Americas Quarterly

Carlos Alberto Montaner

that the campaign led by Chávez was not based on concern for changing Cuba’s status as part of a constructive effort to augment continental solidarity. It was nothing but artillery fired at Washington with the objective of humiliating the new administration.

Why did President Barack Obama’s government lend itself to a move conceived to damage the U.S.’s image and interests? One theory is that the OAS is no longer what it once was and that its purpose now is to strengthen the democratic governments using the Inter-American Democratic Charter signed on Sep- (CON TINUED FROM PAGE 21)

tember 11, 2001, in Lima, Peru. For that reason, Washington agreed to revoke the resolution but explained that such action did not automatically open the doors of the OAS to Cuba, because the island had to submit to the spirit and letter of the

Democratic Charter.

In Havana, Caracas and the other twenty-first-century capitals of socialism around the hemisphere, officials celebrated the new defeat inflicted on “the Empire.” But, to maintain moral consistency and defend American interests, the Obama administration should have pushed instead to replace the 1962 resolution with a resolution affirming that

Cuban membership in the OAS was
coordination for other sworn en-
emies of the U.S. such as Iran and
North Korea.
It is true that a power as great
and powerful as the United States
has little to fear from the actions of
Chavismo, but the prudent approach
is to at least understand what its en-
emies do and why they do it. Chávez
and Fidel Castro came to the conclu-
sion early this century that Venezu-
ela and Cuba had been given the
difficult but honorable task of fight-
ing against Yankee imperialism and
capitalism, following the collapse of
the Soviet Union.
The aggressive behavior of the
Soviet Union after World War II led
to U.S. diplomat George Kennan’s
famous recommendation of con-
tainment, which shaped U.S. Cold
War strategy for most of the latter
half of the twentieth century. It is
time that something similar be done
to counter this new anti-Western
outbreak.
However, it should no longer be
a battle between Washington and
the Caracas-Havana axis but one
between those nations that respect
individual rights and true democracy
(like the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Peru,
Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia)
and those that tend toward authori-
tarianism. This new group of democ-
racies must then design a strategy to
defend against the authoritarian-
leaning populist backlash seen in
parts of the region.
Low-intensity enemies are en-
emies just the same. Taking them
seriously is an inescapable act of
common sense.

Carlos Alberto Montaner is a
syndicated journalist and writer.
His latest book is Latin America
and the West .
conditional on its acceptance of the
spirit and letter of the Charter.
That would have satisfied the need
to put an end to a formal anach-
ronism, without succumbing to
Chávez’ bullying and provocation.
Of course, that would have obligated
U. S. diplomacy to wage a hard battle
against Chavismo—a task that does
not seem to elicit the slightest enthu-
siasm in the State Department.
Therein lies the heart of the
matter. Seen from the American
perspective, Chávez and his accom-
plices are seemingly insignificant,
low-intensity enemies with whom
the U.S. trades intensely ( 10 percent

of U. S. crude oil imports come from Venezuela). The most convenient way to treat them, therefore, is to avoid them—the way one avoids a drunken and oafish neighbor.

Is this perspective reasonable? While Chávez may be more interesting from an anthropological than a political standpoint, it isn’t obvious that he is more of a “nuisance” than a “danger.”

The fact is, Chávez and Chavismo are a danger to U.S. security in at least two fundamental aspects: by turning Venezuela into a haven for the transit of cocaine into the U.S. as the U.S. General Accounting Office acknowledged in a July 2009 report, and into a circuit of political

The campaign led by Chávez was not
based on concern for changing Cuba’s
status as part of a constructive effort
to augment continental solidarity.
hard
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