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by Robert Collier, San Francisco
Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
CHAVEZ'S ANTI-U.S. FERVOR
Emerging force among nonaligned nations
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 21, 2006
He pops up almost everywhere -- Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South
America and this week at the United Nations, denouncing U.S. policy with
revolutionary fervor.
Like a recurring bad dream for the Bush
administration, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is molding himself into
one of the world's most pre-eminent anti-American leaders.
Days before he addressed the United
Nations -- where he called President Bush the devil Wednesday -- Chavez
hosted the equally anti-American Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in
Caracas. They cemented an increasingly close alliance by signing more
than 20 trade and investment deals, and Chavez promised to cut off oil
supplies to the United States in the event of a U.S. military attack on
Iran.
At last week's summit in Cuba of the
116-nation Non-Aligned Movement, Chavez emerged as the heir apparent of
the movement's longtime patron, the ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
However, Chavez has something Castro never had -- huge oil revenues that
will last for decades to come.
"Unlike Castro, who depended on the
Soviet Union, Chavez is completely independent economically, which gives
him a large margin to maneuver," said Luis Lander, a professor of social
sciences at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas.
Although Chavez came to power in 1999,
his global influence has expanded dramatically in the past two years as
his oil revenues boomed. He is pouring aid into leftist allies Cuba and
Bolivia, providing discounted oil to Caribbean and Central American
nations, buying high-tech weaponry from Russia and even spreading
Venezuelan wealth around western Africa. If Venezuela succeeds in its
attempt to gain a two-year rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council,
Chavez will have a big new megaphone on the global stage.
"Chavez is wildly popular in places where
you wouldn't imagine people had even heard of him," said Carlos Mendoza,
who was Venezuela's ambassador to Russia until last year and previously
was ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "In the (Persian) Gulf states, for
example, everyone knows who he is, they admire him and love him."
In the past two months, Chavez has been
an international whirlwind, visiting China, Russia, Belarus, Iran,
Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Portugal, Qatar, Syria, Mali, Benin,
Angola, Argentina, Brazil and Jamaica. He visited Cuba three times,
becoming a fixture at Castro's bedside and relaying news of the Cuban
president's medical condition to the world.
Chavez's dollar diplomacy has begun to
outstrip Washington's.
U.S. government aid to Latin America was
about $1.7 billion this year, of which $1 billion was military-related
aid for anti-narcotics programs. While precise figures are not
available, Venezuela's foreign aid appears to be several times greater
than the U.S. total for the region, according to a Chronicle survey of
publicly released data.
Chavez has single-handedly rescued Cuba's
economy, providing an estimated $1.8 billion annually in oil and other
investments. In Argentina, Chavez bought $3.1 billion in government
bonds in the past year, allowing the government to pay off its debts to
the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; in Bolivia, he is giving
about $200 million in aid programs, ranging from military supplies to
computers for schools; and in Nicaragua and El Salvador, he has
discounted oil and gasoline to leftist municipal governments controlled
by the Sandinista Front and Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front,
respectively.
In the Caribbean, under a pact known as
Petrocaribe, 14 countries pay only part of the bill for Venezuelan fuel
up front and can finance the rest over 25 years at low interest. In
Jamaica, Chavez has given a $274 million loan for a highway and sports
complex and $65 million for a refinery.
In one of his most grandiose plans,
Chavez is planning to build a 5,700-mile natural gas pipeline through
South America, at a cost of up to $25 billion, in an attempt to unite
the continent behind his "Bolivarian" vision fashioned after the 19th
century independence hero Simon Bolivar.
"These projects make no economic sense,
but they are part of his political megalomania, so normal economic laws
don't apply," said Alberto Quiros, an oil industry analyst in Caracas
and former president of Royal Dutch Shell's Venezuela operations.
"Chavez is willing to pay any price."
So far, in the view of many analysts,
Chavez's initiatives are paying off.
Polls show that Chavez is the third-most
popular leader in Latin America. According to a report by Consulta
Mitofsky, a Mexican polling firm, based on surveys taken March through
May, Chavez is supported by 70 percent of Venezuelans, trailing only his
leftist allies Evo Morales of Bolivia and Nestor Kirchner of Argentina,
at 81 percent and 80 percent, respectively.
"Many Latin Americans, and people in
other continents, are deciding they like his nationalism, his opposition
to free-market economic policies and privatizations, and they are
realizing they can stand up to Washington," said Steve Ellner, a
professor of history at the Universidad de Oriente in the eastern city
of Puerto La Cruz.
While Chavez is thought to be a shoo-in
for another six-year term in December's presidential election, he has
not made friends everywhere, even on his own continent.
On Saturday, he said Venezuela would
refuse to recognize the Mexican government of conservative
President-elect Felipe Calderon, saying that leftist challenger Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador was robbed of victory in the July 2 voting. Chavez
said the proclamation of Calderon as president destroyed the possibility
of Mexico having good relations with Caracas. Mexican officials reacted
angrily, accusing Chavez of interfering in Mexico's domestic politics.
Relations with left-of-center Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva chilled after Chavez supported a
move earlier this year by Bolivia's Evo Morales to expropriate the
operations of Brazil's state-owned Petrobras in Bolivia's natural gas
fields and to demand a tripling in price for Bolivia's gas exports to
Brazil. Chavez has offered Morales $600 million to help set up a
Bolivian state-owned gas and oil firm and build a petrochemical complex.
At home, Chavez's foreign ambitions seem
to provoke little enthusiasm. Despite giant government billboards in
Caracas and elsewhere touting solidarity with revolution around the
world, attendance at government-organized street demonstrations in
support of Cuba and the Palestinians, and other leftist causes generally
draw small crowds.
According to a public opinion poll
conducted in May by Alfredo Keller y Asociados, a Venezuelan research
firm, 40 percent of Chavez's own supporters disagree with his foreign
policy.
But that has not stopped Chavez from
moving his foreign policy even further leftward. In July, he replaced
Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez, an urbane intellectual who had health
problems, with hard-liner Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver and trade
unionist who was speaker of Congress. Maduro had no previous foreign
policy experience and speaks only Spanish.
Chavez established tight personal bonds
with several foreign rulers such as Iran's Ahmadinejad, came out in
support of Hezbollah in its recent confrontation with Israel and
supports North Korea in its nuclear weapons dispute with the United
States.
Chavez's outburst at the U.N. General
Assembly on Wednesday is not the first time he has aimed venom at Bush.
In a nationally televised speech March
19, he seemed as if he wanted to pick a schoolyard fight with the U.S.
president: "You are ignoramus, you are a burro, Mr. Danger ... or to say
it to you in my bad English," he said, switching languages with an
exaggerated accent, "you are a donkey, Mr. Danger. You are a donkey, Mr.
George W. Bush."
As his audience tittered with nervous
laughter, he returned to Spanish. "You are a coward, a killer, a
genocider, an alcoholic, a drunk, a liar, an immoral person, Mr. Danger.
You are the worst, Mr. Danger. The worst of this planet. ... A
psychologically sick man, I know it."
Chavez constantly accuses the Bush
administration of plotting to overthrow him. U.S. officials deny any
such intent, although they frequently label Chavez a destabilizing
influence for the hemisphere and express support for Venezuela's
opposition parties and organizations.
"I view him as a threat of undermining
democracy," Bush said of Chavez in a Fox News interview July 31. "And I
view him as a threat. You know, I wish he would invest his petrodollars
with the people of Venezuela, and give them a chance to, you know, get
out of poverty, and give them a chance to realize hopes and dreams."
In August, the Bush administration
created a new position of intelligence chief for Venezuela and Cuba -- a
sign that some observers saw as indication that Washington has finally
decided to treat Chavez as an arch-enemy like Castro.
Chavez nicknamed the office's director,
Jack Patrick Maher, a longtime CIA official, as "Jack the Ripper," and
claimed that "the empire is organizing a plan for December or before
December," referring to Venezuela's elections.
A military-civilian coup in 2003 that
briefly overthrew Chavez was carried out by many groups that at the time
were known to receive U.S. funding, and documents released in 2004
revealed that U.S. officials had advance knowledge of the coup plotting.
The Bush administration has denied any involvement in the coup attempt,
although at the time it expressed support for the junta installed by the
coup.
Government documents recently obtained by
the Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act request
show that opposition groups have been receiving about $5 million per
year in funding through State Department channels. But the
administration has refused to disclose the names of about one-half of
the groups receiving the aid, claiming that to do so would endanger
their security.
Jeremy Bigwood, an analyst at the Center
for Economic Policy Research, a liberal Washington think tank, sued the
Agency for International Development, the State Department's foreign aid
arm, last year in federal circuit court in Washington, arguing that all
such recipients should be identified because the aid programs are not
part of covert intelligence work. A ruling is expected later this year.
For the time being, however, Chavez seems
secure in the saddle. With the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq and
Afghanistan and the Bush administration focusing most of its remaining
attention on Iran and North Korea, Washington may have little capacity
to wage gunboat diplomacy in Latin America.
"The situation around the world is
sufficiently antagonistic to the Bush administration that Chavez can
gain a lot of support and gradually, bit by bit, wear down the United
States," said William Ratliff, a Latin America expert at the Hoover
Institution at Stanford University. "Like Che Guevara said, 'two, three,
many Vietnams,' Chavez can gain a lot of followers for who knows how
many years."
San Francisco Chronicle
Chavez savages Bush in speech
Diplomats at U.N. applaud his attack on U.S. policy
Colum Lynch, Washington Post
Thursday, September 21, 2006
(09-21) 04:00 PDT United Nations -- Hugo
Chavez, Venezuela's combative president, blasted President Bush on
Wednesday in a U.N. speech as a racist, imperialist devil who has
devoted six years in office to military aggression and the oppression of
the world's poorest people.
Speaking from the podium where President
Bush spoke a day earlier, Chavez said he could still smell the sulfur --
a reference to the scent of Satan. Even by U.N. standards, where the
United States is frequently criticized as the world's superpower,
Chavez's anti-American remarks were exceptionally inflammatory. They
were also received with a warm round of applause.
Chavez's address followed of series of
strident speeches by U.S. adversaries, including Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir. Together,
they represented an emboldened alliance of oil-rich states who defied
U.S. demands to change their policies on a range of issues, including
the development of nuclear technology and the role of U.N. peacekeepers
in Darfur.
"Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from
this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom
I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world,"
Chavez told the chamber of international diplomats. "I think we could
call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the
president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came
to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of
domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world."
Bush administration officials dismissed
Chavez's remarks as the ravings of a reckless political leader. "I'm not
going to dignify a comment by the Venezuelan president towards the
United States," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "I think it's
not becoming for a head of state."
In an effort to bolster his case, Chavez
waved a copy of Noam Chomsky's book "Hegemony or Survival: America's
Quest for Global Domination," and recommended that everyone read it. The
book, written by the American linguist and longtime critic of U.S.
foreign policy, argues that the U.S. pursuit of political supremacy is
having devastating consequences for the majority of the world's people.
After the speech, the book's hourly sales ranking on Amazon.com soared
to No. 22 as of 6 p.m. Wednesday, from No. 160,772 earlier in the day,
according to CNN.
"The president of the United States came
to talk to the peoples -- to the peoples of the world," Chavez said.
"What would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the
floor? ... I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south,
the oppressed people think. They would say, 'Yankee imperialist, go
home.'
"The world is waking up. I have the
feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of
your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all
those who are rising up against American imperialism."
Chavez's U.N. appearance is part of a
Venezuelan campaign to gain election to the Latin American seat on the
U.N. Security Council, a post that would place it in a position to
challenge U.S. policies. The United States, which vigorously opposes
Venezuela's candidacy, is supporting a competing bid for the post by
Guatemala, a poor Central American republic with little political
influence at the United Nations.
In portraying the United States as an
imperial power, Chavez sought to evoke memories of the Cold War, when
Third World revolutionaries such as Cuban President Fidel Castro (an
ally and mentor of Chavez) and Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe delivered
scathing attacks on the United States.
U.N. experts said that while Chavez's
speech may resonate with delegations who oppose a new world order built
around U.S. power, it was so undiplomatic that it might undermine his
chances of getting into the Security Council.
It "confirms the worst stereotypes about
the U.N. General Assembly being a circus sideshow filled with venom and
rabid anti-Americanism," said Edward Luck, an expert on the United
Nations at Columbia University. "I never thought anyone could make
Ahmadenijad look like a moderate, but Chavez has done it."
While Chavez is renowned for his caustic
views of the Bush administration, some senior U.N. diplomats were
startled by his statement. Asked if Chavez had gone too far, China's
Foreign Minister Li Zhao Xing said: "He really said that? Are you sure?
He would go that far?"
Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret
Beckett suggested that the Chavez comments went beyond the pale of
diplomatic protocol at the United Nations. "Even the Democrats wouldn't
say that," she said.
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