US influence on the wane in Latin America

[bemildred]

Anti-KoolAid. The bolded text is obvious to anyone paying
attention, and yet you will seldom see it discussed anywhere in
the MSM.

For two centuries, the US has cast a long shadow over Latin America, but the resolution of a recent spat between Colombia and Venezuela suggests that Washington’s influence there may be on the wane.

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Chavez owes most of his popularity and economic success to the Bush administration. President George Bush’s cowboy poses, which play well in the US media, provide flesh to the caricature of Yankee imperialism that Chavez relies on for votes. Meanwhile, two wars in the Middle East have catapulted the price of oil up to levels Chavez could have only dreamed of before 2001. The program of “moral clarity and military strength” that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney suggested as a prescription for a “new American Century” has so far failed to arrest the slide in the international status of the US - if anything that slide has accelerated. It has been clear since the 1970s that the US was in economic decline relative to Europe and Japan - a decline that was hastened by the immense financial cost of the Vietnam War. What was not clear until the invasion of Iraq were the limits to the capability of the post-Vietnam US military. The speedy occupation of Afghanistan encouraged Rumsfeld and other neo-conservatives in their belief that the “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) - basically improved communications and weapons technology - had dramatically increased the capability of the US military to do more with fewer troops. But Iraq has shown that while invasion is possible, effective occupation still needs old-fashioned boots on the ground, and the continuing insurrection has placed a severe strain on US military reserves. The recent Iraqi election has added legitimacy to the US occupation, but the withdrawal of US troops is unlikely in the short to medium term. Further military interventions against other “rogue states” such as Syria, Iran, or North Korea are probably beyond the capacity of the US military, although that is no guarantee that they will not happen - as Bush put it when denying plans to invade Iran, “all options are on the table”. Nonetheless, while the Bush administration may have believed that the invasion of Iraq would help prevent the emergence of peer competitors - a key goal of US defense policy - their failure so far to neatly end the Middle Eastern conflict has increased the room for maneuver of maverick states - like Venezuela, North Korea, and Pakistan. It has also increased the relative weight of other second-tier powers, like India and Brazil, and allowed other world powers, like Europe, Russia, and China, to expand economic ties with resource-rich countries like Venezuela that have traditionally been firmly locked into the economic orbit of the US.

ISN(Switzerland)

[phantom power]

1. Just another economic bloc...

that's discovering we have nothing left to offer. At least, as long as the neo-cons remain in power, and we continue to turn our backs on the "Reality based" community. Which is essentially everybody except ourselves.

[aneerkoinos]

2. IMF

It should be clear to anyone that IMF is just ideological tool for US foreign policy of neocolonialism. I don't have the source, but in the IMF analysis about the effects about their neoliberal orthodox prescriptions there is plainly put mention about inevitable "social unrest" the imposed policies are going to cause. Duh! One can only wonder about the hubristic idiocy of the economist fundies, "them brownies must be pretty stupid, they're going to take it up the ass forever and if not, there's nothing that a bit of CIA and School of Americas cant cure..."

Newsflash: Nope, dudes, in the end it's you greedy bastards that gonna get shafted by your own blind hubris ...