Insider's View On Chavez' Recent Saber Rattling

My step-dad (Bill) is a retired senior Foreign Service Officer who led a fascinating career and has maintained long-time friendships with some very bright foreign policy folks.

He forwarded this analysis of the current situation in Venezuela to me. It was authored by a Foreign Service acquaintance who Bill holds in very high regard, but he asked that I refer to the author only as "a friend of my stepfather." So with no further adieu:

Finally got around to reading the journalist's note on Venezuela/Ecuador vs. Colombia, which was true when written but explained nothing.

Colombia's civil war began in 1948 and the FARC guerrillas trace their ancestry to that date. Then, it was a group of passionate revolutionaries ­ today it is a 20,000 man criminal enterprise, led by rich thugs who make a fine living from cocaine. Reyes, the FARCs # 2 whom Colombia killed just inside Ecuador, was wearing in his jungle camp a ROLEX worth $10,000.

It's not surprising that Colombia got Reyes, who thought himself untouchable in Ecuador, even using his camp for a classroom for "internationals," among them 10 Mexican students (most died in the air strike).

The most important aspect may have been the "information warfare" bonus. Seizure of Reyes' computers and a notebook at his rainforest office have already led Costa Rican police to a cache of $500,000 in moldy $100s in the back yard of a 79 year old professor ­ an aging Robespierre who kept a rainy day fund for the FARC.

The moral, your e-mail is not secure. In more important places, among them Mexico and Brasil, information from Reyes's files is also being tracked.

So while Ecuador got an apology and Chavez strutted, Colombia and President Uribe won big. Reputable polls show Uribe's popularity has risen from near 60% to 82%. The only dissonant note: President Bush ­ unpopular in much of Latin America, ­ broke s recent sensible silence about Chavez to growl loudly, a welcome diversion for Chavez and for the FARC. [Would he have criticized a Bill Clinton statement in a similar situation? I doubt it.]

None of this means the war on drugs goes well, it doesn't. But Colombia may have won a decisive battle against a shrinking FARC, a good thing.

Mindful of Scotty Reston's dictum that "the American people will do anything for Latin America except read about it," I will stop, before you delete all reference to Latin America from your computers.

But he goes on ...

Hardly anyone in the U.S., with the exception of the Spanish language news media, paid attention to the Venezuela and Ecuador vs. Colombia dust up. Now that their Presidents have shaken hands in Santo Domingo, Latin America will be forgotten, until the next crisis.

Colombia got its man (plus the gift of another of the FARC's top leadership). Most Colombians, who detest the FARC and support Uribe because he vigorously prosecutes the war, think an apology is not a heavy price for striking a hard blow at the insurgency.

For Ecuador, the crisis was about honor. That may sound strange, but history has given Ecuador a losers complex with respect to its larger neighbors. Uribe's apology settles the matter, until the next incident.

The chief protagonist, however, is Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

That's probably true for Ecuador, but not for Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who has a blood feud with Colombia and President Alvaro Uribe. Chavez will keep on backing the narco-guerrilla FARC, simply because it is a way of striking at the U. S.

Now the FARC, which has just suffered some hard blows, is nowhere near taking Colombia, who democratic [sorry; the text gets messed up here]

Experts say no; the parties want control of the narrative about who is at fault, not fight. Ecuador voted for an OAS resolution that fell short of its demands though the text gave the Correa government satisfaction by noting Colombia's violation of Ecuador's territory. By accepting OAS good offices, Ecuador, which doesn't have the military horses, signaled a desire for peace.

If this were only about Ecuador and Colombia we could be confident the OAS, with a fine record of defusing state on state conflicts, would talk the dispute to death. The real protagonist, however, is Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who has a blood feud with Colombia and President Alvaro Uribe, mostly because Chavez backs the FARC's narco-guerillas as a way to get at the U.S.

In the conventional wisdom, Chavez goads the U.S., knowing that we recognize that hostilities would drive oil prices through the roof and that our forces are tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps that is still true, but his calculations may be changing.

It is important to recognize that Chavez sees himself as the heir of Simon Bolivar, who liberated South America from Spain. In Chavez's mind, he is the new "Liberator," destined to throw off the Yankee yoke. He takes heart from OPEC's success in damaging the American economy but his effort to build an anti-U.S. coalition has not gone well, massive expenditures to support Latin political friends notwithstanding.

Today, Bolivia and Nicaragua are acolytes, while Ecuador and Argentina are friends. Brazil humors Chavez but ignores him when it comes to Brazil's vast ties with the U.S. Elsewhere, he is often detested, for meddling and for his anti-democratic stance. By helping the FARC, which is nowhere near taking power, he has earned the enmity of most Colombians.

Chavez is in a race against time before his popularity runs out at home. Oil production is declining and inflation the highest in the Western Hemisphere. He is about to lose his favorite target, a Bush administration unpopular in much of Latin America.

Our next President, regardless of party, is likely to enjoy warmer relations with the region. A policy of giving Chavez enough rope with which to hang himself could pay off in 2009.

Autocrats in trouble at home resort to foreign adventures. If Chavez recognizes he is on the clock, a war with Colombia may commend itself as a way to drag U.S. forces into the fray, a last chance to mobilize Latin America before declining fortunes and a new U.S. administration cut short his Bolivarian destiny.

None of this, except for trying to bankrupt the U.S. through oil, is rational to us. But in Chavez's Mussolini-style search for glory, war may be logical.
Uribe is alert to this possibility; by not responding to Chavez's troops on the frontier, he positioned Colombia to avoid blame, should Chavez initiate hostilities.

That is key, for Uribe and for ourselves -- no ambiguity about who is the aggressor, should Chavez use force. In Latin America, self defense beats pre-emption every time. In saying this I don't want to fall into what Secretary Gates ­ back when he was DDI -- used to tell me was stuff for a "Cassandra column."

What Teodoro Petkoff (Venezuelan guerrilla turned staunch democrat) said may well be correct: "Chavez barks but will not bite." But have shin guards
handy, just in case.

Despite some breaks and mysterious repetition, perhaps caused when it was copied and forwarded to me, I thought the piece insightful and worth sharing.

How To Take Down A Terrorist Insurgency

The Global War on Terror is just that, global, as evidenced by Columbia's recent attack on Farc rebels in Ecuador. Think Columbia as Israel taking out Hamas thugs in Gaza. Think Venezuela as Iran supplying terror militia in Iraq.

Pull off the layers of Columbia's attack and you see how the Global War on Terror can succeed in destroying even decades-old terror organizations.

"This is a definitive blow to the guerrillas and one which will seriously affect their cohesion as an organisation," Roman Ortiz, an analyst with the Bogota think tank Ideas for Peace Foundation, told BBC.

With the attack, a member of Farc's ruling Secretariat has, for the first time, been killed in action. Other members of the Secretariat who have died have succumbed to old age, giving FARC an aura of invincibility.

But the death of Secretariat member Paul Reyes is a significant blow for more reasons than just that he was a FARC Secretariat member. The BBC report explains:

The [Columbian] government has set up a network of informants, runs reinsertion packages for deserting rebels and offers handsome rewards for information.

In the past few days, almost $900,000 was paid for the capture of a Farc commander with 35 years of service.

All this is combined with technology and communication intercepts provided by Washington.

Inciting desertion, infiltrating high levels of Farc, paying off informants ... and having the powerful resources of the US behind you: Priceless.

Against this united front, Farc is by no means dead, but it is crumbling as never before.

In Tehran Caracas, Chavez can bluster, but bluster only goes so far, as we learn from Venezuela News & Views:

Apparently Chavez has been silent today, probably realizing that he shot enough his foot and that others should come to the forefront to fix things up some. Unfortunately once upon a time he had an operator like Jose Vicente Rangel who could not fix much inside Venezuela but who at least could present some more credible image to the foreign observers. Now Chavez has only [foreign minister Nicolas] Maduro and Rodriguez Chacin, a failed bus driver now foreign minister and a thug now Interior and security minister.

Maduro went to the National Assembly. He made a cheap chauvinistic act, criticized the Venezuelan opposition for not rallying the way the Colombian one was doing around Uribe (I kid you not), spoke of all sorts of things that seemed like coming from Cliff notes from the Cuban staff in Venezuela (they were that dated), and climaxed announcing that Venezuela had asked all the Colombian embassy staff to leave the country. Not a complete break up but same difference.

Pretty pathetic. As Hugo's boys try to rally a tired and disgusted nation behind them -- finding it a tough slog, indeed -- Columbia's president plays intelligently on the global stage:

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe says he will ask the International Criminal Court to bring charges against President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Mr Uribe said he would ask the Hague court to bring charges of "financing genocide". Colombia accuses Venezuela of backing Farc rebels. (BBC)

Back to Daniel at VN&V:

Colombians know a good thing when they hold it, they are forging ahead, revealing what they know, and not getting at all in the ridicule tit for tat that the other guys want to drag them into. No matter what tantrums Chavez and Correa throw, and what the rest of Latin America might hold in particularly fake crocodile tears, the Uribe staff is in control.

A now much-maligned president once said, "You're either with us or against us." Uribe and Chavez have picked their sides, Uribe with us, Chavez with Farc, and we're seeing the consequences.

Chavez: Up To W's Old Tricks

With Hugo (No, you go) Chavez suddenly appearing to find threats and terrors everywhere -- doing the same ol' dirty tricks the Left accuses Bush of -- will the Leftys' love affair with Hugo falter?

As all of us who read the Leftist polemics know, Bush created hysteria over "non-existent" WMDs in order to justify an attack on Iraq, and has kept the terror over terrorism purposefully pitched at a high level in order to continue expanding his control of government and masking his efforts to shred the Constitution and crush our freedom.

Or something like that.

Now this, from the Left's favorite crackpot despot:

CARACAS [Don't you just love saying "Caracas?" Carrracas. Carrrracasss!], Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez on Friday accused Colombia of plotting a military attack against Venezuela.

"A military aggression against Venezuela is being prepared" by Colombia, Chavez said. He warned Colombia not to attempt "a provocation against Venezuela" and said his country would cut off all oil exports in the event of a military strike from the neighboring country.

Chavez did not support evidence to support his claim.

Nor did Bush! Or so the Lefties say, anyway, conveniently forgetting so much.

Or maybe it's his old friend Fidel he's emulating; after all, he just accused Columbia of plotting his assassination. Fidel's used that one for years to whip up the anti-American mindset in Cuba -- although I'm sure a substantial segment of the population there merely wonders why it's taking us so long.

In reality, Chavez is behaving more like Saddam Hussein, as if he's preparing his own version of Saddam's disastrous Iran/Iraq war, with Columbia in his sights. Since, unlike Bush who is content to be an 8-year president, Chavez's wants to be a long-term dictator, he may see war with Columbia as his best means to that end -- behaving very much in reality just as the Left imagines Bush acting in their paranoid fantasies.

My, how confusing the Leftist mindset it!

By the way, the always informative Daniel at Venezuela News and Views has a lengthy post that digs into all this and concludes that ultimately, Chavez is unlikely to go to war with Columbia.

You Go, Hugo! Chavez Loses!

Breaking news from Venezuela:

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez suffered a stinging defeat in a vote on constitutional changes that would have let him run for re-election indefinitely, the chief of National Electoral Council said Monday.

Voters defeated the sweeping measures by a vote of 51 percent to 49 percent, Tibisay Lucena said.

Venezuela News & Views adds:

In spite of all the obscene governmental advantage, all the threats and blackmails, the Venezuelan people found the strength to say NO.

The remaining question: Will Hugo let a 51-49 vote stand, or will he grandstand in a way freedom-loving people can't stand?

On Election Eve, Chavez Ally Turns Against Him

Raúl Isaías Baduel has been at Hugo Chavez' side for decades. He was with him in 1982 when they and other officers swore allegiance to the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army 2000, which would ultimately lead to Chavez' presidency.

Until his retirement in July, Baduel served as commander in chief of Venezuela's army, so we know he knows the heart of Chavez, and we know that his opinion piece published in Venezuela (and the NYT) on the eve of the election, will be a powerful force against Chavez. He writes:

I find myself with the moral and ethical obligation as a citizen to express my opposition to the changes to the Constitution that President Chávez and the National Assembly have presented for approval by the voters tomorrow.

The proposal, which would abolish presidential term limits and expand presidential powers, is nothing less than an attempt to establish a socialist state in Venezuela. As our Catholic bishops have already made clear, a socialist state is contrary to the beliefs of Simón Bolívar, the South American liberation hero, and it is also contrary to human nature and the Christian view of society, because it grants the state absolute control over the people it governs.

Men of honor, men who take risks when they could live an easy life, are men who are listened to. Hugo Chavez cannot count himself in this group, but Baduel certainly can.

Will it be enough? Maybe, especially as Chavez' rhetoric is beginning to turn more and more Venezuelans against the dictator in populist clothing. Venezuela News and Views reports:

I have received yet another poll, a famous tracking one and I do not want to give its name because, well, I cannot check 100% the source. I mean, it is a good source but I do not know if that person's source was as good as he is. Don't you love mystery?

Anyway, it is from a famous pollster who has been holding a tracking for a few months now. Early he predicted a possible SI [Chavez] victory, now his prediction is a NO victory by at least 7% and up to 16%. As usual, all depends from participation. What is new here is the guy going on record predicting a 7% minimum. Well, the poll is through phone interviews as tracking polls do and thus the error is 4%. So the NO, according to his own words, could squeeze by a meager 3%, enough to cause trouble and even allow enough cheating by the CNE. At any rate, my 5% gut feeling prediction keeps strengthening :-)

But the most interesting part of the tracking poll is the result for the following question: "Is it right for Chavez to qualify anyone that votes NO as a traitor"? Stunningly 70% of the respondents disagreed! And here we have again the 30% hard core chavismo that this blog has always acknowledged and the 70% rest of the country shocked by such rhetoric!!! This time around Chavez seems to be paying the price. Indeed, it is one thing to do a "rojo, rojito" where the worst is to lose your job and becoming a traitor where the worst, well, is up to the imagination of all....

This error was repeated once again tonight in the pitiful Chavez speech. And in this speech Chavez announced that if they lose they will recognize the result. Even if he put many conditions on losing the fact of the matter is that tonight Chavez, in one of his rare moments of lucidity, decided to prepare his followers to the unthinkable, until a few weeks ago, that he could lose an election.

The results of one of the most important election in Latin America ever may well be contested, so this story could be a long way from over. Stay tuned.

hat-tip: Real Clear Politics

Stalin Vs. Chavez

Leftist students who revere the state torturer Che and spout off on doctrines of collectivism and state planning as if these very doctrines weren't already in history's dustbin bother me to no end. How interesting to find that I am joined in that reaction by Hugo Chavez, the supposed darling of the Left.

How do Penn, Glover & Co. square their fondness for Chavez with the fact that Hugo's most vocal and threatening opponents are college leftists -- their support base here at home?

The WSJ tells the story by cuing off on the curiously named leader of the Venezuelan student movement against Chavez:

As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attempts to push through what he calls 21st-Century Socialism, his biggest obstacle is an army of students led by a leftist named Stalin.

Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela's biggest public university. During the past few weeks, Mr. González and other student leaders here have organized protest marches by tens of thousands of students opposed to a constitutional referendum set for Dec. 2. The proposed changes would dramatically expand Mr. Chávez's power and allow him to seek perpetual re-election.

"Historically, students have represented the hope and conscience of Venezuela," says Mr. González, who, unlike his bushy-moustached and sinister-mannered Soviet namesake, is scruffy-bearded and laid-back.

Young Stalin isn't really overstating the case that much. Throughout Latin America, student unions have a solid place in history. Fifty years ago, a student strike at UCV led ultimately to the downfall of Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and in Cuba, Fidel Castro got his start as a student leader at the University of Havana.

Many Venezuelans are looking hopefully to UCV to spark a protest and save Venezuela from the Chavezocracy that will follow should Hugo prevail in the upcoming Dec. 2 referendum -- and that focus on the university's student leadership is exactly why the power-hungry young Stalin went to the school in the first place.

As you can imagine from his name, Stalin -- who has sisters named Ilych and and Engles -- was raised Red in a union-loving Communist household:

His father, a print-machine operator, was a high-ranking member of the Bandera Roja, or Red Flag, a hard-line Marxist-Leninist party that maintained a guerrilla force until as recently as the mid-1990s. Its members revered Josef Stalin as well as Albania's xenophobic Enver Hoxha. ...

As a young man, Mr. González burnished his leftist credentials, joining Marxist youth groups and following his father into the Bandera Roja. He traveled to Socialist youth conferences in Latin America.

Still seeking to make a life out of left-wing politics, Mr. González enrolled in 2001 at UCV. Rising in the ranks of the student body can be a fast track into political life, and as head of the 40,000-member student federation, his studies have taken a back seat to politics. He plans to graduate next year.

Poor Venezuela has Chavez on the one side, ready to install a dictatorship under a Socialist cover, and a power-hungry hard-core Communist on the other, wanting to take the nation down another path to another failed vision of Socialism. Either route is guaranteed to end in repression, as can be seen by how Stalin's factions treat their own opponents:

The law school's student-center room, a base for Chávez supporters, still smells of charred wood and plastic from a fire that recently destroyed it. Workmen are still cleaning up the School of Social Work. There, pro-Chávez students barricaded themselves for several hours during a standoff with a crowd of students, until a group of armed civilians on motorcycles intervened to allow the Chávez supporters to escape.

How interesting that Stalin's movement got its grip on the campuses by crystallizing the anti-Chávez sentiment that exploded six months ago, when Chavez pulled the plug on the independent television station RCTV. Free speech in May, followed by the repression of Chavez supporters in November.

How typically Leftist.

Still, in the cause of greater global freedom, Stalin Gonzalez can be a useful idiot, helping to remove a much more dangerous idiot from power. Then, we can hope, Gonzalez will swiftly follow Communism into historical obscurity, and Venezuela will be able to pursue a more perfect freedom.

Update: The Hoover Institute's William Ratliff predicts a Chavez victory in the referendum.

Update: Polls show Chavez has lost his lead; will lose.

Bad Medicine

Here's a (socialized, natch) medicine prescription from Venezuela, with Fidel and Hugo as a watermark.

If Hillary gets her way and we're saddled with a national healthcare plan, do you think prescriptions will feature her with Robert Treuhaft, Communist Party USA member, Black Panther lawyer and former Hil employer? (source)

hat-tip: Jim

Voting With Their Feet

WSJ has a fascinating story this a.m. (subscribers only, probably) about Venezuelan oil workers who have gotten out of el Dodge because of Chavez, who is giving literal meaning to the pronunciation of his name, Hugo.

The 45-year-old engineer is part of a swelling colony of Venezuelan expats who say they were driven into exile by a hostile government. Many assert they were purged after a long strike in 2002 at Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the state-owned oil giant known as PdVSA. More recent arrivals initially found work with private oil companies operating in Venezuela in 2003, but lost their jobs this year when Hugo Chávez wrested control of the companies' holdings. They call themselves the "twice fired."

Frigid, remote Alberta has become one of the world's fastest growing enclaves of Venezuelans, rivaling such warm-weather spots as Weston, Fla., outside Miami; and Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston. There are now 3,000 Venezuelan-Albertan families, up from 800 or so last year. Some Albertans now call Evergreen, a Calgary housing development, "Vene-green" because of the 100 families who have bought split-level homes there, and dangle Venezuelan flags from car rearview mirrors. ...

The loss of so many skilled oil workers has hit PdVSA hard. (See related article on page A8.) Since Mr. Chávez took power in 1999, Venezuela's oil production -- according to U.S. government statistics -- is down to 2.4 million barrels a day, from 3.1 million barrels a day, despite high prices. (Venezuela has consistently accused the U.S. of undercounting PdVSA's production in recent years.)

Back in the day when despots could seal their borders better than we can, they could keep their scientists, engineers and skilled workers well shackled. Chavez isn't having the same luck, and his ineptness reminds me of African nations on the way to statehood that crumbled when their skilled white populations fled.

Chavez' days may well be numbered. But we said that about Castro more than once.

Biting The Hand That Bites The Hand That Feeds It

"I Go Crazy/Hugo Crazy" Chavez has a little problem to deal with between his sulfur-smelling rants, kissy-face sessions with Cindy Sheehan, and his siezures of private business: Al Qaeda.

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuela's defense minister said Thursday that the nation would reinforce security measures after a branch of al Qaeda called for attacks on suppliers of oil to the United States.

Venezuela provides around 11 percent of U.S. oil imports despite diplomatic tensions between Caracas and Washington over leftist President Hugo Chavez's self-styled socialist revolution.

Gen. Raul Baduel told reporters that security and intelligence agencies would "take actions and implement previously established security plans, but reinforce them with the goal of guaranteeing security."

He called for calm and said Chavez would provide further instructions about how to deal with the threat.

A Saudi wing of al Qaeda, in a statement posted Wednesday on a Web site, called for attacks on suppliers of oil to the United States to cut off vital oil supplies.

Al Qaeda specifically called for attacks outside the Middle East -- on Venezuela, Mexico and Canada. Eh.

I'll vote for Venezuela, if al Qaeda's interested. Strategically, it makes the most sense for them because the attack would establish that al Qaeda is about forced conversion to Islam or death, and that even fellow Bush-haters need to fall before the sword of Islam. Venezuela would give them that opportunity.

And if you're listening, al Qaeda, could you please spare the Venezuelan people and plant your bomb so it just gets Hugo and his inner circle?

Much appreciated.

hat-tip: Jim

Let's Have Fun! Let's Not Learn From The Soviets!

The Soviet economy, such as it ever was, resides now in the dustbin of history, sharing space with Hitler's dream of an Aryan world and Napoleon's plan for the defeat of Russia.

But someone forgot to drive the ash stake through its heart. The Soviet economic system lives on, thanks to "I go crazy, Hugo crazy" Chavez in his Socialist playground of Venezuela. (In the photo, Chavez is shown holding the food his Socialist reforms are bringing to his people.) From BBC:

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has threatened to nationalise stores that sell meat above a government-set price.

The government says supermarkets have been artificially boosting prices of basic foods by manipulating stockpiles. But critics blame regular food shortages on prices imposed four years ago, forcing shops to sell at a loss.

Many privately-owned supermarkets have suspended sales of beef, milk and sugar after one chain was temporarily closed for pricing meat above allowed levels.

The government has already seized goods that it says are being hoarded to drive up prices.

Since the early 1900s, the world has basically had two economic models: Free market and communist/socialist. Measured by prosperity, freedom, satisfaction of the people, or any other measure than "wealth of the tyrant," the free market capitalist societies won. Yet Chavez and the leaders of a handful of other nations continue to force failed socialism on their people.

And when their "reforms" fail, instead of blaming socialism, they blame corruption by the businesses they are brutalizing. Lenin would be proud. Stalin would beam.