Latin America shakes off the US yoke
The current spat with Ecuador is
symptomatic of Washington's failure to grasp that it no longer exercises
regional hegemony
Mark Weisbrot
guardian.co.uk,
Friday 8 April 2011 18.38 BST
Ecuador's
foreign minister Ricardo Patino
gives a statement to the media in Quito, on 7 April 2011. The US
ordered Ecuador's ambassador to leave the country and scrapped a round
of talks in retaliation for the expulsion of its ambassador in Quito
over US diplomatic cables, released by WikiLeaks, alleging police
corruption. Photograph: Reuters/Guillermo Granja.
On Thursday, the United States expelled the ambassador from Ecuador,
in retaliation for Wednesday's expulsion of the US ambassador from
Ecuador. This now leaves the United States without ambassadorial
relations in three South American countries – Bolivia and Venezuela
being the other two – thus surpassing the Bush administration in its
diplomatic problems in the region.
US Ambassador Heather Hodges was declared "persona non grata" and asked to
leave Ecuador "as soon as possible", after a diplomatic cable released by
WikiLeaks
showed her saying some disparaging things about Ecuador's president,
Rafael Correa. In the cable, she alleges that President Correa had
knowledge of corruption by a former head of the national police.
Although the Bush administration intervened in the internal affairs of
countries such as Bolivia and even Brazil,
it was somewhat better at keeping its "eyes on the prize" and avoiding
fights that would distract from its main goal. The prize, of course, is
Venezuela – home to the largest oil reserves in the world, estimated by the US
Geological Survey at 500bn barrels.
Washington's goal there for the last decade has been regime change. The
Bush team understood that the more they fought with other countries in
the region, the less credible would be their public relations story that
Venezuela was the problem.
It's nothing personal, really
– Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez could have chosen to be the perfect
diplomat and he would still be treated in much the same manner by the US
government. And it's not the oil itself, since Venezuela still sells
the US more than 1m barrels a day and there is a world market for oil,
in any case. It's just that any country with that much oil is going to
have regional influence; and Washington just doesn't want to deal with
someone who has regional influence and doesn't line up with its own
goals for the region – not if it can get rid of them. And they have come close
to getting rid of Chávez, in the 2002 coup – so they are not giving up.
But
Washington is losing ground there, too. A big blow was the change in
Colombia's foreign policy last summer, when President Juan Manuel Santos
took office. An important part of Washington's strategy in Venezuela is
to maintain tension between Colombia and Venezuela. They have a head
start on this project since the 2,000km border between the two countries
has been plagued by paramilitary and guerrilla violence for decades.
Conflict between Venezuela and Colombia is also important to Washington's
electoral strategy in Venezuela.
When there is trouble between the two countries, as in 2009, when
Venezuela cut off bilateral trade in response to the US effort to expand
its military presence in Colombia, it has a negative impact on a lot of
Venezuelans in border states. This helps garner some anti-Chávez votes
in border states, as in last year's congressional election in Venezuela.
And accusations of Venezuelan support for
the Farc guerrillas in Colombia – despite Washington's failure to offer
any evidence – are a key element of bringing its anti-Venezuela efforts
under the "war on terror" umbrella.
Although Colombia's previous
president, Álvaro Uribe, was – in recent years – very much allied with
the United States' strategy toward Venezuela, Santos immediately
rejected it and decided to make peace with Chávez. This turned out to be
quite easy to do, despite their past fights when Santos was Uribe's
defence minister. As anyone who follows Venezuela knows, Chávez is
friendly to any head of state or government that is friendly to
Venezuela.
Santos's U-turn towards Venezuela is very interesting
for several reasons. First, it shows how important regional economic
integration is as a force for peace and stability
in the area. The attempt by Washington and Santos's predecessor to
expand the US military presence in Colombia led to a cutoff of $2.3bn of
Colombia's exports to what had recently become their second most
important trading partner, Venezuela. This was more than 11% of
Colombia's exports, and the bulk of it was in livestock and textile
products for which replacement markets were not so readily available.
Venezuela also has very close relations with Brazil and most of the rest
of South America, and they all felt the same way about Colombia's
foreign policy.
They were especially concerned about the US military
expansion in Colombia – and even more opposed after US Air Force
documents made it clear that this expansion was for "mobility operations
… on the South American continent" and against the "constant threat"
from "anti-US governments".
Santos
was basically faced with a choice of continuing to do Washington's
bidding or being part of South America. He chose South America. The key
role of commerce here, as South America continues to integrate
economically, illustrates some of the most important "gains from trade". These
are far greater than the neoclassical "efficiency gains", often exaggerated by
advocates of "free trade" agreements.
Also,
Santos's choice to rejoin South America shows how geopolitical changes
led by the left governments of the region have now encompassed even
rightwing governments. This is a result of changes in institutions
(foreign ministries, multilateral organisations such as Unasur, the Rio Group),
ideas, and norms that have taken place over the last decade.
Now
comes Washington, demanding that Colombia extradite one Walid Makled,
an accused Venezuelan narco-trafficker arrested in Colombia, to the
United States. No, thank you, says President Santos – this guy goes to
Venezuela. Santos cites Colombian law,
stating that, first, Colombia has an extradition treaty with Venezuela,
not with the United States; second, Venezuela got their extradition
request in first; and third, Makled is wanted for more serious crimes
(including murder) in Venezuela than in the US (drug-trafficking). All
of these are facts that legally require extradition of Makled to
Venezuela.
This is most infuriating to Washington. To understand
why this is so important to the state department, one has to look behind
official pronouncements about Makled getting "a fair trial" in
Venezuela and other nonsense repeated with charming innocence by the
major media. Venezuela has a presidential election next year. For every
important election or referendum in Venezuela – and there are many, but
none more important to Washington than this one – there is an
international media campaign, with the participation of the US
government. (A recent WikiLeaks cable shows
the Colombian government sharing with US officials its coordinated
media campaign to link both Chávez and Correa to the Colombian Farc
guerrillas.) Makled has already offered to sing about alleged corruption
of Venezuelan officials, but only if he is extradited to the US. So, if
they could only get him to Miami, they could have a splendid show trial
that would be better than any international media campaign that the
state department could organise.
If all that seems like it's not
worth the trouble, it's exactly what happened in 2008. US authorities
used a sketchy show trial of a Venezuelan slapped with dubious "failing to
register as a foreign agent" charges
– but not with actual espionage – in order to broadcast allegations of
corruption at the "highest levels" of the Venezuelan government. The
allegations made headlines throughout the hemisphere and, of course,
were a mainstay of the Venezuelan opposition-dominated media. Just think
what the Makled trial could do: no one would ask what the witnesses
were offered for their testimony, or whether there was any corroborating
evidence for their allegations. It would be one big free-for-all
smear-fest, with reporters gobbling it all up.
But Santos is not
co-operating, despite enormous pressure and, of course, the currently
pending "free trade" agreement between the US and Colombia. Perhaps
Washington wants this agreement more than he does.
In any case,
the Obama administration – like its predecessor – is fighting a losing
battle. President Obama's recent trip to Latin America was hardly more
successful than those of Bush. He gets better press – no riots in the streets
or Mayan leaders cleansing the site after his visit. But every president and
foreign minister there can see that US policies haven't changed one bit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/08/venezuela-ecuador
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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