Politic

The whirlwind events of April 13-15 spell uncertainty for the Future of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela and the United State’s relationship with each.

by Gustavo A. Mata and Victor Pineda
The trajectory was uneasily similar: massive demonstrations, overreaction by the government, the intervention of the military, and another Latin American leader overthrown. So it seemed last month to leaders across the Western Hemisphere, when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was toppled and swept back into power over one weekend, reinvigorating memories of the bad old days in Latin American politics.

Despite the massive demonstrations and considerable public discontent with Mr. Chavez, the coup was masterminded by business interests, as was evident by the appointment of Pedro Carmona Estanga as head of the “transitional” government”. Before his ill-advised power grab, Mr. Carmona was the president of the National Business Chamber (Fedecamaras), Venezuela’s summit business organization.

HOLLOW AT THE CORE

Immediately after assuming power, Mr. Carmona committed a series of political blunders that ensured his doom and gave Mr. Chavez the opening he needed to resume office. First, Mr. Carmona dissolved the National Assembly and ordered the arrest of a number of public officials that supported the former president. He went on to roll back some of the popular social programs implemented by Mr. Chavez, including a 20 percent payroll increase for public employees. For his finale, Mr. Carmona invalidated the Constitution of 1999, which an overwhelming majority of Venezuelans had approved in a national referendum.

Mr. Carmona might have survived despite these measures if his appointments had been more judicious. He excluded two powerhouses in Venezuelan politics, Accion Democratica, one of Venezuela’s traditional political parties, and the National Confederation of Labor (CTV). Shutting the door in the CTV’s face was a particularly curious decision, given that Fedecamaras and the CTV have enjoyed good relations for the past fifty years. They were united in opposition to Mr. Chavez, even combining to organize three general strikes against the government in the past year, including the April 10 strike that culminated in Mr. Chavez’s ouster. Such a convergence of interest of business and labor is rare in politics, but Mr. Carmona evidently felt his position was strong enough to exclude a powerful ally. According to political scientist Jesus Herrera from the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Carmona’s dismissive attitude toward such powerful political forces shows the extent to which his government was dominated by elements of the extreme right.

In the end, these self-imposed internal schisms brought down the Carmona government. When he dissolved the National Assembly, armed forces chief General Efrain Vasquez threatened to withdraw his support. Mr. Carmona reconsidered his decision and suspended the inauguration of his new cabinet. Now Mr. Carmona appeared weak in addition to high-handed: Dr. Herrera suggests that it appeared that the real power lay with General Vasquez.

Meanwhile, on the day after the coup (April 13) Chavez supporters surrounded the presidential palace and demanded his return. Mr. Carmona was forced to leave the palace and move to Fuerte Tiuna, a military base in Caracas. Concurrently, military bases in the cities of Maracay, Valencia and Barquisimeto rebelled against Carmona’s government and threw their support behind Mr. Chavez.

Upon being removed from office, Mr. Chavez had been sequestered and taken to four different locations, until he finally arrived at the Isla de la Orchila, an island in the Caribbean. When Mr. Carmona fled, Mr. Chavez was released by a group of loyal paratroopers. He returned to the presidential palace in the early morning of Sunday, April 14, barely catching his breath before he declared triumphantly in a press conference, “to God what belongs to God, to the Caesar what belongs to the Caesar, and to the people what belongs to the people.”

THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE

As soon as he assumed power, Mr. Carmona announced that Venezuela would pursue its own interests in the Western Hemisphere ahead of its commitments to the Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries (OPEC). In other words, Venezuela would no longer adhere to OPEC’s production quotas and threaten the effectiveness of the cartel. Mr. Carmona went on to announce a moratorium to Venezuela’s shipments of oil to the state of Cuba.

The policy shift played well to American audiences. With turmoil in the Middle East threatening oil prices (which rose sharply in April), the prospect of Mr. Carmona deviating from OPEC collective action appealed to nervous American businessmen. And even apart from omnipresent oil rows, the U.S. government has had its own problems with Mr. Chavez. The Venezuelan president has been an outspoken advocate for third-world countries, and maintains warm relationships with pariah states Libya and Cuba. Mr. Chavez was the first head of state to visit Iraq after the sanctions were imposed. He spoke out publicly against the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and refused to provide the American government access to the private records of thousands of Arab-Venezuelans.

Mr. Chavez also has been a continual thorn in the side of American efforts to promote free trade in Latin America. He has criticized the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations, and he reluctantly signed the hemispheric Declaration of Quebec because he thought it promoted representative democracy instead of the participatory type.

When news of the coup reached the U.S., the Bush administration sent conflicting messages: it stopped short of endorsing the coup, but it blamed Mr. Chavez for his troubles rather than condemning the undemocratic transfer of power. Apart from El Salvador, the U.S.’s voice was alone in the Western Hemisphere in failing to denounce the coup. Instead, the U.S. held to the line that Mr. Chavez had “resigned” (albeit under pressure) as a result of popular pressure.

Although Venezuela’s neighbors have been critical of Mr. Chavez, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica and the European Union expressed concern for the manner in which the transition was orchestrated. Mexico, Peru, Argentina and Paraguay refused to recognize Mr. Carmona’s government until free elections were held.

THE AFTERMATH

On the Monday following the turbulent weekend, Mr. Chavez alleged that he had seen private airplane with U.S. markings when he was being held at the Isla de la Orchila; he plans to conduct an investigation. Venezuelan journalists reported more plausible U.S. involvement, writing that the organizers of the coup met with the U.S. Ambassador, Charles Shapiro, in Venezuela prior to the coup. The U.S. government confirmed that the meeting took place but denied that the Bush administration had anything to do with the coup preparations.

Upon the return of Mr. Chavez, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice chided him for failing to heed the Venezuelan people’s message that his policies “were not working” and that he had dealt with them in a “high-handed fashion”.

Calling for national reconciliation, Ms. Rice said: “We do hope that Mr Chavez. . . takes advantage of this opportunity to right his own ship which has, quite frankly, been moving in the wrong direction for some time.” While Venezuelans wait to see where their destiny will take them, Mr. Chavez must practice the political flexibility Mr. Carmona so sorely lacked if he is to unite Venezuelan society and regain international confidence.

George W. Bush’s unilateralist tendencies contradict his father’s vision, and threaten American goals in the long term

by Ansel Halliburton
More than a decade ago, history changed course faster than anyone could have predicted. The Berlin Wall fell, the Iron Curtain lifted, and Soviet power crumbled just two years later. The Cold War ended and the world entered a new, uncertain era. Then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush seized the opportunity to proclaim a “new world order,” which was to be characterized by unprecedented international cooperation and peace. True to his words, the United Nations, international law, and international trade each have flourished since the end of the Cold War.

The president’s vision seemed promising until September 11, 2001. When terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the course of history took an unexpected turn once again. Few doubted that the devastating attacks on America would have far-reaching consequences for the entire world, and as the U.S. government built a global coalition against terrorism, a new order began to take shape.

Like his father, George W. Bush is trying to construct a new world order at a turning point in history. The new new world order, however, is entirely different from what George H. W. Bush proposed. Where Bush the father declared, “A world where the United Nations, freed from Cold War stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders,” Bush the son speaks of combating an “axis of evil.” The present Bush Administration has determined to make American power the dominant force in world politics, and that the U.S. will do unilaterally what it cannot accomplish multilaterally. During its first year in office, the Bush Administration acted alone in scrapping the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and promoting national missile defense over the protests of the international community.

Unilateralism continued to characterize U.S. policy in the wake of the terrorist attacks. In his State of the Union speech on January 29, President Bush characterized Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an “axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” His rhetorical flourish touched off a firestorm of international debate, but, more importantly, it placed weapons proliferation on the same tier as terrorism. The list of potential U.S. military targets has been extended beyond terrorist groups to states developing and selling weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defended the President’s “axis of evil” rhetoric, calling it “useful” to put a moral spotlight on the three regimes, while not revealing any immediate plans for military action.

The combination of U.S. unilateralism and the extension of the war on terror to include weapons proliferators is a potent mixture, and it marks a departure from previous policy. Frustrated with slow progress on U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons cutbacks, the Bush Administration has advanced a policy of “unilateral but parallel” force reductions. At the same time, it has revisited the idea of “usable” nuclear weapons, attempting to build a new concept of deterrence for the post-Cold War era. In practice, this reliance on unilateralism has irritated allies and adversaries alike.

DETERRENCE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM?

While the security environment changed dramatically since the demise of the Soviet Union, nuclear deterrence policies have remained in limbo because of deadlock with Russia, as well as disagreements inside the White House and the Pentagon. Even though the U.S. and Russia are no longer adversaries, both countries maintain thousands of nuclear weapons poised to strike each other. China also possesses a limited strategic nuclear arsenal with sufficient range to strike the U.S. Apart from the usual suspects, an estimate produced by the National Intelligence Council and published by the CIA in December concluded that by 2015, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq-the three “axis of evil” states-could have ballistic missiles of their own capable of striking U.S. territory.

Portions of the Defense Department’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), leaked to the press in January, describe the potential use of U.S. nuclear weapons against seven countries, including the so-called “axis of evil.” Members of the media and advocacy groups have focused narrowly on this fact, interpreting the NPR as a step toward lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons.

The actual situation, however, is more complex, and the media’s simplified interpretation does not do the NPR justice. The review was undertaken to reassess U.S. strategic nuclear forces in the new security environment. It established a broad strategy and force structure rather than specific target lists or exact numbers of warheads. At a January 9 Pentagon news conference on the NPR, J.D. Crouch, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, described the need for a “capabilities-based force” which could meet the demand for “greater flexibility for a range of contingencies that will be harder to know” in the future.

The September 11 attacks, and the U.S. military deployments that followed, lend credence to Crouch’s view. Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization blamed for the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, is a stateless and highly diffuse organization. (Indeed, it learned many of its tactics, ranging from organizational compartmentalization and secrecy to evasion of spy satellites, from the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.) The Pentagon, often accused of fighting the last war, was not oriented toward this type of threat. In fact, the NPR concedes that nuclear weapons have little role in fighting the terrorist threat, and the force structure it recommends relies heavily on improved conventional forces and intelligence capabilities for that purpose.

It can be argued that in the 1990s the U.S. demonstrated its total dominance of conventional warfare. In a matter of days, U.S. military might, projected to the other side of the world, all but obliterated the Iraqi army, previously one of the world’s largest. In 1999, U.S. air power was decisive in the NATO campaign in Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, winning the war without deploying any ground forces at all. After these experiences, and the knowledge of the overwhelming power of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, few are likely to challenge the U.S. openly. While the NPR rightly refers to the deterrent effect of America’s strong conventional forces, this deterrent is still oriented toward more conventional threats.

POLICY FAILURE

Although the Bush Administration’s defense policies are unlikely to win America any new friends, they will likely succeed on some level due to the sheer preponderance of U.S. military power. Unfortunately, by pursuing unilateral policies, the U.S. may win the battle, but lose the war.

Assistant Secretary Crouch said the goals of U.S. nuclear strategy would be to “assure, dissuade, deter and defeat”-to assure allies, to dissuade competition, to deter use of nuclear weapons, and to defeat adversaries. By this measure, U.S. policy meets only half of its own criteria. The U.S. will be able to defeat any nuclear or conventional adversary in the foreseeable future, and updating nuclear strategy for the new security environment helps to create new forms of deterrence for the post-Cold War world. But U.S. policy surely is not reassuring its allies. Relations with Russia are strained periodically, and many of America’s European allies are concerned over the Bush Administration’s unilateralist bent. Most importantly, dissuading proliferation is more difficult than merely outmuscling Russia or China. (India, and Pakistan are not expected to threaten the U.S. directly, and consequently have been left out of the defense establishment’s calculus.)

The authors of the Nuclear Posture Review tried to take the long view on nuclear weapons, but they didn’t quite succeed. A more farsighted view of the consequences of current U.S. policy as represented by the leaked NPR, national missile defense, and withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, would show that the U.S. is unilaterally shooting itself in the foot.

While Russia has followed President Bush’s unilateral lead in cutting strategic nuclear weapons, this is likely to have happened “with or without arms control,” according to the National Intelligence Council report-the same report President Bush relied on for his “axis of evil” speech. Hence, any claims to the success of “unilateral but parallel” reductions are bunk. The U.S. will always possess enough nuclear weapons to obliterate would-be proliferators, and the NPR does nothing to change this fact. Diplomatic engagement is more likely to produce better results than new defense policies. Unfortunately, engagement seems to be off the table for now: President Bush’s State of the Union remarks did not go over well in Iran, Iraq, or North Korea-the three countries the National Intelligence Council identified as the major ballistic missile threats to the U.S.

More importantly, the Bush Administration’s focus on missile defense and nuclear proliferation ignores the much more immediate threat of terrorism. A functional missile defense shield would not have prevented the September 11 attacks. The Pentagon’s attention should remain on defeating known terrorists.

The threat of ballistic missiles from the “axis of evil” is real, but it is not as imminent as that of terrorism, and it can be better handled through other means, and without disrupting the delicate counter-terrorism coalition. De-emphasizing proliferation issues and embracing multilateral dialogue would restore the credibility of U.S. diplomacy and allow it to focus on more important issues, such as terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Bush Administration must resist the temptations of building an America-centric world order and using its powerful position to act unilaterally. Although short-term goals can be achieved unilaterally, such strategies undermine America’s long-term interests by weakening its alliances and diplomatic relations.