in any and all ways possible to undermine American efforts and policies both in the region, and, if possible, elsewhere in the world. He is personally more hostile to the US than were such obvious American foes as Stalin and Hitler. For them the opposition was merely business, the requirement of policy per se. For Chavez the motivations come from some deep personal well of antipathy as well as the dictates of politics.

As the Spanish judge noted in his findings Chavez's regime engaged the services of both FARC and ETA in the task of pursuing targets marked for assassination. The assassinations were intended to terrorize opponents of Chavez both internal and foreign based--most notably the president of Columbia, Uribe. In short, Chavez is the sponsor of terrorism.

Chavez and his regime have cultivated close and growing ties with Hezbollah and Hamas as well as the chief sponsor of these groups, Iran. The "Bolivarian" government has provided facilities and support to representatives and agents of both Hezbollah and Hamas. This means he is just as much a sponsor of terrorism as Iran.

There is an increasing body of information showing that operatives of both jihadist groups are working closely with assorted narcotrafficker syndicates in Venezuela, which has become an increasingly critical shipment point for product destined to both Europe and North America. This development implies that Hamas and Hezbollah personnel as well as their Iranian or Syrian "advisors" will have increasing access to the sophisticated smuggling systems established to funnel contraband into the US.

The evidence was clear a year ago. It is far more so today. Venezuela is a state sponsor of terrorism. The only missing link when Mr Obama took office was a straightforward finding by a court of competence to the effect that Venezuela aided, abetted, or engaged in the use of terror as an instrument of state policy.

There is no missing link now thanks to the ability and courage of a single Spanish judge. And, make no mistake about it, the judge was correct. His correctness has been underscored by the howls and squeals of protest and denial originating in Caracas. The desperate wiggling of Chavez and Company is seen best with the recycling of the Interpol discredited Venezuelan assertion that evidence extracted from the laptop once belonging to FARC's number two honcho by the Columbian government more than a year ago was counterfeit.

Sorry, Hugo, that wingless airplane will not fly. Interpol is not, as you allege, a mere tool of the Yankee imperialists. Your position to the contrary is akin to the Iranian allegation that the IAEA has been taken over by the US.

The time has come for a change in American policy. It is time to add Venezuela to Iran, Cuba, Sudan, and Syria as a state which sponsors terrorism. It is time for the consequences of that designation to be applied to Caracas and environs. To put it bluntly, it is time for the Obama administration and the president to encounter one more unpleasant reality: Hugo Chavez and his regime are hostile to the US and a clear threat to its interests in the region as well as here at home.

A nice smile and a quick willingness to say, "I am not George W. Bush," does not win friends nor influence states. These politically valuable features do not make the US any less likely to be threatened or even attacked by those who wish us ill. That group includes not only Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, or Islamists only; it includes Venezuela's Maximum Leader as well.

Mr Obama, Hugo Chavez and his "Bolivarian Revolution" have met the test as a state sponsor of terrorism. Don't you have the intellectual and moral courage necessary to match that of a single Spanish judge and accept reality as it has been shown to be?

Then There Is (Always) Hugo Chavez

It's hard to know whether to see the humor in Hugo (Mouth of the South) Chavez or not.

On the one hand, the man's gift for verbosity, which was exhibited in all its varied moods not only at the UN General Assembly but in his one-on-one interview with Larry King, provides much ground for amusement.

On the other, this self-anointed successor to Fidel Castro and single-handed inventor of the latest gimcrack form of "socialism" dubbed "Bolivarianism," has shown a definite propensity for authoritarianism, suppression, and regional troublemaking.

His anti-Americanism is rather much standard issue and nothing to be particularly concerned over. His Yankee bashing plays well with his base and helps divert attention from the decaying economy. There is no surprise that Chavez has blamed that on the US as if the US alone has caused the global decline in oil prices, a reality which has hit Venezuela hard.

Chavez needs the myth of the US-as-Empire in order to keep his hands on the levers of power. This is why he has pumped the recent not-quite-finalized agreement between the US and Columbia to allow US drug enforcement efforts including those of the military to be based on seven Columbian military installations into a full-fledged invasion threat.

Without the scary Americans, questions might be asked even among Venezuela's poorest people--Chavez' base--about why he is spending a couple of billion scarce bucks on Russian arms rather than on them. A Latin American dictator has historically possessed two choices if he wanted to stay in power. The first was to proclaim his wedding to the anti-Communist status quo and get the unquestioning support of American administrations one after the other. The second option was to announce often and loudly that "The Yankees are coming! The Marines are landing! The CIA is trying to kill me!"

Chavez took the second route even though the Clinton administration treated him with the kindest of kid gloves and the Obama administration is doing likewise. The man in the middle, George W. Bush, did not and that was a mistake. The animus held by the Bush/Cheney administration for any anti-American leftist with a large mouth provided Chavez with all the material he needed to play repression as self-defense against the empire.

Probably more through preoccupation with matters of larger import than the coming of the Hugo Chavez Bolivarian Revolution, the Clinton White House and State Department rather ignored Venezuela. This was the best course to take. It should have been followed by the Bush/Cheney crew as well, but, blinded as always by neocon ideology, they took the Mouth of the South seriously. By doing so they transformed Chavez from an irrelevancy to a problem.

During the years of Bush/Cheney, Chavez not only tied himself to the aging "socialists" of Cuba and Nicaragua, but to a pair of ideological companions, Ewo Morales, the elected Los Indios jefe grande of Bolivia and Rafael Correa, the US educated economist turned Ecuadorian president. The "Bolivarian Revolution" had two bloodless conquests and now had to be taken seriously as a political force in South America.

The "Bolivarian" movement promises "Socialism For the Twenty-First Century" but so far seems to be the same old sort of destroy-the-bourgeois-raise-the-proletariat approach to economic, social, and political life. The "Bolivarian" version does have the add-on of oil and natural gas which should provide the "socialists" of all three countries with the means to alleviate poverty, end illiteracy, heal the sick, feed the hungry, and generally bring the paradise on Earth which"socialism" always promises those on the bottom of the heap.

In the past the advent of a socialist regime has generally meant the enhancement of government power, the increasing restrictions of customary rights and immunities enjoyed by citizens, a hike in "defense" expenditures, and breathless "revolutionary" oratory in all the official media. This pattern has been followed by all three members of the Chavez headed "Bolivarian" movement.

Social unrest, middle-class flight, and the other usual accessories of a socialist takeover have also been observed in all three countries with Venezuela exhibiting them to the greatest degree. How any of this has benefited the "wretched" of each is unclear. Perhaps saying, "Well, he is one of us, one of the poor, a man of the masses," makes up for continued inequalities of economic and political power and social status. Perhaps it even provides comfort when stores lack milk or other basic commodities. (No, Hugo, the US didn't do that either.)

The US and other Western countries have much to answer for in South America given the overall impact of "globalization" and "de-regulation" on the people in a number of South American countries. The rush to globalization, which started in the Clinton administration and continued with some acceleration under its successors, did much damage to those least able to absorb it throughout much of South America.

It is not surprising that many accepted that change, radical change, was called for in the wake of "privatization" and its handmaiden "globalization." It is unfortunate, and for the US a potentially major problem that the radical change taken brought ambitious strongmen typified by Hugo Chavez to power.

Chavez has established relations with both Iran and its proxy Hezbollah so as to establish outposts of state sponsored Islamist jihadism in the Western Hemisphere--which is a threat compared to which the supposed threat posed by Communist Cuba pales into deserved insignificance. He has clear ambitions of becoming some sort of leader in the global South.

The recently concluded Second South America-Africa Summit held in Venezuela and graced by such as Colonel Gaddafi and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is a fine demonstration of this. It is easy, quite tempting really, to toss off this grandiose meeting as being irrelevant.

The easy temptation must be resisted. There is quite a bit of barely concealed frustration, pent up hostility, resident in both South America and Africa. The totem of victim status is waved quickly, easily, and with great effect by leaders from these regions. The message of both Chavez and Gaddafi that the "imperial nations" owe compensation for the presumed exploitation of their colonial adventures has wide appeal. The increasing populations and decreasing prices for agricultural and extracted commodities have combined to generate increasing poverty and its concomitants, resentment and envy in many places in both continents.

Hugo Chavez has shown a real ability at exploiting and capitalizing upon latent resentments, unsuppressed envy, and hardly covert hatred. He is young, ambitious beyond measure, and highly able. He is more of a regional politician than Fidel Castro ever was. His internal politics and external diplomacy shows that.

Managing the problems and mitigating the potential threat presented by Chavez is a genuine challenge for the Obama administration and State Department. Benign neglect will no longer suffice as it did in the days of Bill Clinton. The opposition of the Bush/Cheney period would be counterproductive. What remains is the middle path of accepting Chavez as a fact on the ground while letting him know politely but unmistakably that there are lines he cannot cross without severe consequences.

Hugo Chavez said both at the UNGA and on the Larry King broadcast that he wants to be treated with respect, the respect of an equal. Take him at his word. Let him know there are limits and what the limits are. Let him know what the consequences will be if he violates the limits.

After all, friends treat friends with honesty, Hugo.