RUSSIA is not alone in being in serious dispute with its southern neighbors. In the last three days the United States has become embroiled in three separate spats with Latin American countries. The recrudescence of its long-term differences with the left-wing Venezuelan regime of President Hugo Chavez is no surprise. But the new rows with Bolivia and Honduras suggest that there are wider issues at stake here. Bolivia has, along with Venezuela, expelled the US envoys to their governments, accusing Washington of meddling in their internal affairs. Meanwhile, Honduras has refused to accept the credentials of a new US ambassador. The Americans, of course, deny any interference whatsoever and but have stepped up the dispute with Venezuela, by freezing the US assets of three top Chavez aides, accusing them of being involved in narcotics and backing Colombia’s FARC guerrillas.
The Bush denial that it is backing right-wing opposition in Venezuela and Bolivia does not ring at all true. Washington still regards Latin America as its backyard. It has always resisted left-wing movements that in the Cold War it took to be Soviet-influenced. The Americans have never forgotten they and indeed the world came to the brink of a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. Now the Russians are back. The White House will not have been amused to see two Russian bombers fly into Venezuela this week to take part in a military exercise. It has been little reported that the Russians are also taking a renewed interest in Cuba with Russian business reportedly looking at investment opportunities. It was the annual Soviet purchases of the Cuban sugar harvest at inflated prices that long kept Castro’s communist regime afloat.
All this is tailor-made to alarm the Bush White House which has unwisely persisted in its economic blockade of Cuba, even though abandoning that policy — unilaterally — could well give a major fillip to the movement of political change that is gathering strength in that country now that Fidel Castro has retreated from leadership. Could it be that the Kremlin is encouraging its state-owned and private businesses to seek advantageous positions within Cuba so that when economic, if not political transition occurs, it will be Russian money that will occupy some at least of the commanding heights of the economy, before the Americans can arrive with their check books? It will not of course have occurred to the Bush administration that there is any parallel between Russia’s sending bombers to Venezuela and the United States sending warships to Georgia and the Black Sea. Bush is so certain that everything he and the US think and do is right, that he is incapable of appreciating the priorities and reactions of anyone else. So what is his administration up to in Latin America and why has he chosen the closing months of his presidency to allow — even maybe provoke — a diplomatic confrontation with two if not three of his southern neighbors — to say nothing of his secret approval for US forces to infringe Pakistani sovereignty in pursuit of the Taleban? Has he not got himself and the American people into enough international trouble already?
