- WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - While
President George Bush played nice with Mexican President Vicente Fox at
the North American Summit in Texas, U.S. media attention was focused more
on Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's efforts to sound the alarm against
Latin American 'troublemakers' in his recent swing through the region.
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- Topping his list was populist Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, followed by a nemesis from bygone days, former Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega, who was accused by an unnamed 'senior official' in Secy.
Rumsfeld's delegation of hoarding several hundred Russian-made surface-to-air
missiles (SAMs) that Washington wants to see destroyed.
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- Indeed, at the start of Secy. Rumsfeld's trip, Washington
announced the suspension of all U.S. military assistance to Nicaragua --
about $2.3 million -- pending the destruction of the missiles that Washington
contend might be obtained by terrorists.
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- At the same time, the right-wing National Review published
a cover story by Pres. Bush's top Latin America aide during his first term,
Otto Reich, a Cuban-American, on "Latin America's Terrible Two,"
referring to Pres. Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro. The magazine's
cover, with a photo of the two men in close conversation, featured a banner
reading "The Axis of Evil ...Western Hemisphere Version."
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- "With the combination of Castro's evil genius, experience
in political warfare, and economic desperation, and Chavez' unlimited money
and recklessness, the peace of this region is in peril," wrote Mr.
Reich. "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," he wrote, echoing a series
of opinion pieces that have appeared mostly in the editorial pages of the
Wall Street Journal in recent weeks.
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- Secy. Rumsfeld's efforts appeared to be part of an orchestrated
campaign that began in January when, during her confirmation hearings,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice referred to Pres. Chavez as a 'negative
force' in the region.
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- Recently, the Miami Herald reported that Pres. Bush himself
was taking a personal interest in Pres. Chavez' actions and rhetoric and
that various policy options to toughen Washington's stance toward Caracas,
including efforts to discredit the Venezuelan leader for alleged corruption,
and to persuade his neighbors, notably Brazil, to distance themselves from
him, were now being actively pursued.
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- "We need to have a strategy to contain Chavez,"
said Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, the Pentagon's top Latin America official, at
a recent defense conference in Miami. A hard-liner whose thinking is close
to that of Mr. Reich, he later told the Financial Times of London that
Pres. Chavez "is picking on the countries whose social fabric is the
weakest. In some cases, it's downright subversion."
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- The fact that Secy. Rumsfeld chose Brasilia, Brazil,
as the place from which to issue his strongest attack yet -- assailing
Venezuela's decision to buy 100,000 AK-47s from Russia -- suggested that
such a strategy is already in play.
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- If the shipment goes through, he added, "it wouldn't
be good for the hemisphere."
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- The Chavez government has insisted that the guns will
be used to replace the 35,000-man army's aging stocks of FAL rifles.
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- Nevertheless, Washington sees the AK-47 order as part
of a much larger arms build-up, financed by high global oil prices, that
may include the purchase of fighter jets from Brazil, gunboats from Spain,
and as many as 50 assault attack helicopters and 30 MIG-29 fighter jets
from Russia.
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- Washington is also increasingly worried about the larger
geo-strategic implications of Pres. Chavez' petro-policies. The United
States currently imports about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from Venezuela
-- or about 60 percent of Venezuela's total oil exports. But Pres. Chavez,
who has warned that he will cut off the oil supplies if Washington tries
to overthrow him, has been trying to diversify his customers.
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- In recent months, he has signed contracts with France,
India and China. To help with his diversification efforts, he further alienated
Washington by commissioning Iranian technical assistance. Earlier in March,
he hosted Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, to whom he expounded on Teheran's
right "to develop atomic energy and to continue its research in that
area" and voiced his "profound rejection of the imperialist desires
of the U.S. government."
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- At the same time, he has provided oil at cut-rate prices
to Cuba, in exchange for the services of thousands of doctors and teachers
working without charge in rural areas and urban slums.
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- What makes all of this appear threatening to the Bush
administration is the leftward, anti-neo-liberal trend throughout Latin
America, as Mr. Reich himself conceded despite its reflection on his own
stewardship of U.S. policy there.
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- Citing 'press reports' that a "leftist-populist
alliance is engulfing most of South America," Mr. Reich, who also
suggests that Ortega's Sandinistas may soon be voted back into power in
poverty- stricken Nicaragua, says, "This is the reality U.S. policymakers
must confront; and our pressing specific challenge is neutralizing the
Cuba-Venezuela axis."
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- To some critics, this campaign could well prove counter-productive.
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- "It's as if these people have a compulsive need
to see Latin American reality only through a Manichean lens, whereby they
have to identify an evil force to mobilize against and the complexities
of the region get simplified into these dualisms of good and evil,"
said Geoffrey Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human
rights group.
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- "We've been dealing with Castro as evil incarnate,
and we've made ourselves a laughing-stock throughout the region and done
nothing to effectively encourage democratization and human rights in Cuba,"
he added. "If we approach Chavez the same way, we're likely to have
the same results."
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- © Copyright 2005 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com
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- http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1913.shtml
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