Drugs, Oil and Hugo Chavez
Topic: Energy, South America, Western Hemisphere| No Comments »The demise of Hugo Chavez should be a goal of the United States. This left wing nut and compadre to Fidel Castro has revealed he wants to destabilize South America. In a recent attack carried out by Columbian forces, a Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Columbia (or FARC) top commander was killed along with several of his supporters. 
Columbia reports there were documents recovered that revealed the Venezuelan president has bankrolled the terrorist group and there was reportedly information the group was attempting to obtain uranium. The validity of this information may be questioned but Hugo Chavez publicly mourned the death of the slain FARC leader, Raúl Reyes. Hugo Chavez has also colluded with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in condemning the attack. The FARC are among the most notorious rebels in South America. In Robert Kaplan’s 2005 book, Imperial Grunts, he writes about the FARC:
The FARC, with its seventeen thousand or so fighters, no longer represented the shaggy haired university idealists of the Cold War era, but a criminal army built on the forced recruitment of teenage boys and girls, in which desertion led to the slaughter of one’s family. FARC leader Manuel Marulanda, perhaps the world’s oldest living guerrilla, might still have harbored ideals. But with an income variously estimated at $500 million annually in protection money and cocaine business, the FARC was Karl Marx at the top and Adam Smith all the way down the command chain. (p.50)
It is reported that Arabs militants such as Hamas and Hezbollah are being funded by the Chavez government. Chavez is also providing secure zones for FARC from which they are trying to destabilize democratic Columbia. The US military has redoubled its efforts in Columbia under President Bush in a policy known as Plan Columbia which began in 2001. The plan has brought a level of stability to Columbia by putting pressure on rebel groups such as FARC and FLN (National Liberation Army), driving the drug trade further underground and also giving President Álvaro Uribe some breathing room. Uribe has an 80% approval rating in his own country, the highest in his five years as President. Chavez has recently called Columbia the Israel of South America because of US’s involvement there. 
However, Chavez’s own situation in his country has grown tenuous. Anti-FARC protests are common in Venezuela. Their brutal tactics are well known throughout the region. Since the cross border attack, Chavez has ordered troops to the border with Columbia but most see it as bluster since Chavez may not have the support of his generals to do anything drastic. Chavez is a menace and President Bush has done the right thing in bolstering Columbia’s democracy.
America imports nearly 15% of its oil from Venezuela. Everywhere you turn it appears the snakes are rattling around the barrels. It is a further indication of the need of this country to unify around a policy that rids us of foreign oil. In the meantime Chavez’s popularity in Venezuela has waned and the US should do whatever it can to show this pariah the door.
Columbia Stands as a Beacon of Hope
Every winter we hear about little old ladies who can’t afford their energy bill and live in small cold apartments. Well, it appears the Ukraine is playing that role these days. Russia’s energy company Gazprom has reduced the flow of natural gas to the Ukraine by 25% because of a delinquent bill. 
The Ukraine, by far the largest importer of Russia’s natural gas, has promised to pay the bill but says the reduction in gas output from Russia is not a major issue since the winter in that generally cold nation has been mild. Some believe Russia’s move was meant to show the region that she plans on continuing Putin’s strong hand. Russia and the Ukraine have a long history of tension culminating in Stalin’s decimation of the population of this largely agricultural country in the 1930s when he starved between seven and nine million Ukrainians after they failed to embrace his policies. 
There were several options on the ballot but Putin’s control of the government meant access to information on these other candidates was severely limited in most cases and outright restricted in others. The one man most known in the west, Gary Kasparov the chess champion, was denied inclusion on the ballot and is one of the key opposition leaders who has called the election a “farce”. Assemblies have often been broken up by law enforcement officials within Russia and the media is run by the state and thus is pro-Putin. 
A win by him in either Texas or Ohio will send his opponent “to the showers”. If he manages to win both it will bring down the curtains for sure. The Obama campaign has learned a valuable lesson from the Kerry campaign of four years ago. Whenever there is an attack from either Clinton or McCain, they waste no time in returning fire; sometimes in a matter of hours. They understand the power of the “swiftboat” and it appears, like in the famous line in Jaws, that his opponent are going to need a bigger boat.
Bush claimed that such a meeting would give credence to the authoritarian regime. I am so sick of this administration’s callous disregard for precedents and a strange neglect of history. When Republican President Richard Nixon visited China, a move seen as one of his few achievements, China was one of the most authoritarian nations on the planet. Look at Chinese-American relations now. Granted the economic policy highly favors China and that needs to change but China has moved beyond their insular foreign policy and has begun a new movement of openness that will not be reversed. After Senators Kerry and McCain pressed the President to normalize relations with Vietnam in 1995, trade restrictions were lifted and in 2000 President Clinton became the first US President to visit the nation since the war ended. (President Nixon actually visited the Vietnam while still at war in 1969). The communist state has followed China’s lead and they have allowed free trade to flourish in this once closed country. And now there is debate over Cuba. Is there anyone who does not doubt the same result we have seen in the communist nations of China and Vietnam will also ensue in Cuba? It is time to return Cuba to the paradise it was in the 1940s. Resuming ties with the island nation will bring their society closer to ours, not vice versa.
