Latin America's Terrible Two - Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez con

[CRad]

I thought this was interesting. A friend working down in LatAm sent it. He also sent regards to NDD as they were once on the same team. (Jr demo guy I believe)
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In military terms, the Western Hemisphere is the strategic rear area of the
United States. The U.S. needs a secure and prosperous hemisphere not only to
ensure a peaceful neighborhood in which to live, but also to be able to
project its power to the farthest reaches of the globe and win the War on
Terror.

What is happening in our neighborhood? Press reports indicate that a
leftist-populist alliance is engulfing most of South America. Some Andean
and Central American countries are sliding back from economic reforms and
narcotics eradication, and the Caribbean remains irrationally hostile to the
U.S. This is the reality U.S. policymakers must confront; and our most
pressing specific challenge is neutralizing or defeating the Cuba-Venezuela
axis. With the combination of Castro’s evil genius, experience in political
warfare, and economic desperation, and Chávez’s unlimited money and
recklessness, the peace of this region is in peril.

A quarter-century ago, a democratic revolution began to stir in Latin
America and the Caribbean. Today, that revolution is in danger of being
reversed. When Ronald Reagan came to power in 1981, more than three-quarters
of the region’s citizens lived under undemocratic regimes, mostly right-wing
military juntas, but also a few left-wing dictatorships. By 1981, the Soviet
Union and its cat’s paw, Fidel Castro, had succeeded in backing Marxist
takeovers in two nations close to U.S. shores: Grenada and Nicaragua.
Financed by the Soviets and by local kidnappings, drug trafficking, bank
robberies, and other criminal activities, Castro had spread his ideology of
violence throughout the Caribbean and Central America. By January 10, 1981,
ten days before Reagan’s first inauguration, the Castro-supplied Marxist
FMLN guerrilla group in El Salvador felt so confident of victory over a
moderate civilian-military junta that it launched what it called a “Final
Offensive” to give Reagan an “inaugural gift” of a Communist El Salvador.

In South America, a “dirty war” of left-wing violence in Argentina, Brazil,
and Uruguay had led to an equal and opposite reaction by right-wing military
regimes. At the hands of both sides, untold thousands were murdered,
tortured, or “disappeared,” under horrible conditions whose consequences are
with us to this day (some members of those leftist movements are among the
leaders democratically elected recently in South America). The Reagan
administration withstood severe attacks from the usual wrong-headed suspects
in Congress, the media, academia, and the churches, but managed to roll back
the Communist aggression — even this language now seems outdated, but it is
accurate.

THE LEFT’S RESURGENCE
By 1990, the tide had turned: There was not one
right-wing military government still in office (something for which Reagan
is not given credit in the so-called prestige press); over 90 percent of the
region’s population was living under elected governments; and most of the
remaining leftist regimes or terrorist movements, such as the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua, Noriega in Panama, and the FMLN in El Salvador, had few months of
political life left. The worst dictatorship remaining was Castro’s: His
regime was crumbling faster than usual with the end of $5 billion annual
Soviet subsidies. Free-market policies and individual initiative fueled a
promising return to prosperity in the Americas.

Today that progress — the legacy of freedom and democracy Reagan fought for
— is being threatened, and so is U.S. national security. Not only is Castro
still in power, but he is being kept afloat financially by Venezuela’s
oil-fueled charity; the Sandinistas are making a comeback in Nicaragua; and
violent radical groups menace democracy from Bolivia to Haiti. In recent
years, left-of-center leaders have come to power in Chile, Brazil, Ecuador,
Argentina, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay.

Should we worry about these leftists? In general, yes. We know that
socialist prescriptions do not provide a solution for the problems of
developing nations — and as the chief importer of goods and of people in
this hemisphere; the U.S. will pay the price of their success or failure. We
would much rather pay the price in imported goods and services from
successful societies than bear the cost of surplus populations, crime, and
drugs exported by failed states. Another reason we should worry about some
of these newly elected leaders is that often, former revolutionaries have
acquired authoritarian habits that are hard to break. We, along with our
allies, must keep a close watch on whether these presidents respect the
human rights of their citizens. If a government is going to attempt to
destabilize a neighbor, or establish an authoritarian regime, it must begin
by violating the civil and political rights of its own people — by, for
example, intimidating the press and muzzling free speech, controlling the
labor unions, manipulating the currency, undermining private enterprise, and
all the while creating public distractions by blaming foreign devils for the
ills of the nation. And when governments take this path — as did the
Argentine generals in the 1980s with the Falkland Islands, and Castro and
Chávez more recently — they pose a threat to the survival of their
neighbors.

Of course, we cannot put all the leftists in one basket. We must
differentiate between individuals, and listen to what they say. Throughout
history, Western democracies, including the U.S., have erred in ignoring the
rhetoric of future despots. In the 1930s, few Europeans or Americans
believed Hitler’s Mein Kampf to be a viable blueprint for the takeover of
Germany and for a war of aggression and extermination by a racist political
regime (some exceptions to this rule, like Churchill, were labeled
warmongers and ridiculed by the intelligentsia). American “opinion leaders”
have always downplayed the threat posed by Castro, even after Castro begged
Nikita Khrushchev to launch a Soviet nuclear attack against the U.S. at the
height of the 1962 missile crisis. Many of these same congressmen,
academics, journalists, and diplomats now minimize or ignore another
would-be dictator in Venezuela. The U.S. cannot afford to follow them in
this mistake, because Chávez has what Castro has always wanted — lots of
money — and could use it to do great harm.

[CRad]

CONFRONTING CHÁVEZ
The first task of the U.S., and whatever coalition of the
willing it can muster in the region, is to confront the dangerous alliance
posed by Cuba and Venezuela. Chávez’s misappropriation of Venezuela’s
extraordinary oil wealth, and his willingness to subordinate the nation’s
sovereignty to Castro’s ambitions, is emboldening anti-American movements
that only a few years ago were weak, broke, and demoralized. Since 2000,
Chávez has injected billions of dollars into the Cuban economy (multiply
80,000 barrels of oil, times today’s price, times 365 days a year), thus
allowing Castro to extend the life of his bankrupt dictatorship. In
exchange, Castro has provided an estimated 20,000 or more “teachers” (read:
indoctrinators), intelligence agents, and military advisers to turn
Venezuela into another Cuba. Chávez has also provided safe haven to
Colombia’s Communist terrorist groups such as the FARC, thus undermining one
of the most democratic and successful leaders in the region, President
Alvaro Uribe. Recently a FARC leader, Rodrigo Granda, identified as that
terrorist group’s “foreign minister,” was captured inside Venezuela by
bounty hunters and delivered to the Colombian government. Granda, who was
enjoying the Venezuelan government’s “hospitality,” had received Venezuelan
documentation and had even voted in the August 2004 referendum that ratified
Chávez’s control. The democratic opposition in Venezuela and many foreign
observers are convinced that the referendum was fraudulent: How many
thousands of Colombians, Cubans, and other foreigners were given the same
illegal opportunity to vote for Hugo Chávez?

Castro isn’t the only beneficiary of Chávez’s largesse. Untold millions of
Venezuela’s oil dollars are also being diverted to such radical leaders as
Evo Morales in Bolivia, who advocates expansion of coca cultivation and
upholds Castro’s regime as the model for the Andean nations. Calling the
U.S. “the world’s most evil regime,” Chávez has threatened to cut off
exports of oil to the U.S. (Venezuela is our third largest source of foreign
oil) and sell it to China. In March, during the visit of the president of
Iran, Mohammed Khatami, to Caracas, Chávez publicly defended Iran’s right to
develop nuclear power and said that if the U.S. used military power to stop
Iran, Venezuela would cut off oil deliveries to the U.S.

MARCHING BOOTS
Chávez is also engaging in a major force buildup. According
to reports, he intends to acquire from Russia 50 sophisticated Mig-29s, 40
attack and transport helicopters, and 100,000 advanced AK-47s (an unusually
high number for an armed force of not more than 35,000 men); from Spain,
four naval frigates and an unspecified number of battle tanks; and from
Brazil, two dozen Tucano aircraft with air-to-ground attack capability.
These and other Venezuelan military acquisitions (the amount of weapons
transferred from Cuba or China is not known) threaten the peace of the
entire region.

The most vulnerable current targets of the Castro-Chávez axis are Nicaragua
and Bolivia. A Sandinista takeover in Nicaragua, this time not by force but
by Trotskyite subversion of civil institutions, is being resisted by the
same democratic forces that defeated the Communists over a decade ago. In
Bolivia, a struggle has been underway for years between democratic forces
and radical indigenous groups promoting an increase in coca cultivation and
nationalization of energy resources. But this time the radical, or
“anti-systemic” leftist forces have an advantage: They are receiving funding
and political/military assistance from the outside. Colombian FARC
“advisers” have been apprehended in Bolivia, and a couple of years ago the
Venezuelan military attaché was caught passing large quantities of money to
Evo Morales’s party, according to the former Bolivian defense minister.

In Nicaragua, the Marxist Sandinistas are making a political comeback
through an alliance with the party of disgraced former president Arnoldo
Alemán, currently serving a sentence for corruption. The Sandinista-Alemán
alliance is a threat to U.S. national security: It has prevented the elected
government of President Bolaños from destroying Soviet-era surface-to-air
missiles (SAM-7s) that can shoot down commercial or civilian aircraft.
Bolaños had agreed last year with then-secretary of state Powell to destroy
the missiles.

Though it represents the majority of the population in both countries, as
demonstrated by polls and elections, the pro-democracy, anti-radical civil
society is under violent threat — violence is the favorite tool of the
radicals — and thus needs the moral, political, and material support of the
free nations of the world. As usual, the leadership for that support,
especially in this part of the globe, must come from one country: the United
States. Moreover, the U.S. can and must work with democratic leftists, the
operative term being “democratic.” In fact, if they are like Chile’s
president, Ricardo Lagos, they are no more a danger to democracy and freedom
than is Tony Blair’s left-of-center Labour party — which, we should recall,
has been our closest ally in Europe. Lagos is the latest leftist Chilean
leader to preside over the continuation of an economic boom based on
free-market policies and individual initiative, the very antithesis of
socialism.

And if the new leaders are like Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, we can
be equally calm since, to date, Lula, as he is known, has governed without
violating any political or economic rights of Brazilians. He has carried out
centrist, orthodox economic policies that have resulted in substantial
economic progress. On the other hand, Brazil’s foreign policy does have the
leftist tilt and gratuitous anti-Americanism that is reflective of a
socialist European mindset — in spite of the fact that President Bush has
extended a hand of friendship and cooperation almost unprecedented to
someone who came to office with such strong left-wing credentials as Lula.
Bush ignored the many years of friendship between Lula and Communists such
as Castro and instead wisely focused on the fact that the former labor
unionist had always played the democratic game by the rules. Even when
persecuted by military regimes, Lula never advocated violence. He ran for
president of Brazil unsuccessfully three times before he won on the fourth
try. Bush and Lula have had several pleasant and productive bilateral
meetings; even before he was inaugurated, Lula was invited to a meeting in
the Oval Office, something unusual for a president-elect. Lula’s clearly
stated top priority is to find a way to feed the large proportion of
Brazil’s population that is malnourished; it is probable that he knows that
left-wing policies will not lift Brazilians from poverty and put food on
their tables, and that’s why he has chosen a rational, centrist economic
plan rather than Castroite policies.

The real danger to regional peace and stability today does not emanate as
much from those relatively new democratically elected presidents as it does
from two demagogues who have been around a while longer: Fidel Castro and
Hugo Chávez. The emerging axis of subversion forming between Cuba and
Venezuela must be confronted before it can undermine democracy in Colombia,
Nicaragua, Bolivia, or another vulnerable neighbor. Many countries in the
region are intimidated by the ability of the Castro-Chávez axis to mobilize
anti-government violence, as in Bolivia; or by Chávez’s brazen use of oil as
blackmail, as in the oil-starved and defenseless Caribbean island-nations;
or by the leftist movements from which many of the current leaders came.
Some are simply afraid to appear to support a policy favored by the
“imperialist” U.S. — but they will have to overcome these fears lest their
countries pay a severe price.

__________________________________________________ _______________

Mr. Reich served President Bush from 2001 to 2004, first as assistant
secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere and later in the National
Security Council. He now heads his own international government-relations
firm in Washington.

(If this has already been posted or is in the wrong place someone will be along shortly to correct the problem, no?)

[Roguish Lawyer]

Very interesting article.

So what should we do about Chavez?

[504PIR]

I would be very curious to know the extent of the PRC's involvement with Chavez. Red China has dramatically increaesed her influence in Latin America over the last 15 years.

[Airbornelawyer]

There are basically two directions Chavez can go, both left but with different results.

He can try to form an anti-American alliance with Cuba and Communist China. He can (continue to) meddle in the politics of other Andean states (Colombia and Bolivia, especially, but I wouldn't be surprised to find his fingerprints on any Sendero resurgence).

Or, he can try to form a more political leftist alliance with other, less roguish, left-wing governments. Spain's Socialists under Zapatero and his foreign minister have been pushing this agenda (of course, they've been reaching out to Castro too, but more in the political sense than the security ties Chavez has been advancing). Brazil's leftists under Lula! are the other main part of this equation.

Both directions are anti-American (well, anti-US; Venezuela is part of the Americas), but one is a threat while the other is a rivalry.

Chavez seems inclined toward the former course.

In either case, China will play an increasing role if only because of its growing energy needs. And while Angola and Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are interested in cold hard cash for their oil, countries like Sudan and Venezuela can benefit from China's cheap weapons and UN support.

[boat guy]

I think AL hit the nail on the head with regard to the PRC involvement with Chavez. There are two threads in China currently; Capitalism and Communism. the communist government is not necessarily anti US but seeks its own stabilization. As has been mentioned in other threads about globalization, the communist government of China is threatened by the rapid emergence of that country. In order to maintain their control I believe that they will continue to foster and develop relations with Chavez. Outright opposition to the US will not stabilize China, however if our loss is China's gain, I am sure that they will proceed without hesitation.