Chavez is cruisin' for a bruisin'
Thomas Barnett
¦"Venezuela's Oil-for-MiGs Program: President Chavez appears fully prepared to menace neighboring states,"," op-ed by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal, 24 September 2004, p. A15.
I have to admit that I like this lady's stuff by and large. She's fairly hawkish, but she never seems to be unreasonable about it, and her charges tend to stick.
O'Grady's really got it on for Hugo Chavez, as many of us do. He's just clever enough with his populism to appear legitimate, but he's not really doing anything to move the pile in Venezeula. Does he distribute the oil wealth better than the previous controlling elite? Yes. But he also doesn't do any better in improving Venezuela's long-term economic connectivity with the outside world, something a country cursed by oil needs to do with that wealth over time. Instead, he picks fights, he buys arms, he talks tough, he cracks down on dissident, he creates a bully militia to break heads when he feels the need. in short, Chavez is never going to be good for Venezueal over the long run. He's ruled for a while, and shows all signs of never wanting to give up power, so he's pretty much near the top of the list of "big men" who will eventually need to be toppled if the Gap is going to get shrunk.
O'Grady details his regional meddling in this op-ed: he bullies Bolivia like Syria bullies Lebanon, he's building up arms to a level that makes absolutely no sense given his neighbors (unless he's planning to do things to them, which Venezuela engages in every so often)--like $5 B in MiG fighters from Russia. Where is he going with all this? Nowhere good, that's for sure.
Chavez got away with strong-arming the attempted recall vote, but it's only going to get more ugly and he alienates more and more people there and is forced to manipulate the political process more and more to stay in power. I predict he'll declare himself President-for-Life at some point, setting in motion what will be an inevitable endgame with the U.S. at some fork down the road.
Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett |
