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From the
Americas
M
ay
/J
une
2007
US Foreign policy
Russia’s President Putin sounds a note
heard at the White House
“The Bush administration has decided to reach out more often
and more intensively to Russia at a time when the leadership in
Moscow is harshly criticizing American policy and some scholars
say the United States has not sufficiently tended to an important
relationship.”
(‘US Moves to Soothe Growing Russian Resentment,’
March 6)
This assertion, by Washington reporters Thom Shanker and Helene
Cooper of the New York Times, reflects the belated awakening by
President George W Bush to the fact that President Vladimir V
Putin is seriously dissatisfied with him. While Mr Putin is not alone
in holding that view, recent remarks of his have been unusually
pointed and direct.
On February 10, in Munich, the Russian leader used a keynote
address at a security conference to accuse the US of overstepping
itself to impose its will on the world through the unilateral application
of military power. Specific grievances were American plans to
base elements of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe,
and Washington’s support for expanding the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization. Taken together, these policies have induced unease
and indignation in a Russia newly flush with petrodollars.
Initially it was believed by American political analysts that the speech
was intended for Russian domestic consumption. But many Russia
experts in the US came to believe that Mr Putin was speaking to the
United States and its NATO allies.
“We weren’t paying attention,”
Russia scholar Michael A. McFaul,
a professor at Stanford University (Palo Alto, California), told the
Times.
“We were distracted, busy, with other problems in the world,
in particular Iraq. The administration is now put in a position of
playing defense.”
Senior Bush administration officials, acknowledging the utility
of franker dialogue with Russia on American foreign policy and
national security plans, now seek fuller engagement with Russian
leaders. By calling for private discussions they hope to demonstrate
that the United States is exerting itself to promote the relationship.
Latin America
Venezuela spends on its neighbours
to counter US influence
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela recently announced
that his government would build an oil refinery in Nicaragua.
Venezuela has also pledged to provide Ecuador with $1 billion in
credit, a very significant cushion if, as threatened, that country’s
government should default on foreign debt payments. And, together
with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Mr Chávez has
announced a $2 billion international investment fund for Latin
America.
Why this very conspicuous open-handedness on the part of the
Venezuelan president? Writing in the Washington Post, Juan Forero
and Peter S Goodman explain:
“[Mr] Chávez has long pledged to
buck Washington-backed economic policies in Latin America. Now,
two months after winning reelection and consolidating his hold on
the country with new powers to rule by decree, he is strengthening
economic ties in the region in a bid”
to curb the reach of the US
government in the region. (‘Chávez Builds His Sphere of Influence,’
February 23)
Long neglected by US President George W Bush, whose foreign-
affairs focus lies elsewhere, Latin America is already broadly
disillusioned with its big neighbour to the North. But the Post writers
say that economists and other observers of Venezuela’s affairs
believe that, for Mr Chávez, the goal is
“nothing less than to kill the
so-called Washington consensus”
: the economic recommendations
of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US Treasury
which push governments to limit spending, raise interest rates, and
open their economies to foreign trade and investment.
While the amount of Venezuelan aid to neighbours is hard to
quantify, it would appear that the country puts its money where its
president’s mouth is. Venezuela’s central bank recorded billions
spent on foreign bonds and other investments in the first nine
months of 2006, dwarfing the amount the United States offers in
assistance to all of Latin America.
As for Mr Chávez’s vision of a Latin America independent of the US,
the Venezuelan model, predicated on a break with all multinational
institutions with Washington ties, has plainly gathered steam in
some countries. Last year, Argentina paid off the last of the $10
billion it owed the IMF. It was aided by Venezuela, which had bought
$2.5 billion in Argentine debt. Also in 2006, after spending nearly
two decades under the strictures of an IMF program, Bolivia let its
agreement with the fund end. Meanwhile, Venezuela has committed
more than $140 million in loans and grants while pledging to invest
as much as $1.5 billion in Bolivia’s gas industry in coming years.
Bolivian leaders said Venezuelan aid comes with fewer strings
attached.
“In the case of the United States, we’re locked into
specific areas – aid for roads, aid for health, aid for electricity,”
vice president Álvaro García Linera told the Post in an interview in
his office in La Paz. The Venezuelan aid
“allows [Bolivia] greater
flexibility to choose projects with more productive impact, especially
those ventures that include a state presence.”
• While President Chávez of Venezuela frequently takes his
anti-Washington show on the road in Latin America, some of
the region’s most important economies – Mexico, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, and Peru – maintain solid relations with multilateral
lenders and continue to follow market-oriented principles, such
as welcoming foreign investment, limiting government spending
and attacking inflation. And the Washington Post article cited
above notes that it is by no means certain that the Venezuelan
president is well regarded by the people he visits, even if their
governments are happy to accept his aid.
According to a recent survey of 20,200 people in 18 Latin
American countries by Latinobarómetro, a Chilean polling firm,
most of those polled lumped Mr Chávez with US President Bush
and Cuba’s Fidel Castro as bad leaders. They cited Brazil’s Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet as the best.