Oil aids Venezuela's influence (Chavez urges Cuban-style "socialism" as alternative to capitalism)

Miami Herald ^ | Septemer 11, 2005 | PETER PRENGAMAN, AP

[Cincinatus' Wife]

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - When nine Caribbean countries signed oil trading agreements with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, it was a marriage of convenience.

Fragile Caribbean economies scored modest relief from rising fuel prices, while the leftist South American leader advanced his campaign to become a counterweight to U.S. influence in the region, analysts say.

"A lot of what Chavez is doing right now is just bravado," said Vinay Jawahar of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue. "But it's going to make the United States' life harder."

Jawahar said Chavez is trying to increase his influence in the 34-nation Organization of American States, whose top human rights panel has often criticized the Venezuelan government.

The OAS also is the venue for negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a U.S.-backed effort that Chavez opposes. Caribbean countries, who have concerns about how the FTAA would affect their struggling industries, often try to vote in a bloc in the OAS, making their support pivotal to many decisions.

Jawahar said Chavez also is trying to build regional support for his friend and ally, Cuban President Fidel Castro. The United States routinely backs resolutions condemning Cuba's human rights record in the United Nations. In recent years, votes on the resolutions have been close.

At a signing ceremony for the oil deals in Jamaica on Tuesday, Chavez urged Caribbean governments to consider Cuba-style socialism as an alternative to capitalism.

"Fidel, I think you were always right: It's socialism or death," he said.

Yet Chavez can only go so far in eroding U.S. influence in the Caribbean, analysts say. The United States is the biggest trade partner of most Caribbean countries and their largest market for tourism.

The same day the Dominican Republic signed the Petrocaribe oil agreement with Venezuela, its legislature overwhelmingly approved a free trade agreement with the United States and five Central American countries.

"Only a crazy person would have turned down Chavez's deal with oil at $70 a barrel," said Miguel Ceara-Hatton, a U.N. economist in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. "This won't change relations with the United States."

Still, the Petrocaribe agreement left Caribbean countries indebted to Venezuela. Nine countries - Antigua, Belize, Grenada, Guyana, Dominica, Suriname, St. Kitts, St. Vincent and the Dominican Republic - signed deals under the initiative in Jamaica. Cuba and Jamaica had previously signed.

Under the plan, Caribbean governments would pay market price for Venezuelan oil, but they only would be required to pay a portion of the cost upfront and could finance the rest over 25 years at low interest rates. Governments also could pay partly with services or goods such as rice, bananas or sugar while Venezuela would provide help expanding shipping and refining facilities.

The agreement allowed the Dominican Republic to scrap a major fuel conservation plan that would have raised gasoline prices and limited private vehicle use.

Although it may be too soon to know how much influence Chavez will gain through Petrocaribe, the initiative comes at a time when Washington appears to be having a harder time getting its way in the region.

Earlier this year, Washington's first choice for secretary-general of the OAS, former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores, dropped out of the leadership race for lack of support. It was the first time the United States' chosen candidate did not win the OAS leadership.

Venezuela had vehemently opposed Flores, who had applauded a 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez, and supported Chilean Interior Minister Jose Miguel Insulza, who won the post.

"Chavez has been generous," said Larry Birns, an director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "And in certain respects, he'll expect dividends."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

Fidel Castro - Cuba

Cuban leader Fidel Castro jokes with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez while both talked briefly with admirers, during a break in the PetroCaribbean Summit meeting on oil in the Caribbean, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005. In addition to Chavez and Castro, many leaders of other Caribbean nations gathered for Tuesday's summit to discuss the details of an oil trading program that could help some of the more fragile economies in the region survive the shock of higher fuel prices, according to summit organizers. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Using oil to spread revolution - CAFTA "a national-security vote" slows Chavista expansionism ***.............Fears that Venezuela would profit from its rejection was one reason why the Bush administration lobbied so hard for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), narrowly passed by the House of Representatives on July 27th (see article). Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, had called this “a national-security vote”.

All the same, Mr Chávez's successes are fragile ones. For one thing, it is hard to see what tangible benefits Venezuelans derive from this diplomacy. Mr Chávez has alienated both of his country's main trading partners, the United States and Colombia. Oil revenues are increasingly being spent without democratic scrutiny. A once-professional diplomatic service has been turned into a branch of the revolution, its dissidents either purged or neutralised. And although the alliance with Cuba has brought new social programmes, their cost and long-term benefits are hard to determine. Despite the oil boom, unemployment officially stands at 11%.

There are also limits to the region's tolerance of chavista expansionism. Only Cuba has signed up for ALBA. The richer Caribbean countries are unenthusiastic about Petrocaribe. Petrosur and Petroandina feature much rhetoric and little action. Cuba apart, no other country shares Mr Chávez's distaste for representative democracy, or his disdain for regional bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In a setback for Mr Chávez, on July 27th the Inter-American Development Bank, the region's largest official lender, chose as its new president Luis Alberto Moreno, Colombia's ambassador to Washington who was discreetly backed by Mr Bush. Mr Moreno easily defeated candidates from Brazil and Venezuela.

Argentine officials have welcomed imports of fuel from Venezuela, and its help in making contacts with China, but they are cooling towards Mr Chávez. Were evidence to emerge of his hand in Bolivia's turmoil, South America would become even warier. Should Lula's troubles deny him a second term, Brazil is likely to move to the centre-right, shifting the regional balance. The death of Mr Castro, who is 78 and frail, would be a body blow to Mr Chávez. So, of course, would a fall in oil prices.

A Summit of the Americas, involving 34 countries (all except Cuba), in Argentina in November should be a pointer to the prevailing diplomatic winds. The United States wants to stop the meeting becoming a platform for Mr Chávez. But if Mr Bush turns up empty-handed (CAFTA apart), Latin Americans will continue to pay court to that generous neighbour in Caracas.***

[Caipirabob]

"Fidel, I think you were always right: It's socialism or death," he said.

Guess what Chavez? In the end it won't be Socialism.

fidel : "Thank you for those American-Style Depends, Comrade!"

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Chavez, like Hillary, knows the true goal.

"Hillary Clinton and the Radical Left" Hillary Clinton and the Third Way***............ For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.

Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.

But the fall of Communism taught the progressives who were its supporters very little. Above all, it failed to teach them the connection between their utopian ideals and the destructive consequences that flowed from them. The fall of Communism has had a cautionary impact only on the overt agendas of the political left. The arrogance that drives them has hardly diminished. The left is like a millenarian sect that erroneously predicted the end of the world, and now must regroup to revitalize its faith.

No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption. In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which "social justice" prevails.

Because the transformation progressives seek is ultimately total, the power they seek must be total as well. In the end, the redemption they envision cannot be achieved as a political compromise, even though compromises may be struck along the way. Their brave new world can ultimately be secured only by the complete surrender of the resisting force. In short, the transformation of the world requires the permanent entrenchment of the saints in power. Therefore, everything is justified that serves to achieve the continuance of Them. ............***

[longtermmemmory]

I see, IOW Chavez urges Venezuelans to eat ground up banana peels in order to not starve to death. Just like Cuba.

[clee1]

Uh huh.

I just hope the POTUS in office when this gets up to steam has more b@lls that JFK did.

[Hardastarboard]

Well of course Mr. Chavez advocates Cuban style socialism. That's because it works, whereas all the other forms have failed.

/sarcasm

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Good point!

[sgtbono2002]

Pat Robertson was right.

[arthurus]

All South America could become Cubanized and it would just mean that the continent would fall out of the world economy and starve in its self sufficiency.

[arthurus]

The Russians discovered that the only practical way to pursue this goal is to kill off everyone who is not compatible. Unfortunately if you succeed in doing this, the 5% or so who remain will have children who will be endowed with Human Nature and the goal recedes again.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Pat Robertson knows enough to know when his remarks will aid the enemy.

He gave Chavez a gift and the U.S. a black eye.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

And the flood into the U.S. would be greater. Imagine having North Korea on your doorstep.

[arthurus]

No sarcasm needed. It does work. When people judge whether or not the system "works" they misjudge the goals. It works because Castro remains in power. The goal of Cuban socialism is to keep the thugs in total control.

[arthurus]

He told Chavez that he has to watch his back because Chavez will assume that such an announcement by any public figure is a threat from GB.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Both these commies love making the U.S. their enemy. They rally their countries with dire visions of the U.S. invading and/or assassinating them.

[sgtbono2002]

What you say is true. He was wrong in saying it, That has nothing to do with his being right about the concept.

Chavez is a highly dangerous enemy of the United States.

More dangerous than Castro ever was , because as you can see he is using the oil wealth of his country to buy the loyalty of other states. He is also buying weapons, Chavez is a South American Saddam Hussein on the rise.The more successful he is now the more dangerous he will become later. How long before he establishes ties with N Korea and Iran and tries to buy a Nuclear weapon?

He needs to be nipped in the bud.

[Thermalseeker]

"It's socialism or death."

Socialism, medically speaking, is death everywhere it is tried.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

.......The more successful he is now the more dangerous he will become later........

He's been at this since the Eighties. Now he appears to be cruising along at a good clip.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!