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War scares are running high in Great Britain, while the British Foreign Ministry is trying to cool down tensions with Argentina. At the same time Britain is attempting to demonstrate that it has no intention of abandoning the Falkland Islands claimed by Argentina. Prime Minister David Cameron, in his broadcast on Saturday, pledged to the Falklanders “We will always maintain our commitment to you on any question of sovereignty …Your right to self-determination is the cornerstone of our policy. We will never negotiate on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands unless you, the Falkland Islanders, so wish. No democracy could...

America Abroad: Exceptional Since 1776A response to Stephen Walt's "The Myth of American Exceptionalism" President Obama’s misunderstanding of American exceptionalism has found defenders among international-relations scholars and taken on an aura of legitimacy. Realist theorist Stephen Walt, in a recent article in Foreign Policy, exposes the “myths� of American exceptionalism. Walt echoes Obama’s view — namely that, since many nations have sincerely believed they were exceptional, no nation is truly exceptional. Yet America’s indispensable role in the world does not result from the sincerity of its leaders, but from the verity of its exceptional principles.Despite dismissals of American exceptionalism and...

There are fears there will soon be a second world missile crisis after it was reported that Iran, who are fierce enemies of Israel, are due to build a mid-range rocket base in Venezuela. According to German paper Die Welt Iran have bought launch pads on the Paraguana Peninsula, and the Middle East country's engineers visited the site in February...According to the Jerusalem Post Iran will build intermediate-range missile launch pads on the Paraguana Peninsula, located roughly 120km from America's main South American ally, Columbia. Engineers from Khatam al-Anbia construction company scoped out the site earlier this year. The head...

In 1823 President James Monroe issued a seminal foreign policy statement which has become known as the Monroe Doctrine. This stated that the United States would view any European involvement in Latin America as a threat to the United States to be resisted. At the time of its issuance, the U.S. did not have the military power to effectively enforce this so the Royal Navy served as the de facto enforcer of this policy until the U.S. gained requisite military strength around the turn of the 20th century. In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt issued the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe...

Jamsheed and Carol Choksy of Indiana University wrote an insightful piece in RealClear Politics this morning addressing Tehran's investment in leftist governments in South America. Their conclusion reinforces the belief that Iran is projecting a preponderance of power globally to put US and other Western allies in a bind. The Latin American angle is especially interesting because it shows that Iran is posing a direct challenge to the US' Monroe Doctrine--a geopolitical strategy that has secured US primacy in the western hemisphere for the last 200 years. Perhaps the most engaging section of the article is the paragraph that addressed...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Russia would cross "a red line for the United States of America" if it were to base nuclear capable bombers in Cuba, a top US air force officer warned on Tuesday. "If they did I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America," said General Norton Schwartz, nominated to be the air force's chief of staff. He was referring to a Russian news report that said the military is thinking of flying long-range bombers to Cuba on a regular basis. It...

He has been called a terrorist by Washington but... An adoring audience of British left-wingers and the Latin American diaspora cheered, clapped, sang and laughed as Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez denounced President Bush and capitalism and praised Ken Livingstone and the Pope... During his marathon address, with occasional pauses to ask his "amigo" Ken whether his time was up, he managed to refer to everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Rosa Luxemburg, Pythagoras to Thomas Jefferson, CLR James to his mother. "Sometimes I'm a terrorist according to Washington or a guy who does military coups," said President Chávez, in front...

WASHINGTON - Disagreements between the U.S. and Bolivia over visa policy and coca eradication flared up this week, threatening the Bush administration's efforts to court Bolivia's president. Differences over trade, visas, drug trafficking and a former Bolivian president exiled in the United States are straining U.S.-Bolivian relations and threatening to wreck the Bush administration's careful efforts to court left-leaning President Evo Morales, diplomats and analysts say. The tensions could worsen in the coming months as Morales, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, defines his policy toward Washington, probably after the July elections to choose...

BEIJING - Despite strengthening trade ties, China said it had no plans to expand its influence in Latin America. Chinese officials have assured Washington that Beijing has no plans to seek greater influence in Latin America beyond expanding trade, a senior U.S. envoy said Friday. The assurances underscore how China's global rise has heightened concerns about its activities in regions where Washington has long been dominant. ''In our conversations, the purpose was not to draw lines,'' Thomas Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said of several days of talks with his Chinese counterparts. ``Ultimately, in the...

The United States and China will talk next week about China's growing involvement in Latin America. In the past two years China has invested billions in the region - which Washington has, up to now, regarded as its sphere of interest. Charles Tang cuts an arresting figure. He negotiates the uneven Sao Paulo paving stones in his well-cut pin stripe suit, tall, alert, wearing the smile of a man who believes in his vision. Latin music seeps out from a nearby building, and Tang appears to sway in time with it, a child of the Chinese revolution who walks and...

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Chinese influence is increasing in Latin America and Africa, a phenomenon that could have substantial bearing on America`s foreign policy on these regions, say analysts. 'America`s influence could be seriously eroded,' while Chinese influence will only increase, said Stephen Johnson, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Referring to the 'plantation economy' being created in Latin America as a result of China`s substantial influence on the economy, he said that the United States should rely more on competition in order to get a foot back in the door as a major player....

VENEZUELA-Top Washington officials worry that Venezuela and Iran may be building more than economic bridges.They started with an agreement to build tractors, but Iran and Venezuela have quickly moved to oil, cement, homes, auto parts, shipbuilding and perhaps even nuclear energy. The new friendship between the two deeply anti-American governments was further cemented last month as Iranian Parliament speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel headed a delegation that visited Venezuela and drew expressions of support from populist President Hugo Chávez. ''It's a natural byproduct of their confrontation with the United States,'' said Armando Durán, a columnist and former Venezuelan foreign minister....

"Don't mess with me, Condoleezza," Hugo Chavez said Sunday during his weekly radio broadcast.

Date: Feb 5, 2006 3:08 PM From: Kenneth T. Tellis kenttellis@gmail.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: The time for Russia to act in defense of its own interests As long as the Russian nation sits back and accepts the world situation as a fait accompli Russia is doomed to medocrity ... but Russia can and must put its own interests before all. Perhaps the Russian families who lost their sons, fathers and youth in Afghanistan, might do well to remember who created that situation for them. It was the US that spent millions of dollars in a proxy war, fought by US-armed,...

WASHINGTON -Washington's antidrug trafficking and aid policies face challenges in Bolivia from the incoming leftist government of Evo Morales. When Bolivia's Evo Morales is sworn in as president on Jan. 22, analysts say he's likely to challenge two policies long cherished by the Bush administration -- that U.S. aid must be tied to investment-friendly policies, and that coca crops must be eradicated. A former coca growers' leader, the fiery Morales toured France, Venezuela, Cuba, Spain and China -- all not exactly friendly to the Bush administration -- and in Venezuela vowed to join the ``anti-neoliberal, anti-imperial fight.'' So far, the...

In the summer of 2004, self-appointed E.U. poll watchers joined Jimmy Carter and others in helping Hugo Chavez seize power through a fraudulent recall election in Venezuela. Within months, Chavez expelled U.S. military advisors and ordered weapons from the Russians (including 50 MiG-29s), and one suspects some of those weapons were for the narco-terrorists in Colombia. While in office, Chavez has jailed, executed, and intimidated his democratic opposition, and he now has a fellow dictator-in-training in Bolivia who also bastardized the democratic process to gain power. That man is long-time labor agitator and avowed communist “Evo” Morales, who has assumed...

ETERAZAMA, Bolivia - After striking a conciliatory tone with business leaders the night before, President-elect Evo Morales resumed his anti-U.S. rhetoric at a party with coca farmers.Partying until dawn on Thursday with the coca growers who helped him win Bolivia's presidential elections, Evo Morales had the audience cheering with some anti-U.S. rhetoric. ''We are winning the green battle: the coca leaf is beating the North American dollar,'' said Morales, who leaves today for Cuba, the first stop in a world tour before his inauguration Jan. 22. Morales also won applause the night before with a strikingly different message to Bolivia's...

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Thousands of supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez marched in Caracas on Saturday to support the leftist leader in his dispute with Mexico's president over U.S. free trade proposals. State workers, unionists and students, many wearing red T-shirts, waved flags and anti-U.S. placards as they marched through the capital accompanied by trucks blaring revolutionary songs, Venezuelan folk ballads and Mexican mariachi music. Venezuela and Mexico withdrew their ambassadors on Monday after Chavez called his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, a "lap dog" of U.S. imperialism for his close ties to Washington and told him, "Don't mess with...

CARACAS - Venezuela will receive the first of 100,000 Russian-made assault rifles starting next month in a deal struck earlier this year. Russia will deliver 30,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and three helicopters to Venezuela by year's end, Russian and Venezuelan officials said during talks Thursday. The first 15,000 rifles will arrive Dec. 15, with an identical shipment to follow on Dec. 30, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said. They will be the first weapons under a deal for 100,000 Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-103 and AK-104 rifles signed in May by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's government. The remaining 70,000 rifles will...

CARACAS - (AP) -- President Hugo Chávez warned Tuesday he might share Venezuela's U.S.-made F-16 fighters with Cuba and China, accusing the United States of making it difficult for his country to obtain spare parts for the aircraft. Chávez claimed the U.S. broke a contract to supply parts for Venezuela's fleet of 21 F-16s and pressured other countries not to help maintain them. `DO WHAT WE WANT' ''We can do whatever we want with the planes. Maybe we'll send 10 to Cuba, or maybe to China so that they can see the technology,'' said Chávez, a close ally of Cuban...

CARACAS,VENEZUELA-Venezuelan army reservists are training civilians, apparently to defend their country against a presumed U.S. invasion. But critics say President Hugo Chávez is building a private army. It began loudly, with a boombox blasting the calvary bugle through the soft, early-evening air. The sound prompted 80 or so mostly young men and women, dressed in white T-shirts and black baseball caps, to run to get into a tight military formation. ''Buenas noches!'' barked army reservist Sgt. Ricardo Nahmens, dressed in camouflage, at the unarmed group gathered recently in the gravel parking lot in western Caracas. ''Guarantee of security and national...

President George W. Bush rightly is concerned about history repeating itself now that Fidel Castro Jr. -- better known as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez -- has ordered massive quantities of armaments from Russia. Mr. Chavez's Cyrillic shopping spree includes more than 100,000 AK-47 rifles (U.S. intelligence says it might reach 300,000), MiG-29 fighter jets and attack helicopters. He also plans to build an ammunition factory. The Bush administration has lodged a formal protest with Russia for agreeing to be Chavez's bad Santa. To understand Chavez, understand his father figure, the tyrant Castro. Cuba's agrarian reformer was all cane and no...

SURELY some bright bulb from the Council on Foreign Relations in New York or the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton has already remarked that President Bush's inaugural address 10 days ago is the fourth corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. No? So many savants and not one peep out of the lot of them? Really?The president had barely warmed up: "There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants ... and that is the force of human freedom.... The survival of liberty in...

HAVANA, Nov 22 (Reuters) - China's President Hu Jintao arrived in Cuba on Monday on his first visit as Chinese leader to offer the Western Hemisphere's only communist state closer political and economic ties. Hu praised the "heroic Cuban people" and urged them to continue building socialism under the leadership of President Fidel Castro, 16 years his senior and in power since 1959. "We sincerely wish the Cuban people do not let up in their advance on the road of socialist construction," Hu said in a written greeting on his arrival from an Asia-Pacific summit in Chile. He was met...

In "To Rule the Waves," Arthur Herman explains the central role of sea power, particularly for Britain, over nearly half a millennium. His excellent history combines thrilling accounts of battles... with a terrific strategic analysis. Herman reminds us that the sea unites distant and far away lands, and today over 95 percent of international trade is by sea.... To Herman, the decisive moment for the British came when they realized that, far from being vulnerable filaments connecting the home country and its colonies, the sea united the two. As long as the Royal Navy ruled it, Britain could prosper. The...

President Hugo Chávez threatened to use the army to take control in states where governors refuse to accept defeat in Sunday's national elections. CARACAS - The Venezuelan government warned Monday that it would use the army to restore order if opposition state governors persisted in their refusal to recognize the results of Sunday's regional elections. Preliminary figures gave candidates loyal to President Hugo Chávez victory in 20 of 22 state elections. But in several areas, including the important central states of Carabobo and Miranda, governors belonging to the opposition disputed the accuracy of the results. Miranda Gov. Enrique Mendoza, a...

China's Public Security Ministry is set to dispatch a 130-man "special police" unit to Haiti this month in the first deployment of Chinese forces to the Western Hemisphere, Bush administration officials say. The first advance unit of the police troops, who are specially trained for riot and crowd control, will over the next two weeks join the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, the multinational force known as Minustah dispatched to the war-torn Caribbean island... ...Administration officials are concerned that the Chinese government will use the troop deployment as a way to put political pressure on the Haitian government, one of...

A little-noticed drama unfolding in a tiny courtroom at Miami-Dade's Krome detention center provides a small window into the political turmoil roiling Venezuela. It's the asylum case of José Antonio Colina and Germán Rodolfo Varela, two former Venezuelan military officers accused of bombing the Spanish Embassy and Colombian Consulate in Caracas last year. On the surface, they share much in common. But they are strikingly different. And it's those differences that confound traditional perceptions of the Venezuelan scene. Both are former lieutenants in the Venezuelan National Guard. Both broke with President Hugo Chávez. Both joined thousands of anti-Chávez protesters at...

Peru called home its ambassador in Havana, expanding Cuba's diplomatic rift with Mexico and Peru over their U.N. votes to criticize Cuba's human rights record. Mexico's ambassador to Cuba returned home Monday amid a diplomatic rift with Havana that widened significantly, with Peru announcing that it too would recall its ambassador on the island. The twin actions -- a first for both countries -- will effectively freeze political relations but are unlikely to hamper business ties. Mexico also gave the Cuban ambassador until today to leave Mexico. The moves followed weekend criticism of Mexico and Peru by President Fidel Castro...

Shielded by the media glare of presidential politics and daily explosions in Iraq, two crucial issues are about to be decided by the U.S. Senate, without the knowledge of the American people. Issue 1: Should the United States ratify the Law of the Seas Treaty (Treaty Doc. 103-39)? Issue 2: Should any U.N. treaty be ratified without full, open debate and a recorded vote? The answer to both questions should be a resounding "no." Nevertheless, the treaty is very near ratification by unanimous consent, having never been debated, and without a recorded vote. This is the same procedure used to...

Monroe Doctrine; December 2, 1823 The Monroe Doctrine was expressed during President Monroe's seventh annual message to Congress, December 2, 1823: . . . At the proposal of the Russian Imperial Government, made through the minister of the Emperor residing here, a full power and instructions have been transmitted to the minister of the United States at St. Petersburg to arrange by amicable negotiation the respective rights and interests of the two nations on the northwest coast of this continent. A similar proposal has been made by His Imperial Majesty to the Government of Great Britain, which has likewise been...

LINKS to Hugo Chavez's "government" June 2001 - March 2002 I'm keeping track of Hugoland formally known as Venezuela. Please LINK any stories or add what you wish to this thread. The above LINK takes you to past articles posted before the new FR format. Below I'll add what I've catalogued since that LINK no longer could take posts. (March 1, 2002)-- Venezuela's strongman faces widespread calls to step down By Phil Gunson | Special to The Christian Science Monitor [Full Text] CARACAS, VENEZUELA - The man who won Venezuelan hearts three years ago as a strongman who could deliver...