Pubdate: Fri, 22 Sep 2006
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Mary Anastasia O'Grady

IN CHAVEZ'S CROSSHAIRS?

Fidel Castro is not far from death.

That's one conclusion to draw from his failure to get out of bed for 
the summit of the non-aligned nations held in Havana last week.

The other telling sign that the long-winded tyrant is not coming 
back, despite Cuban claims that he is on the mend, was Venezuelan 
President Hugo Chavez's performance at the United Nations on 
Wednesday. Clearly the revolutionary baton has been passed to the 
kook from Caracas, Castro's wealthiest and keenest protege.

After this week, Americans are likely to be focused on the nexus 
between Venezuela and Iran, whose president rivaled Mr. Chavez as the 
scariest speaker at the General Assembly. Yet there is an equally 
pressing threat from Venezuela right in the U.S. backyard.

The battleground is Bolivia, which Mr. Chavez badly wants to control 
so he can seize that country's natural-gas reserves and become the 
sole energy supplier in the Southern Cone. In doing so, he hopes to 
seriously damage the Brazilian economy and crush Brazil's 
geopolitical ambitions as the leader in South America. In its place 
he wants to plant the flag of Venezuelan hegemony.

If he gets away with it, Argentine and Chilean sovereignty would also 
be diminished and continental stability lost.

To avoid this grim outcome and preserve Bolivian democracy, the U.S. 
could start by studying Mr. Chavez's path to power, which included 
help, both passive and active, from Washington.

Theatrics aside, the Venezuelan's verbal assault this week against 
the U.S. was hardly a news flash.

Mr. Chavez has been spouting this stuff for eight years while 
Venezuelan democrats have been begging the world to take note of it. 
Democratic Congressman William Delahunt, former Republican 
Congressman Jack Kemp and the Washington law firm of Patton Boggs all 
worked to give Mr. Chavez an image makeover in the U.S. so that 
Venezuelan cries for help might be ignored even as the aspiring 
dictator was consolidating power. It seems to have worked too. Let's 
not forget what happened when Venezuelans tried to remove Mr. Chavez 
in a 2004 recall referendum. The European Union refused to act as an 
observer, citing lack of transparency. But that didn't stop Jimmy 
Carter or the Organization of American States, both of which went 
along to "observe" a vote cloaked in state secrets.

When OAS mission director Fernando Jaramillo cried foul at the many 
government pre-referendum pranks and Mr. Chavez complained about him, 
OAS chief Cesar Gaviria yanked Mr. Jaramillo from the country just 
ahead of the vote. Exit polls showed that the Venezuelan president 
was badly beaten in the contest but the chavista-stacked electoral 
council declared him the winner. Mr. Chavez refused to allow 
independent auditing of voting machine software or a count of paper 
ballots against machine tallies.

Mr. Carter together with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the 
Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega and the OAS, rushed to endorse the 
vote despite the lack of transparency and many testimonies to 
state-sponsored intimidation and dirty tricks. In the heat of the 
battle, the National Endowment for Democracy cruelly threatened the 
country's most important independent electoral watchdog that if it 
didn't accept Mr. Chavez's victory, NED would pull its support. Mr. 
Chavez now boasts that he was democratically elected and foments 
hatred against his neighbors, including the U.S. Wednesday's 
Castro-esque message claimed that the "non-aligned" movement intent 
on going nuclear has only pure motives, while the U.S. president is 
the devil. Still Hugo knows that rhetorical bullying from the U.N. 
pulpit can take him only so far. Both Mexico and Peru rejected Chavez 
proxies this year in presidential elections.

While he might still get a foothold in Nicaragua if Daniel Ortega 
wins there in November, what he really wants to do is knock Brazil 
down a few notches.

And there is no better way to do that than to hit its energy supply.

This explains the blitz the chavistas are now putting on in Bolivia 
to make that country a (hydro) carbon copy of Venezuela. Mr. Morales 
rose to executive power by first using violence to bring down two 
constitutional presidents and then forcing a new election, which he 
won. He dreams of an indigenous, collectivist Bolivian economy under 
the thumb of an authoritarian government. Never mind that most native 
Bolivians are highly entrepreneurial.

His power is boosted by his support for Bolivian coca growers against 
U.S.-mandated eradication efforts.

He is also being coached by Mr. Chavez. He has nationalized 
investments in the natural-gas industry and he ruled that 
agricultural land be redistributed to peasants.

He has purged the military of its highest ranking professionals and 
he has arrested or threatened to arrest some 150 of his political opponents.

Bolivia is now blanketed with Cuban doctors and teachers.

Cuban security detail protect the president while Venezuelan energy 
advisers are said to be setting policy in the natural-gas sector.

Yet there is serious resistance in the eastern states and some 
admission from La Paz that the country is too poor to cut itself off 
from the world. Last week Mr. Morales had to fire his energy minister 
after Brazil threatened to exit the country when the minister 
announced the seizure of two more Brazilian owned refineries.

Such acquiescence toward Brazil has to be frustrating Mr. Chavez and 
any chance to defeat those in his way now lies with the rewriting of 
the Bolivian constitution. But there is a problem there too. Mr. 
Morales's party has just over 50% of the constitutional assembly seats.

That means that in order to steamroll the opposition the government 
must force a change in the approval requirement to a simple majority 
from a two-thirds vote, which is now the law.

Seven of the nine state governors have objected to this but Evo's 
side is again threatening violence.

Bolivia could use some help from the international community.

One thing the U.S. could do to weaken Evo is end insistence on coca 
eradication, which while failing to reduce drug use has alienated peasants.

What is clear is that doing nothing while Mr. Chavez seizes power on 
the continent is not an option.