A new Cold War? Forget it, Mr Chavez: business is business

Tony Karon

• Last Updated: September 13. 2008 10:22PM UAE / September 13. 2008 6:22PM GMT

America’s news media are incorrigibly addicted to seeing the ghosts of the past resurrected in every new international story. The staged downing of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in April 2003 was likened by breathless anchors to the moment the Berlin Wall came down; the occupation of Iraq was measured by the yardstick of Germany in 1945, or was it Vietnam in 1964? The answer depended on which papers you were reading. Every new adversary is invariably likened to Hitler; every argument for diplomacy must first withstand the accusations of “1938-style appeasement”, and so on. It’s hardly surprising, then, that when long-range Russian bombers showed up in Venezuela on the same day that President Hugo Chavez kicked out the US ambassador, the punditocracy trotted out sage musings on the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and a “new Cold War” in Latin America.

Chavez and the Russians plan to give them more to chew on. In November Venezuela will welcome four Russian warships, led by the flagship of its Baltic Fleet, for joint naval exercises that will involve 1,000 Russian personnel and more aircraft in a region long claimed by the US as its exclusive strategic sphere of influence: you know, in the same way that Russia claims its “near abroad” in places such as Georgia and Ukraine, and gets really annoyed when the US wants to station missile interceptors in Poland. And making that point is Moscow’s only real purpose in deploying its military in waters close to America’s southern flank, on the edge of its key energy supply route.

Chavez is happy to help the Russians to send their message, because he wants to send a few of his own. He says the purpose of the joint exercises is to warn the US that its traditional strong-arm tactics towards Latin American leaders it doesn’t like won’t work in Venezuela. But Chavez talks up a US “threat” far beyond any that really exists, to justify authoritarian and militarised domestic politics.

More importantly, he is out to burnish his own claim to regional influence by demonstrating how far US hegemony has fallen: not only is he inviting the Russian military into Washington’s traditional sphere of influence, he has also cosied up to Iran, foremost among America’s current bogeymen. President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad has visited Caracas three times in the past two years, and he awarded Chavez Iran’s highest medal for supporting the Islamic Republic in the showdown over its nuclear programme. Venezuela is deepening commercial ties with Iran, and, of course, has replaced the longstanding Soviet role of propping up the Cuban economy by selling oil to Havana at a heavy discount. He has used Venezuela’s booming oil wealth to encourage and empower local allies such as President Evo Morales of Bolivia (another emerging partner of Tehran who plans to invest billions in his country’s natural gas industry) and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Venezuela spends five times as much in aid to Latin America as does the United States. In the Domino Theory that drove Washington’s Latin America policy in the 1980s, Chavez would have been a target as the primary regional menace. Yet he’s getting away with it, as the US is no longer able or willing to stamp its authority on the region it has dominated for a century.

Still, much as Chavez might like to cast himself as Fidel Castro in a Cold War sequel, the reality is far more complex than it was in the bipolar world of US-Soviet rivalry. For starters, there’s no ideological basis for the alliance between the self-styled socialist Venezuelan leader and the Islamists in Tehran or the nationalists in Moscow; simply a common antipathy towards the US and a shared interest in keeping oil prices high. During the Cold War there were two world economies, and you were part of either one or the other; today there’s only one, and its trade links knit together even such fierce rivals as Chavez and Bush. Venezuela is the fourth-largest oil supplier to the United States, and that’s a relationship both sides have a strong interest in maintaining, despite their differences. And while Chavez likes to imagine himself speaking for the Left in Latin America, in fact his bellicose populism is eschewed by the Left in the continent’s most advanced and diversified economies - Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

Nor is Russia (or, for that matter, Iran) the major competitor to stake a claim in Uncle Sam’s traditional backyard. China is fast supplanting the US as the region’s major trade partner. And it is business ties, not military power, that will shape the region’s future orientation.

So, while the era of the Monroe Doctrine, by which the US claimed the right to intervene in Latin America to keep out other powers, is well and truly over, Washington has not been replaced by some alternative hegemon. Instead, Latin American countries are forging political and economic ties with one another, and with China and Europe: and, of course, with the United States. And just as much as Bolivia might tangle with the US and embrace Chavez and Iran, it also finds itself at loggerheads with Brazil over its investment in Bolivian natural gas. These cleavages are hardly ideological; the Brazilian state-owned company Petrobras is to drill for oil off the coast of Cuba, and if the US begins offshore drilling along its coastline you can bet that the Brazilian giant, with its expertise in deep-water drilling, will be involved.

The balance of power has shifted, sure, but not in the way that Chavez would have us believe. Indeed, if “Yanqui imperialism” is on the wane then so too is “anti-imperialism” as an organising principle of regional affairs. Chavez may be trying symbolically to reprise the Cold War, but he’s forgetting Karl Marx’s erudite warning: when historical events occur twice, the first time is a tragedy, the second is a farce.

Tony Karon is a senior editor at Time.com and publishes the website Rootless Cosmopolitan