Venezuelan bluster

Russian and Venezuelan naval ships participated in j0oint exercises beginning yesterday, raising concerns about an incipient anti-American alliance. Is a new cold war imminent and is Venezuela this decade's version of Cuba as a Russian ally in the hemisphere. This Register editorial downplays the potential danger. The action is meant to tweak Uncle Sam's nose, to be sure, but both Russia and Venezuela are states with economies reliant to an unhealthy extent on petroleum products, and the global decrease in oil prices has made both of them weaker. Sure, Russia has showed that if the U.S. can play in its back yard( Georgia), Russia can play in ours (the Caribbean). Geopolitically, however, it doesn't mean all that much . . . yet . . . unless the U.S. keeps trying to pretend it's a unipolar world as its own economic underpinning weakens.

Silver lining to the financial crisis?

Here's a link to my most recent piece for Antiwar.com. It argues that if there is a bright side to the world financial crisis, it is the falling price of oil, which means that several countries that have amassed petrodollars and used them to make mischief in the world at large -- notably Iran, Russia and Venezuela -- will have less money available and thus less capacity to create problems for others.

The Register ran an editorial today that made a similar argument. Coincidence? I think not. I'm afraid my former colleague John Seiler misunderstood the import of the editorial and attacked it in his own blog. We ran the editorial in part to undercut the idea that the United States needs to be actively interventionist overseas to counter these countries, because the threats are petering out of their own accord -- not only because of the falling price of oil but because that falling price exposes some inherent weaknesses in the economies of those countries. I agree with almost everything John wrote, in fact, except for the part where he said the Register had become economic nationalists, for heaven's sake. John and I will remain friends, of course.

Brazil countering Venezuela nicely, thank you

There's little question that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is an enormous pain in the ass, with all his talk of establishing socialism, his attempts to create an anti-American coalition, and his nasty talk about the U.S., all facilitated by high oil prices, which keep filling his coffers despite the state oil company losing efficiency since he filled it with his cronies. A few neocons have even advocated military action or some CIA-style subversion.

As this story explains, however, Brazil is doing a pretty good job of neutralizing Venezuela, a game played with a certain amount of skill by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio da Silva. Da Silva ran as a leftist but governs like a moderate, and oil reserves dwarfing Venezuela's have been discovered offshore (though it will be expensive and take a while for the oil to start flowing). Lula is always lavish in his praise of Chavez, but he is making Venezuela more dependent on Brazil than vice-versa. Brazil's effort to establish a continental trade alliance is succeeding, while Venezuela's is sputtering. And on and on.

When countries (or their leaders) get rambunctious, it's usually their neighbors who are in the best position to counter them. The U.S. would be smart to stay out of it.

(I must confess to a certain identification with Brazil's da Silva because he looks like my doppelganger. The resemblance is so striking that when his picture appears in our paper my colleagues joke with me, wondering where I was over the weekend and why you never see a picture of me and da Silva together.)

South American crisis handled

Here's a link to the piece I did last week for Antiwar.com, explaining that many of the roots of the Colombian/Venezuelan crisis lie very much in the misguided and misbegotten U.S. war on drugs. Since that was written, the crisis seems to have been resolved -- as one would expect, since none of the parties had a real interest in going to the mattresses and spilling actual blood. The significant thing is that there was no need for outside intervention here, by the U.S., Europe or anybody else. People in a region can settle their own disputes? What a concept!

Venezuela and Colombia on the brink

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the trouble brewing between Venezuela and Colombia, following a raid by Colombian forces into Ecuadoran territory to bomb a FARC guerrilla camp. What there wasn't space to discuss was the extent to which troubles in Colombia are exacerbated by the drug war. The 40-year civil war/insurrection/whatever was relatively quiescent until the drug war was ramped up following "success" in drug suppression in Peru and Bolivia, which shifted more coca production to Colombia. Both the FARC and the right-wing paramilitaries found they could finance their activities by protecting narcotraffickers and growers and taking a cut of the huge prohibition premiums.