The Threat Closer to Home

Hugo Chavez and the War Against America

Introduction

Anti-U.S. networks are here to stay. Chávez is throwing his one-pipeline-state petrodollars around to cultivate bonds beyond comrades in Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia. Ties with Iran, Russia, China, Argentina, Ecuador and Caribbean states are intensifying.... Chávez wants to parlay his petrorevenue and pseudorevolution into a global anti-American role. - Roger Cohen, The New York Times, December 3, 2007

Standing at the podium of the United Nations in September 2006, he seemed like any world leader we're accustomed to seeing at the General Assembly. Jet-black, short-cropped hair, dark complexion; a dark suit, crisp white shirt and red tie; he clasped his hands together in prayer gazing upward, the presidential teleprompters at either side. When he spoke, he sounded intelligent, informed, confident, imposing. He opened with a reference to one of Noam Chomsky's books. And shortly after some modest applause, he began referring to President Bush as "the devil" and the West's spokesman for imperialism. "Yesterday the devil was here right in this spot," he said, crossing himself as if anointed by the deity. "This table from where I speak still smells from sulfur," he added. "It would take a psychiatrist to analyze the U.S. president's speech from yesterday." When not bashing the leader of the free world, Chávez excoriated the UN itself. "I believe that almost no one in this room would stand up to defend the system of the United Nations. Let's admit with honesty, the UN system that emerged after World War II has collapsed, shattered; it doesn't work."

Who is this man? one wonders. What is his agenda? How seriously should the rest of the world take his rhetoric? Does he back his words with actions? And when he does, how does it affect other nations? How should the United States respond? These are critical questions. This Latin American potentate, unknown to the majority of the American public, is a far greater threat to our national security than the cleric with the long gray beard, the easily recognized religious zealot, Osama bin Laden. The cold reality is this: Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, is a much more dangerous individual than the famously elusive leader of al-Qaeda. He has made the United States his sworn enemy, and the sad truth is that few people are really listening. More important, is our government listening?

Some see him as a clown, but his histrionics mask the danger he poses. Our economy is in shambles in large part because he has successfully driven up the price of oil to record levels. He's propped up Iran's economy over the last few years and so is supporting state-sponsored terrorism. He is also most likely advocating on behalf of Hamas and Hezbollah, and even tolerating Hezbollah's presence in his country. Further, recent revelations about the FARC - the Colombian guerrillas - show he has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support terrorist activity in the southern hemisphere, perhaps even supporting the development of a dirty bomb. In the meantime, he's buying off American leaders across the political spectrum.

In sum, Hugo Chávez is one genuinely scary individual who suddenly has a much larger platform on today's geopolitical stage than anyone predicted. "I'm still a subversive," Chávez has admitted. "I think the entire world should be subverted."

"America is very naďve about the threat Chávez poses," says Otto Reich, a former Ronald Reagan ambassador to Venezuela and assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere in the Bush administration. "Today, Chávez is at least as dangerous as bin Laden; he's preparing his attack; he's even implementing the attack, but too many of America's leaders are still ignoring him. This could be a tragedy bigger than 9/11."

When our vulnerability was tested at the beginning of this century by an enemy without a country, we tightened security at our borders, scrutinized foreigners, and generally speaking, closed ranks. We grudgingly gave up some of our freedoms after the Office of Homeland Security was created. We reasoned that it was now a different world.

But it's not just our infrastructure that's vulnerable. It's not just our culture and American democracy. It's the very core of what makes us the envy of the free world: our economy.

Industry, imagination, and a willingness to strive are traits that we treasure. We are only 4 percent of the world's people but we provide more than 25 percent of the world's economic output - an enviable position of strength and prestige. But our very power and presence in an interdependent and interconnected world makes us a target for the rage and resentment of an attack from a few strategically placed people among the other 96 percent - the 6.4 billion non-Americans who populate the rest of the world.

Our trade deficit - $3.8 trillion since 2000 - is enormous, unprecedented, and perilous, and makes the dollar vulnerable to an attack that's already begun. When the euro was first floated just a few short years ago, it traded at 90 cents. At the time of this writing, it has hit $1.55, weakening our buying power in the European Union. The dollar has declined against other major currencies as well.

Our shaky economy is being propped up by foreign investment at a perilous time for U.S. security. The United States is still the leader of the free world, but our foothold is weak. Our military forces are spread thin: we are conducting controversial, unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are involved in humanitarian and security missions in 70 of the world's 192 nations. Some 200,000 U.S. troops are currently deployed to the Iraqi and Afghani theaters, and many troops are required to do multiple tours of duty. Our generals complain that our air fleet is dangerously outdated, with crucial planes, such as F-15s, frequently grounded; the other services say there is a pressing need for modernizations. Yet, whatever our shortcomings, our very reach and visibility continue to inspire envy and hatred, and make us increasingly vulnerable to attacks.

A generation has gone by since the Cold War thawed and two superpowers ruled the earth. We now live in a symbiotic society, where each country is beholden to another in some way or another - natural resources, food and health support, disaster relief, trade agreements, and so on. This symbiosis, happy or not, depending on the circumstances, leaves us open to criticism on the worldwide political stage. We cannot afford all the altruism we'd like to pursue, nor can we be everything to everyone.

Every day our position as economic and military colossus erodes slightly. Why? We import more than half the oil we need to operate our economy, which makes us vulnerable to volatile oil-producing regimes that are unfriendly to our way of life. Oil recently traded at $125 to $147 a barrel, causing significant pain for businesses and consumers, and fueling inflation in a number of sectors, especially food sales. A similar spike in oil prices - or a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and China to dump the dollar in favor of some other reserve currency - would inflict grievous harm on the U.S. economy and severely endanger its standing as the world's sole superpower. And as the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States, Venezuela has made us one of her thirstiest customers, providing us with $29 billions' worth in 2007 alone.

Chávez has the means and motivation to harm the United States in a way that no other country - and perhaps no other terrorist organization - could. He prepared for this role at the feet of one of the world's most cunning and effective dictators, Fidel Castro. One cannot discount how much Castro's aura has shaped Chávez's thoughts and actions. We've already seen the halo effect on Chávez that allowed Fidel Castro to rule Cuba for half a century - mainly with Soviet support. The Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has noted admiringly: "Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez seems to have succeeded in bringing education and health services to the barrios of Caracas, which previously had seen little of the benefits of that country's rich endowment of oil."

A number of Venezuelans, however, believe that Stiglitz has been seriously misinformed. When Chávez was elected to the presidency in December 1998, polls showed that 80 percent of Venezuelans believed he would lead his nation out of endemic poverty. Three years later, fewer than 40 percent believed it and 800,000 Venezuelans took to the streets in a massive protest against Chávez's authoritarianism. He was briefly overthrown by his own military, which refused his order to shoot civilian protesters. Chávez claims this was the doing of white oligarchs in a conspiracy planned and implemented by the United States, the CIA, and President George W. Bush.

To those Americans who think they understand him, Hugo Chávez may seem like a blowhard, all bluster and little substance, a Castro pretender and acolyte known mostly for his baiting of President Bush. He has labeled Bush a genocidal maniac, a warmonger, a drunkard, a coward, and the world's number one terrorist. While Bush's favorability ratings hovered at a mere 30 percent in U.S. polls in the fall of 2008, by any decent critical standard, Chávez's calumnies are still over-the-top. Even Fidel had better manners when taking American leadership to task. Yet it's easy for Bush's adversaries and denigrators to find common ground in this Venezuelan autocrat.

When Chávez pontificates about Bush as Satan or decries capitalism as the world's worst horror ("Jesus Christ was the first Socialist and Judas the first Capitalist," he told Rome officials in 2005), few Americans take him seriously and fewer still see in Chávez a real danger to this country.

This is a serious underestimation.

With Hugo Chávez commanding the Venezuelan pipeline, America is facing an unprecedented and unrecognized threat. When asked about the looming scythe over our heads, State Department officials merely shrug, though the U.S. military's threat assessment rule is to analyze an adversary's capabilities first and intentions second. There are many who harbor bad intentions toward the United States, but only a few who possess the capability to do anything about it. Chávez is one of these few because:

* His de facto dictatorship gives him absolute control over Venezuela's military, oil production, and treasury.

* He harbors oil reserves second only to those of Saudi Arabia; Venezuela's annual windfall profits exceed the net worth of Bill Gates.

* He has a strategic military and oil alliance with a major American foe and terrorism sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

* He has more soldiers on active and reserve duty and more modern weaponry - mostly from Russia and China - than any other nation in Latin America.

* Fulfilling Castro's dream, he has funded a Communist insurgency against the United States, effectively annexing Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, and Ecuador as surrogate states, and is developing cells in dozens of countries to create new fronts in this struggle.

* He is allied with the narcotics-financed guerrillas against the government of Colombia, which the United States supports in its war against drug trafficking.

* He has numerous associations with terrorists, money launderers, kidnappers, and drug traffickers.

* He has more hard assets (the CITGO oil company) and soft assets (Hollywood stars, politicians, lobbyists, and media connections) than any other foreign power.

These are formidable and perhaps unique capabilities on the world scene. But does Chávez intend to use these weapons against us? We believe he means it when he says, "We have made it very clear. Our enemy is the American empire," and "If the U.S. Empire succeeds in consolidating its dominance, then humankind has no future, therefore, we have to save humankind and put an end to the U.S. Empire."

Chávez longs for the era when there will be no liberal international order to constrain his dream of a worldwide "socialist" revolution: no United Nations, no World Bank, no International Monetary Fund, no Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, no World Trade Organization, no international law, no economic necessity for modernization and globalization. And perhaps more important, he longs for the day when the United States no longer polices the world's playing field. Chávez has spent more than $100 billion trying to minimize the impact of each international institution on Latin America. He is clearly opposed to international cooperation that does not endorse the Cuba-Venezuela government philosophy.

"Look, I think the first thing to acknowledge when one goes to war," Chávez told the TV interviewer Carlos Croes in 2005, "is that one has to begin hating the ..." [Croes interrupts] "To hate him?" [Chávez continues] "To hate him! I mean, you cannot go to war loving the person. We have to start getting ready to see the gringos as enemies, and that's the first preparation for combat."

In fact, worldwide polls show that the United States is currently the most despised nation on earth. Yale's Amy Chua believes it's because "America today has become the world's market-dominant minority ... Americans have attained heights of wealth and economic power wildly disproportionate to our tiny numbers." Chávez exploits this. He is deeply shamed by the history of slavery and subjugation of the Indo-Afro (dark-skinned) people and believes that confiscation of property, revenge, warfare, violence, and hatred are all justified as payback. We are dealing with a vindictive, vengeful man on the verge of megalomania, and we have not yet fully comprehended his potential to spread his wrath throughout much of the free world.

In the following pages, we'll examine five critical fronts of Chávez's initiative against what he calls "the evil empire." These are his oil; his alliance with Iran; the FARC's guerrilla war in Colombia; promoting anti-American states; and building friendly or so-called soft assets in the United States.

The "Oil Weapon"

By driving up the price of oil, Chávez is seeking to undermine the American economy - a goal he has declared publicly many times. He knows that higher oil will jack up inflation, exacerbating America's present economic downturn. The use of what Chávez calls the "oil weapon" is a conscious strategic initiative on his part that already has resulted in higher gas prices, economic dislocation, and oil market uncertainty.

His goal is to aggrandize himself at America's expense. As the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen has noted, "Chávez wants to parlay his petrorevenue and pseudorevolution into a global anti-American role.... High oil prices will tend to accentuate the long-term erosion of American dominance."

Chávez's first act as president was to seize absolute control over Venezuela's national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., PDVSA (pronounced "pay-day-VEY-sa"), which he had criticized as "a state within a state" during his presidential campaign. From 2001 to 2004, the Chávez takeover of Venezuela's oil sector (and the money and power that followed) involved a series of massive protests, a coup d'état that was reversed, a national strike that petered out, and a recall referendum against the president, all of which Chávez miraculously survived.

From early on, Chávez had helped to drive up the price of oil: from $8 a barrel when he assumed power in 1999 to $40 in 2004 and $147 in 2008. Over this period, Chávez shorted the oil market by 3 million barrels a day. Had this shortage been made available in 2008, it could have pushed prices down to the $50-a-barrel range - or about $2.25 for a gallon of gas in the United States. Americans think ExxonMobil is earning obscene profits, but its CEO's penchant for increasing the company's earnings is mild compared with Venezuela's. Of all the members of OPEC (the oil cartel was a Venezuelan idea), Chávez has lobbied most aggressively for the highest prices since its founding.

It's no surprise that oil is Chávez's weapon of choice. Today, Chávez estimates that Venezuela has reserves of 307 billion barrels of oil, second only to Saudi Arabia. And that's approximately ten times the amount of reserves held by the United States.

Venezuela's Alliance with Iran

Venezuela's ties to the radical Islamist regime in Iran have indirectly (and possibly directly) resulted in state-sponsored terrorism against the United States, its allies, and its interests. By directly supporting Iran with commercial projects and oil revenue, Chávez has provided much-needed resources to prop up the ailing Iranian economy. This, in turn, freed up Iranian money for terrorists whose goal is to undermine American interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and indeed around the world.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Threat Closer to Home by Douglas Schoen Michael Rowan Copyright © 2009 by Douglas Schoen. Excerpted by permission.
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