“Elected by a landslide and carrying the hopes of America, Barack Obama will soon begin to reveal his priorities on international relations for the United States. What place will Latin America have in these priorities? One shouldn’t expect our region to be on the list of his immediate priorities, but for a number of reasons, I think there’ll be significant progress in comparison to the lamentable legacy of George W. Bush, who frustrated the great expectations that he had created in our region at the beginning of his mandate.”
One of the more rewarding things about showing Americans what the rest of the world thinks about our nation, is to introduce people to newspapers that they would never ordinarily be able to read. For example, how many Americans have ever read a newspaper from the civil-war stricken Portuguese-speaking country of Angola?
This article by Altino Matos of the Jornal de Angola has an interesting take on the election of Barack Obama. While it suggests that the ‘American Media Machine’ chose Obama to alter our global image - it doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with that.
“The American communication system, one of the largest in existence, was quick to realize that it had to do something substantial and consistent to save the United States, considering the erosion of its image, which began primarily with wars in Afghanistan Iraq and the Middle East.
“The strategy for recovery had to come from the Democrats, but it couldn’t be based solely on words. It was essential to find a face that could incorporate these words and breathe life into a comprehensive program. In this way, the technocrats found in Barack Obama a man of the multitudes.”
For those fretting over the results of the U.S. presidential election [gee, I wonder who that could be?] French historian Alexandre Adler - who writes for Le Figaro and is often referred to as the French neo-con, offers this tribute to the American political class for picking two candidates which, despite their differences, are destined to address many of the same pressing issues in much the same way.
These include, according to Adler, a mild protectionism to rebuild America’s industrial base and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure; the ‘benign abandonment of Europe;” a prolongation of Bush’s Middle East policy; and progress on South American immigration and Iran. Read the rest of this entry »
One of a flood of new international polls on which U.S. candidate people prefer, is one by Latinobarometro. According to the Chilean organization’s Web site, this annual survey involves some 19,000 interviews in 18 Latin American countries, representing more than 400 million inhabitants.
“Asked about which candidate would be more advantageous for Latin America, 29 percent prefer Democrat Barack Obama and only 8 percent Republican John McCain. Another 29 percent think it doesn’t matter, 31 percent don’t know and 2 percent didn’t respond. … As for the attention that the new U.S. president will pay to Latin America, the answers vary a lot, with 39 percent of Dominicans who think he will pay more attention, an opinion shared by 31 percent in Brazil and 29 percent in Costa Rica and Uruguay.
“At the other extreme are Honduras, Bolivia and El Salvador, with only 14 percent who share that view, while in Guatemala and Panama, those who think he will pay more attention are at 15 percent, in Peru at 16 percent, in Chile and Ecuador at 19 percent, at 21 percent in Nicaragua, 24 percent in Argentina and Paraguay, 25 percent in Colombia and 27 percent in Venezuela and Mexico.”
While bits and pieces of this story about Venezuela welcoming a pair of Russian strategic bombers have been covered by the wire services over the past few days, we thought it best to translate something from Latin America on the subject.
According to this news item from Argentina’s El Patagonico, the two Russian TU-160 aircraft, according to that nation’s President, Hugo Chavez, are visiting ‘as part of the formation of a multi-polar world,’ which he says is one of the objectives of Venezuela’s foreign policy.
“Russian aircraft and strategic aviation which is capable of encircling the globe are coming to our country … Russian planes, strategic bombers, TU-160s have landed in Venezuela, Yes. So that you feel the pain, little-Yankees, I’ll even fly one of those beasts.”
The article is packaged with part of Chavez’ weekly TV/Radio show “Hello President’, in which he discusses the arrival of the bombers, and video of Russian President Medvedev, explaining why he sent them.
September 12th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
President Chavez of Venezuela says Premier Castro of Cuba is his role model. Cuba has long had ties with Russia. In the 60s, we had the Betelgeuse scared out of us during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Russia began secretly-building missile bases in Cuba, a mere 90 miles offshore USA.
President Kennedy told Russia that any aggression launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be reason for full retaliation by the US against Russia.
A negotiation was made, the missile bases were dismantled. Later, it was acknowledged that the US also withdrew certain installations from countries bordering Russia.
This week Putin sent from Russia to Venezuela several planes equipped to carry nuclear weapons. Heretofore, Venezuela had no such capacity.
US diplomatic relations with President Chavez and Putin of Russia have been exceedingly strained, very similar to the strain and testing of timbre going on in the 1960s between the US and Russia.
Here is a map, just to reiterate how close Venezuela is to Cuba, the US, vulnerable Mexico and Central America. Not to mention Guatemala, the Panama Canal and Colombia. *See Bolivia’s stance below.
President Bush? Will you follow In John F. Kennedy’s footsteps? Or shall you remain silent? Is this a crisis in the making? Or will it become so, for any number of reasons, for the next guy to be inaugurated in January 09?
Today, on the anniversary of 9-11, you said publicly, ‘the buildings fell down and heroes rose up.’ Which shall you do now?
And John? Barack? Your strategic takes on this now? Sin BS. Please let us know ASAP.
Addendum:
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez says the U.S. ambassador has 72 hours to leave Venezuela and he’s recalling his ambassador from Washington.
Chavez said he’s asking U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy to leave as a means of showing solidarity with *Bolivian President Evo Morales, who expelled Washington’s envoy in La Paz.
“They’re trying to do here what they were doing in Bolivia,” Chavez said. “That’s enough … from you, Yankees,” he said, using an expletive.
Chavez announced the decision during a televised speech, hours after saying his government had detained a group of alleged conspirators in a plot to overthrow him.
Chavez accused the group of current and former military officers of trying to assassinate him and topple the government with support from the United States. He didn’t offer evidence.
U.S. officials have repeatedly denied Chavez’s accusations that Washington has backed plots against him.
“The disproportion of the military force used by Russia against Georgia belongs then, to the deep history that remains common to both peoples. The other certainty, no less historical, is the bankruptcy of the hegemonic role of the United States: driven by a resentment as irrational as it is mean-spirited, the American republic has continued to practice the delusional encirclement of post-Soviet Russia. Without a doubt, the twisted minds at the inept CIA’s Langley headquarters or the brains at the Pentagon have dreamed of having their own Cuba [reference to the Cuban missile crisis]. They thought they had found it in Georgia with their agent of influence, the current president Saakachvili.”
“And just like that retard Fidel Castro who, in 1962, wanted to launch atom bombs against Washington before the terrified eyes of his reckless allies in Moscow, here we have “Frankenstein-Saakachvili” wanting to involve his American patrons in the extreme and absurd logic that governs those who exalt in the narrow nationalism of Georgia. Indeed in Washington today, the climate is not indignation over the childishness of our news commentary, but about mutual accusations of irresponsibility, just as it was in Moscow the day after the Kennedy-Khrushchev duel over Cuba.”
So what’s the solution? Adler suggests:
“In the first place, put a permanent end to the logic of force to which Russia has tendency to give in to. Then, definitely inhibit the use of force by giving Russia the decent and necessary place that it must occupy in the construction of Europe. In addition, we must not push Ukraine toward confrontation with Russia. But also for Russia, do everything possible to ensure its historic reconciliation with our Polish and Turkish allies. This is a very tough, but indispensable road.”
“Obama is right to say that Latin Americans are primarily responsible for their own tribulations, but wrong to believe that an increase in foreign aid will improve the economy of the region and prevent the emergence of populists like Hugo Chavez. That was the philosophy of the Good Neighbor Policy, which was designed to undermine the influence of the Axis powers in the 1930s, and of the Alliance for Progress which was aimed at curbing the spread of communism in the 1960s. Indeed, populism was Lord and King in Latin America from the end of the 1920s until the early 1990s. Its current resurgence confirms that foreign aid will do little to preclude populism: Under George W. Bush, aid to Latin America has doubled to $1.6 billion - the largest increase since World War II.”
“U.S. policy toward Latin America should be an exercise in atmospherics - high on photo ops and very friendly rhetoric, and low on detailed policies. Detailed policies inevitably lead to interventionism or condescension, and Latin Americans need to continue to move toward self-reliance.”
