- The latest news report that Russia will sign an agreement
with the Bolivian government to explore and produce natural gas is a significant
setback for US domination of its traditional Latin American sphere of influence.
Since it was declared in 1823 as the Monroe Doctrine, the United States,
especially its banking elites have regarded South America as a de facto
'American plantation.' The move by Russia's state-owned Gazprom into Bolivia
must be seen as Moscow's asymmetric geopolitical response to US expansion
of NATO to the doorstep of Moscow in recent years. The US is ill-prepared
to counter with any economic incentive.
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- Gazprom Deputy CEO, Alexander Medvedev, announced at
a recent energy conference in Argentina that they would sign a final agreement
in the coming weeks with the Bolivian state oil and gas company, YFBP,
for a major joint venture to develop Bolivia's huge natural gas reserves.
Bolivia has the second largest gas reserves (1.5 trillion cubic meters)
in South America after Venezuela. Its key gas reserves are concentrated
in the country's southeast in Santa Cruz.
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- The Russian gas deal follows talks with Moscow on increased
Russian military aid to the Bolivian armed forces following a US cut-off
of all aid.
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- Bolivia's President, Evo Morales, the country's first
fully indigenous head of state in the 470 years since the Spanish Conquest,
has been on the target list of Washington since his popular election in
2005. In September 2008 Morales expelled the US Ambassador, accusing him
of fomenting opposition riots and protests against Morales. One week later,
the Bush Administration responded by putting Bolivia on the "counter-narcotics"
blacklist, cutting all US foreign aid. Curiously, the list is small, including
only three countries, all firm opponents of US policies-Bolivia, Venezuela
and Burma (Myanmar). Countries such as Mexico, Afghanistan, Colombia are
not cited by Washington suggesting there might be another agenda there.
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- In January 2009 Morales again won a decisive national
referendum allowing him to run for re-election and to take steps to control
large landholdings. With a 60 per cent "Yes" vote, Morales can
seek re-election in December 2009. As well, under the new powers, rich
landowners may be targeted for dispossession as the state now only allows
private ownership of large estates, Latifundistas, if the land is put to
'social use.' If not, the land may be seized by the state and redistributed.
As well the referendum gave the state more power over its energy resources.
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- War Over Water And Energy
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- The US interest in Bolivia is little other than crass
exploitation of that country's huge resources. Washington sent Harvard
"shock therapy" economist Jeffrey Sachs to Bolivia in the 1980's
to impose his radical therapy which killed inflation and did nothing to
alleviate the severe poverty. It did open up the resources of the country
to cheap exploitation by foreign multinationals like BP and ExxonMobil
as well as British and American water companies.
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- Former Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm Halliburton
had plans to exploit Bolivia's natural gas for export. In 2002 popular
outrage over the generous terms given by an earlier pro-US government to
Halliburton led to nationwide protests, dubbed the "Bolivian Gas War"
by media.
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- With growing popular protests and national strikes against
foreign exploitation of the country's resources, the Bolivian Congress
passed a new Hydrocarbons Law in 2005 that partially re-nationalized the
energy resources, while allowing foreign companies to lease, albeit on
less generous terms. YPFB had been privatized in 1996 and British firms
BP and BG along with Halliburton and ExxonMobil immediately came in then
to build a multi-billion dollar gas pipeline to export LNG to California.
Cheney's Halliburton was the main construction contractor.
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- Morales won a landslide election victory in December
2005 on a pledge to use the country's resources to develop the country's
economy, one of the poorest in South America. Since that time Washington
has covertly been supporting various opposition groups in Santa Cruz province
in the region of the gas and huge fresh water resources.
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- On May 1, 2006, President Morales signed a decree stating
that all gas reserves were to be nationalized: "the state recovers
ownership, possession and total and absolute control" of hydrocarbons.
Since then the government's energy-related revenue doubled and has increased
six-fold from 2002. Foreign companies were either compensated for their
holdings as with Shell, or continued to work but as minority partners with
the state.
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- Bush finds a 'retirement' ranch
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- Shortly before leaving office, according to South American
media reports, then President George W. Bush drew considerable attention
in Bolivia with reports he had arranged to buy a huge tract of land on
the Triple Frontier border of Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia "to retire."
Bush reportedly bought some 40000 hectares of land in Chaco, Paraguay,
near a US military base. Significantly, the land is reportedly located
in Paso de Patria, near Bolivian gas reserves and the Guarani indigenous
water region, within the Triple Border. The Guarani Aquifer is one of the
largest underground water reserves in South America, running beneath Argentina,
Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and larger than Texas and California together.
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- South America is now all but lost to US influence, with
only Colombia, a stalwart ally, and Peru considered still in Washington's
geopolitical orbit. The rest of the region has now swung against US influence,
led by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has cultivated anti-US allies like
Iran and Cuba, and has now invited the Russian air force and navy to exercise
in the Caribbean. Bolivia's Morales has strong ties to the governments
of Venezuela, Ecuador and recently of Paraguay, where former Bishop Fernando
Lugo won an upset victory in April 2008 breaking the 61 year domination
of the right-wing military Colorado Party.
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- The Bolivia-Russia Gazprom deal further secures a degree
of economic independence for Bolivia from the historical US economic domination.
For Russia, it offers an excellent chance to up pressure on the United
States in its backyard, its traditional "sphere of influence"
in the Americas, long considered a Rockefeller family plantation. Given
its deepening domestic economic crisis, the Obama Administration has few
cards to play beyond trying to create chaos in the region. It has little
positive to offer Bolivia or any of its neighbors. The process is like
a 'Grade B' rerun of the collapse of the British Empire in Africa and the
Indian Subcontinent after the Second World War.
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