Posted on 10/23/2006 7:24:01 PM PDT by CubaninMiami
Carlos Alberto Montaner
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will build 20 military bases in Bolivia, which will be situated on the borders with five other nations: Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Those installations will be under the control of Venezuelan and Cuban personnel, in complicity with Bolivian soldiers. Most certainly, the Cubans will carry Venezuelan passports and identification papers. It isn't easy to tell them apart. They're alike, even in their virtues and defects. The cost of the new Venezuelan armaments will rise to $30 billion. Venezuela has become the leading international buyer of arms and military equipment.
The plan reprises an old dream and early strategic concept created by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara: to turn Bolivia, a country in the heart of Latin America, into the subversive bastion of South America. That conviction cost Guevara his own life in 1967.
First target: Chile
Bolivia is a country from which the entire Andean region can be destabilized by fanning ethnic conflicts. It is a country (soon with the right bases) from which the new warplanes bought by Chávez in Russia can operate. I expect the Chileans -- the first targets in the sights of the Venezuelan colonel ready to ''swim in the Bolivian sea'' -- are aware of the enormous danger that will hang over them in the not-too-distant future.
Chávez, in cahoots with Evo Morales, intends to seduce and recruit the Bolivians into his revolutionary adventure by means of a gigantic aid plan that includes medical treatment, literacy campaigns and abundant food. He is sure that such massive aid will demolish any nationalistic wariness. He already is very much appreciated by the Bolivian masses and will be even more so in the future. Bolivia is the poorest country in the continent. Several hundreds of millions of dollars conveniently distributed (Chávez calculates) may achieve the miracle of attracting the enthusiastic adhesion of the neediest people and the complicity of the radical groups to the cause of a redemptive conquest of Latin America, a step on the road to 21st-century socialism.
No sense of boundaries
What we're witnessing is the consequence of a delirious vision of history and global political reality. Months ago, last December, that vision was explained in Caracas by Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, and the world was foolish enough not to pay any attention. Castro and Chávez, two absolutely messianic characters without any vestige of prudence or sense of boundaries, came to the conclusion that Marxism had revived after the debacle that ended the Soviet Union and its European satellites 15 years ago. From that conclusion, they derived the sacred mission that both assumed with the responsibility and fervor of crusaders: Caracas and Havana would bear on their shoulders the task of redeeming a humanity cowardly abandoned by Moscow.
That's the hair-raising picture before our eyes: Caracas-Havana, and now La Paz, are the new Moscow, mother and father of world socialism. The task they have as signed themselves begins with the revolutionary conquest of South America and the installation in all its nations of sympathetic governments that will collaborate in the final battle against ``imperialism.''
What is the objective of that battle? Obviously, to bring the United States and its despicable European acolytes to their knees. To end forever the iniquitous exploitation of the Third World by the creation of a grandiose collectivistic and egalitarian civilization that will reign eternally for the glory of humanity.
Hungry and hopeless
It would be a huge mistake to dismiss this blueprint to conquest just because it's the senseless madness of a couple of characters who didn't take Prozac when they should have. The Third Reich spawned by the Nazis was no less mad or absurd, yet it cost the world 40 million dead and the monstrous Holocaust. Cuba is an impoverished Third World island, hungry and hopeless, but that didn't deter its government from participating in successful coups d'etat in Madagascar and Yemen, or sending its troops to fight in bloody African wars, both in Angola and Ethiopia, for 15 years.
With his petrodollars and the help and guidance of the Cubans, who are expert and combat-tested, Chávez is building the largest Spanish-speaking army: 1.2 million men who will have at their disposal the most destructive air force in all of South America. Once that machine is well oiled, he won't hesitate to put it to use as the Cuban armed forces were once used. Once the tool is available, it will inevitably be put into operation. No matter that Chávez is mad. Madmen also kill
Boy...do we have alot cooking for the next 50 years...
I half-hope that Chavez makes a move against Chile or one of our other friends down there. It would be so very desirable to have an excuse to reduce his entire military establishment to scrap metal and charcoal. I hope we don't lose our nerve when the time comes.
I don't care for the guy, but Pat Robertson was 100% dead-on right in this case.
Bolivia was always attractive as a guerilla sanctuary because of interior lines and multiple borders. One of those is not with Venezuela, however, and so Huey may run into a little logistics problem if he decides to fund Terror Central out of there.
However since we are a moral people who abhor civilian casualties, we probably won't, at least not in any conventional fight. We are forever constrained by ethics and reason, and often our adversaries aren't. Also, the logistics of scrap metal and charcoal are quite staggering and expensive even with US air power. We can certainly take their aircraft out of the picture, no doubt about that. Going into a large, armed country with boots on the ground is messy and riddled with problems, as we are seeing now in Iraq. It just ain't easy. It stretches us thin and hurts us in so many ways, even as we prevail.
If it ever comes to an existential crisis for the US, the only really big stick we can wield against billions of determined opponents is our nuclear arsenal. Even after the worst nightmare Tom Clancy scenario, we have the ability to do the scrap metal and charcoal thing for real, no matter what damage has been inflicted upon our country.
I realize that the odds of our using them are remote, and that is properly so. They will hopefully never be needed. But all in all, the evil powers in this world know that we have them, and under what circumstances they will be used. Chavez knows, Kim knows, Ahmanutjob knows. Putin and Hu know. Sometimes it is but the threat of madness that keeps us safe in our beds.
The proverbial flea-with-erection floating down the river yelling for the bridge to be raised.
Not sure Chile is a "friend." Most of South America (except Paraguay and Colombia) is ruled by lefties, though most of them are the tree-hugging Euro "wimp next door" kind of lefty.
I think what we're going to see is that Castro will die, Chavez will thereby lose his legitimacy, and most of the lefties in South America will turn against him on their own. Another $10/gal drop in oil prices would also hurt him. In fact, about the only thing that would keep him popular would be the US putting pressure on him.
History has proven, again and again, that if you give incompetent pissants like Chavez enough rope they will hang themselves. And that leaves us free to confront the real threats to world peace - N. Korea and Iran (and, eventually, Russia and China).
Hmmm...sounds like it could succeed..../sarc/
Chavez is certainly rolling out the Master Plans, all on the assumption he will be re-elected. This project reveals what will prove to be his fatal flaw: he needs to be re-elected first in Venezuela, rather than Bolivia or anywhere else in Latin America. He is doomed.
Or the rat crawling up the elephant's leg, its mind bent on rape.
Why are these similes always sexual?
-ccm
Oh, I didn't mean to imply we should occupy Venezuela or Bolivia. Just destroy his air force, armor, and major military installations from the air. We could accomplish all we needed in a matter of two weeks. It's a 500-mile milk run from Puerto Rico to Venezuela.
-ccm
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