AP
Posted on 03/07/2004 1:41:04 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
If you think Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chávez was out of his mind when he broke the last vestige of diplomatic etiquette and called President Bush ''a jerk'' in his three-hour speech to the nation Sunday, you may be wrong.
The majority view among senior U.S. officials and Latin American diplomats is that Chávez, the former army coup plotter who was elected in 1998 and has since driven his country on an increasingly authoritarian path, has made a decision to provoke the United States into an all-out confrontation and to radicalize his ''Bolivarian'' revolution.
It sounds crazy for Chávez to take on the United States, by far Venezuela's biggest oil client. But look at it from his point of view:
First, Chávez needs to divert attention from his government's steps to full-fledged totalitarian rule. Chávez was cornered by the political opposition's petition seeking a referendum to drive him out of office. Having decided to arbitrarily disqualify the petition containing 3.4 million signatures, he needed a conflict with Washington.
Second, Chávez needs to ''internationalize'' Venezuela's political crisis to find blame for the collapse of his country's economy, which has already produced an additional 2.5 million poor since he took office. He wants to be seen as a courageous regional leader fighting against U.S. imperialism, rather than as a beleaguered demagogue trying to impose a dictatorship.
In his speech Sunday, Chávez cast Venezuela as a victim of ''Mr. Bush's interventionist, invading, colonialist government.'' Days later, Venezuela announced that it would call for an urgent Organization of American States meeting to condemn ''the American intervention in Haiti'' and alleged U.S. efforts to oust Venezuela's democratically elected government.
It's the old David vs. Goliath card, which Cuba's Fidel Castro has been successfully playing for the past four decades. And at a time when anti-Americanism in Latin America is at its highest levels in recent decades, Chávez thinks it's his best way to cling to power.
Third, by radicalizing his ''Bolivarian revolution,'' Chávez may be trying to provoke turmoil to have a pretext to impose martial law and rule by decree. He could do this through a ''self-coup,'' or simply by leading opposition leaders to conclude that they have no chance other than political violence.
''Venezuelans are fed up with violence, and whoever is seen as encouraging violence loses the game,'' says political analyst Graciela Roemer.
Will the Bush administration fall into Chávez's trap? So far, its coolest heads are prevailing. ''I've seen some of his comments, and I'm not just going to dignify them with a response from this podium,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday.
But even well-placed Washington insiders say it is not clear whether this position will prevail.
There is growing evidence of Chávez support for Colombian guerrilla groups, and violent groups in Bolivia, Argentina and other South American countries. But the CIA has so far prevailed in keeping that information classified because of fears of new embarrassments such as the weapons of mass destruction fiasco after the Iraq war, well-placed Washington sources say.
The Bush administration and the Venezuelan opposition should avoid falling into Chávez's trap. If Chávez continues along the path of breaking democratic rule, the OAS and Carter Center observers should withdraw from Venezuela with a big splash, and deprive Chávez of his last claims to legitimacy.
Then, the United States should work with its Latin American and European allies -- especially with France, America's latest ally in the Haiti crisis -- to put pressure on Chávez to bring back the OAS and Carter Center observers and give them a supervisory role in the verification of the petition signatures being questioned.
In a U.S. vs. Venezuela war of words, Chávez would win. He knows that, and that's why he's raising the stakes.
That's the spirit. Glad you weren't around for the Revolution.
For the French and others, the Revolutionary War wasn't about American independence; it was about fighting a war by proxy against the British. They cared more about tweaking the nose of the British than they did about the American colonists. And even if they were there out of the goodness of their little froggy hearts, the Americans were already fighting--not waiting for someone to come save them. That makes all the difference.
Perhaps. No little-guy-resenting-the-big-guy action?
We have no axe to grind with the Hatians or the Venezuelans. Perhaps a better war analogy would be the Civil War--how would the North and the South reacted if the French, British, Spanish, Chinese, etc. came and attempted to impose 'order'?
The sad fact is that sometimes, only a good bloodletting will solve a nation's problems. There's no need to let the blood be ours.
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