Tag Archives: Ecuador

Chavez’s oil problems with China

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has repeatedly expressed his wishes to sell large amounts of oil to China in order to reduce or even stop his need to export it to the United States. The latest statement made by the country’s oil minister, Rafael Ramirez, is that the South American country plans to increase its oil sales to China to 200,000 barrels a day from the current 150,000. Chávez had previously said that he hoped to export 300,000 barrels a day to the Asian giant by the end of the year.

Chavez’s capacity to create controversy is undeniable. He is best pals with Fidel Castro, has signed arms deals with Russia and has visited his Iranian new friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly calling for the destruction of the U.S. echoing the Middle Eastern dictator’s words. It is ironic that although he hates the United States so much, he makes sure his oil shipments arrive without delay to this country’s ports obtaining revenues of millions if not billions of American, yes American dollars.

NEWS:

  • Venezuela: Iran’s Trade Exchanges with Venezuela to Boost to US$8 billion.  Venezuela’s Chavez Runs for Re-Election.
  • Brazil: Brazil’s Lula Closer to First Round Victory.
  • Mexico still Presidentless.
  • Raul Castro receives Hugo Chavez in Cuba.  Learn to live without me, Castro tells Cubans as he turns 80.  Iran, Cuba to expand industrial cooperation.
  • Bolivia’s President Morales drops to 68% approval.
  • Ortega Barely Edging Montealegre in Nicaragua.  Nicaragua: Energy Crisis gets worse
  • Ecuador, Chile sign agreements on petroleum cooperation, tariff cuts.
  • China free-trade pact clears final hurdle in Chile.  IMF applauds Chile.

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What to do about Venezuela

What to Do About Venezuela

By J. Michael Waller

Introduction

Among the more troubling legacies Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has inherited is one of neglect towards the Western Hemisphere, a legacy that has seriously diminished the United States’ stature and influence in most of the Americas.  This is due, in part, to the self-imposed abdication of the Nation’s hemispheric security obligations.  Secretary Rice has signaled by her recent trip to the region and a major address on the subject delivered today that she intends to address the problem – and not a moment too soon.

Today, Washington’s friends in Latin America stand isolated, disillusioned, and bewildered.  At the same time, the foes of freedom are advancing their objectives in our hemisphere with an effectiveness unseen since the presidency of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. Lack of a coherent U.S. strategy toward the region since the end of the Cold War, no less so since 2001, has allowed other actors to enter and dominate the scene.

These actors range from old, obsessed figures like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and warmed-over ’70s terrorists-turned-politicians like Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, to Carter himself, whose continued international work certifying election results has provided essential political cover to anti-democratic forces in the region.  Indeed, it might be said that over the past four years, Jimmy Carter has been the most visible and arguably most influential U.S. leader in Latin America.

Nowhere is the lack of a U.S. strategic approach to the Western Hemisphere more evident than in the unchecked rise of a self-absorbed, unstable strongman in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who has made common cause with terrorists and the regimes that support them, and has developed a revolutionary ideology that has begun to plunge the Americas again into violence and chaos. It is necessary for the democratic nations of the hemisphere to come together and stop this rising threat to peace before it is too late.

 

 

_____________________

J. Michael Waller, Ph.D., is the Center for Security Policy’s Vice President for Information Operations.

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Hemispheric insecurity

(Washington, D.C.): Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel was absolutely furious over the weekend. The ostensible reason for his rage was the Bush Administration’s refusal to intervene in Haiti’s latest crisis until after its corrupt, despotic ruler, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was removed from power.

Why the Rage?

To be sure, Rep. Rangel and his colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus have been the most steadfast of ex-President Aristide’s supporters. They and like-minded members of the Clinton Administration were, in no small measure, responsible for the 1994 U.S. power-play that forcibly restored Aristide to the post to which he had been elected.

The anger being expressed by Rangel and Company seems curiously misplaced, however. Their man in Haiti proved to be everything that critics of the Clinton putsch had said he was: brutally thuggish, irremediably corrupt and mentally and behaviorally erratic. In fact, it was Aristide’s subsequent tyrannical misconduct, and not a lack of American political and financial support, that was most responsible for his country’s current slide into anarchy and despair – behavior that dissipated Aristide’s once considerable popular support in Haiti and contributed to his swift overthrow.

By refusing to prop up Aristide, President Bush has given Haiti what it was denied when Bill Clinton engaged in the sort of “nation-building” that gave the process a bad name: a chance to establish the institutions essential to representative, accountable governance. Rather than repeating the earlier mistake of investing (in the form of well-over a billion in U.S. tax dollars) in one man – without regard to his anti-democratic track record – on the grounds that he won a vote, the United States must now invest the energy and resources needed to promote institutionalized checks-and-balances that alone can protect against future misrule by his successor.

It Isn’t ‘the Economy, Stupid’

Rep. Rangel may be angry for one other reason, however. The crisis in Haiti is a sobering reminder of a larger point he and other Democrats seem to hope American voters will miss this November: The world is a turbulent, disorderly and increasingly dangerous place for U.S. interests.

At a time when the clear hope in Democratic circles is that the electorate will focus once again exclusively on “the economy, stupid,” it is inconvenient, to put it mildly, to have still more foreign entanglements developing – especially in our back yard. The fact that this particular problem in Haiti was unmistakably a legacy of the misspent Clinton years simply underscores the foolishness of engaging in such myopia once again.

Worse yet, Haiti is hardly the only indication that things are going seriously south south of our border. Consider the following sampler:

  • In Venezuela, another elected autocrat, Hugo Chavez, is turning his oil-rich nation into an engine for regional instability and anti-American policies. Schooled and abetted by Fidel Castro, whose Cuban dictatorship Chavez unabashedly admires and props up, the Venezuelan despot is resorting increasingly to coercion and even force to suppress mounting popular opposition. Having strung out legal efforts to remove him from power, he now appears determined to prevent them from going forward at all – raising the distinct possibility of bloodshed and mayhem in a country that supplies much of the United States’ imported oil.
  • Unfortunately, Chavez has a soul-mate and willing partner not only in Castro but in Brazil’s Luiz Incio Lula da Silva (universally known as Lula). Brazil’s Lula has been assiduously courting terrorist groups (reportedly, Colombia’s FARC and Peru’s Shining Path) and regimes that sponsor terror (notably, those of North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran and the Palestinian Authority). Not coincidentally, the so-called “Triborder Area” – where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet – has become a breeding ground for Islamist terrorists seeking safe havens from which to recruit, train and launch operatives on destructive missions elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.
  • With materiel and political life-support from Venezuela’s Chavez and Brazil’s Lula, Castro has gotten a new lease on life. His repression at home has intensified and his efforts to export subversion to the mainland have resumed in earnest.
  • The hemisphere’s anti-American axis is working assiduously to develop and exploit targets of opportunity for their destabilization campaign in Colombia and Peru. Pro-axis regimes have already taken power in Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Curiously, there was no perceptible outcry from Democratic circles when Bolivia’s elected president was forced from power by Andean-Indian political movements enjoying the strong support of Chavez and his ilk.
  • This turmoil is offering opportunities for penetration of our backyard not only by Islamists and their Mideastern sponsors. The future prospect for genuine and pro-Western democracies in this hemisphere are being further clouded by Chinese political, economic and strategic inroads being made from the Panama Canal to Brazil.

    • The Bottom Line

    One thing is certain: The next President of the United States is going to confront trouble south of our border – trouble that will probably make the present turmoil in Haiti pale by comparison. It will take a great and visionary Commander-in-Chief to contend with the myriad implications of such trouble if, as seems entirely possible, it emerges as the next and most proximate front in the war on terror.

    It will be a grave disservice to the voters if these unpleasant facts are concealed from them. The electorate will be even worse served, however, if they are not made fully aware of two others: One of the candidates for Commander-in-Chief, John Kerry, was a preeminent opponent of efforts to counter Latin America’s last generation of anti-U.S. leftists. And he routinely voted to cut our defense capabilities and force structure in ways that would have left us still less prepared to deal with the next one.

    US does little as hemispheric crisis grows

    A growing crisis continues to engulf much of the American hemisphere, with the rise of bitterly anti-US regimes whose leaders have longstanding ties and sympathies with state sponsors of terrorism.

    The Bush administration has done nothing visible to help democratic forces in Venezuela to remove autocratic Colonel Hugo Chavez, who looks to Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and the late Mao Tse-tung as his inspirations while he aids the narcoterrorists of neighboring Colombia.

    A left-wing extremist has just been inaugurated president of Brazil. President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva has spent years organizing the hemisphere’s revolutionary movements, guerrilla and terrorist groups, and their political sympathizers in collaboration with the Cuban government. He has vowed to turn Brazil into a military power, stating that the government should resume development and production of a 30-kiloton nuclear bomb and proliferate military high technology to any regime it wishes. An aide recently reiterated Lula’s nuclear plans.

    A leftist colonel who tried to overthrow a democratically elected president has just been elected president of Ecuador.

    Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups are strengthening their footholds throughout Latin America.

    Sentiment is building to dismantle the successful, US-led inter-American security system of the past 55 years.

    Meanwhile, the staunchly pro-US president of Colombia, inaugurated just months ago, wants to work more closely with the United States to crush Marxist-Leninist narcoterrorist groups in his country. The State Department responded by terminating aid to Colombia’s most effective air force unit.

    It’s time for the administration to engage.

    Note to President Fox: Let him quit

    Mexico’s Marxist Foreign Minister, Jorge Castaeda, says he’s not getting his way, so he wants to quit. President Vicente Fox hints he might not let him leave, and says he will announce a decision on Monday.

    For the sake of US-Mexican relations, Fox should let Castaeda leave. Immediately.

    Most press reports have inaccurately characterized Castaeda as having worked for closer Mexican-American relations. That simply isn’t so. Castaeda’s demands have generally been one-sided, ranging from immigration to the channeling of billions of US Social Security tax dollars into Mexico.

    On hemispheric security issues, Castaeda has been a threat. In his own words, he has dedicated his professional life to “trying to help the Latin American left settle scores and accounts with the past.”

    Just days before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Castaeda was working aggressively behind the scenes to scrap the half-century-old Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, better known as the Rio Treaty, which unites the entire hemisphere except Castro’s Cuba in an alliance against outside aggressors.

    Castaeda’s efforts backfired when Brazil invoked the treaty in a unanimous hemispheric solidarity with the United States.

    Yet Mexico was one of the last countries in the world officially to offer condolences or solidarity with America after the terrorist attacks.

    After waiting a decent interval, Castaeda went at it again, threatening to wreck the Rio Treaty by withdrawing Mexico and, he hopes, inducing the new or incoming leftist regimes in Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador to follow.

    For the sake of inter-American security and solidarity, to say nothing of Mexican-American relations, President Fox should let his anachronistic foreign minister take his ball and go home.

    Now, confirm Secretary Reich

    The latest of many laudable examples of President Bush’s commitment to principle and fortitude in the face of political adversity was his recess appointment last week of Ambassador Otto Reich to serve as the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

    As one of Amb. Reich’s former colleagues, Amb. Frank Ruddy, noted in today’s Washington Times, such a step was made necessary by the ideologically motivated and vindictive refusal over many months of Senator Christopher Dodd — the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere Subcommittee — to afford Mr. Reich the courtesy of a confirmation hearing, let alone a vote in committee or on the Senate floor. This obstructionism was made necessary for the simple reason that, had the Reich nomination ever come to such a vote, it would have easily passed with bipartisan support.

    If Sen. Dodd is going to perform any better when it comes to oversight of the rapidly metastasizing situation in this hemisphere — a situation that fully justified Mr. Bush’s recess appointment of so experienced, competent and principled a public servant as Amb. Reich — his subcommittee will have to hold hearings. It would be absurd, if not unprecedented, for it to do so without allowing the relevant Assistant Secretary of State the chance to present the Administration’s views and policies.

    While the subcommittee is at it, the members should finally go ahead and formally consider Otto Reich’s nomination — and act to confirm him without further ado.

     

    Set Aside Marxist Dreams
    Senate should confirm Otto Reich

    By Frank Ruddy
    The Washington Times, 15 January 2002

    The "Blame America First" viewpoint surely has an even smaller constituency at home today than it had before September 11. Nevertheless, in some of the deeper mineshafts of foreign policy elitism, this odd outlook lives on.

    So it is with the great woolly mammoth of the Democratic left’s foreign policy, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. Encased in ancient ideological ice, he remains clenched in the conflict of a Cold War that ended more than a decade ago.

    Moscow has ended its affair with Fidel Castro, announcing last October it would shut down the last Russian intelligence outpost, in Cuba. But for Mr. Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Western Hemisphere panel, the romance with Latin American Leftism — and the passion of anti-anti- communism — appear to be unquenchable.

    The current case in point is Mr. Dodd’s refusal to allow a hearing and vote on President Bush’s nominee for assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, Otto Reich. Acting in the national interest, Mr. Bush gave Mr. Reich a recess appointment on Jan. 11, allowing him to serve without Senate confirmation until the end of this year.

    I worked closely with Mr. Reich during the Reagan administration, where he was one of the brightest and most effective strategists in our struggle against the Brezhnev Doctrine. Mr. Reich ably led the US. Agency for International Development’s Latin American bureau and then led communications efforts for our efforts to halt the advance of Soviet and Castroite influence over Central America and the Caribbean.

    His distinguished service continued in the Reagan and first Bush administrations with his posting as US. ambassador to Venezuela and as a US. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

    Had it not been for Mr. Reich’s efforts, the United States today might confront terrorist, anti- democratic, anti-American states in Nicaragua, E1 Salvador and elsewhere in our region. He was a key young player on the Reagan team’s campaign to roll back communist domination, to promote global free expression, free markets and democracy, and, as Ronald Reagan promised, to "make America great again!" Today, Mr. Reich is superbly qualified to serve as President Bush’s top diplomat for Latin America.

    Mr. Reich is living proof of the United States’ mission as a last, best hope for mankind. His father was an Austrian Jew and his mother a Cuban Catholic. As the Nazi Holocaust began, Mr. Reich’s father fled Austria and Europe for the safer shores of Cuba. His father’s parents, meanwhile, were murdered by the Nazis. Mr. Reich was born and raised in Cuba, but when Fidel Castro established a Soviet satellite dictatorship there, he and his parents came to the United States as refugees.

    The United States’ need for leadership and direction in Latin American relations is urgent. While attention today is on Afghanistan, over the long run our neighborhood in the hemisphere is of greater strategic importance than Central Asia. International terrorists including Irish Republican Army murderers, Islamic extremists from the Middle East, and homegrown Latin American guerrillas, all operate extensively in South America, with encouragement and support from Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba. The pace of terrorist killings in Colombia, appalling before September 11, now is even worse.

    Political and economic stability are at risk throughout Latin America. The president of Venezuela, the largest oil exporter outside of the Middle East, is enamored of Mr. Castro, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam. Political corruption, international terrorists, Marxist guerrillas, and drug traffickers are a plague against civil society and personal safety in Ecuador and Peru as well as in Colombia. Argentina’s government and financial system have just experienced a meltdown.

    A majority of senators — including a number of Democrats — understand the stakes in Latin America and are prepared to vote to confirm Mr. Reich’s confirmation. But not Mr. Dodd. Still living in the last days of disco, he carries a torch for the Sandinistas and the Salvadoran Marxists of yore. As the great Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel observed, the myth of the benevolent guerrilla, like the legend of the noble savage, dies hard. Mr. Bush made the right move by giving Mr. Reich a recess appointment. Now it’s time for Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle to override Mr. Dodd’s petty obstructionism and allow a hearing and floor vote on his confirmation.

    Frank Ruddy,a Washington attorney, served as a US. ambassador and as assistant director of the US. Agency for International Development under President Reagan.

    Appoint Otto Reich

    (Washington, D.C.): The collapse yesterday of the government of Argentina is but the latest reminder of the Nation’s urgent need to have in the senior ranks of the State Department a seasoned policy-maker with vast experience in turbulent Latin America and the President’s confidence. The fact that it coincided with the long-delayed end of the 2001 session of the U.S. Congress creates an opportunity for President Bush: Mr. Bush can finally install such an individual — Ambassador Otto Reich — in the post to which the President nominated him months ago, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

    As the following editorial published in the Wall Street Journal on 13 December 2001 makes clear, the only reason Amb. Reich has not been on duty before now is because of an ideological vendetta waged against him by Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Western Hemisphere Affairs Subcommittee. Even as ominous economic, political and/or strategic developments in Latin American nations like Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru have demanded expert and competent leadership from the U.S. government, Sen. Dodd has blocked the Reich nomination. Worse yet, he has maliciously sullied the name of the man President Bush knows can provide such leadership while denying Amb. Reich a hearing in which to rebut false charges. The Senator’s motivation is transparent: He fears such a hearing would demonstrate to the world that it is Chris Dodd’s deplorable record on hemispheric affairs — not Otto Reich’s estimable one — that should be subjected to critical reviews.

    Now that Sen. Dodd and his colleagues have finally left town, Mr. Bush should exercise his constitutional prerogative to make a recess appointment for Ambassador Reich to his State Department post. By so doing, he can simultaneously end a travesty of congressional abuse of power and give the Nation a man whose talents and abilities are more needed with every passing day.

    While Caracas Burns

    The Wall Street Journal, 13 December 2001

    Argentina has a debt crisis, guerrilla movements are growing in Colombia and Peru, and on Monday Venezuela was all but shut down because of a nationwide protest against the creeping dictatorship of President Hugo Chavez. The success story that was once Latin America is unraveling by the day, thanks in part to a lack of U.S. leadership.

    Yet while Caracas burns, the top U.S. policy maker for the region can’t assume his post for reasons of petty ideological revenge. Otto Reich — President Bush’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere — still can’t get a hearing in Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd’s subcommittee. Mr. Dodd’s petulance has gone beyond the usual Beltway payback and is now creating a leadership vacuum damaging to U.S. national security.

    It’s hard to recall reading today’s headlines, but 10 years ago Latin America’s future looked bright. Democracy was on the rise, economies were growing and the era of military coups seemed to be over. The countries did this mostly on their own, but U.S. leadership was crucial. The U.S. nurtured free-market economic ideas and helped against Marxist rebels. That trend stopped during the 1990s, as the Clinton Administration mostly ignored the region for more glamorous priorities. The result today is a region threatened by repression, violence and economic decline.

    Beltway fiddler

    In Colombia, Marxist guerrillas now control, and claim to own, a portion of the country as large as Switzerland. Any negotiations with the government, they maintain, are about who controls the rest of Colombia, and to prove it they launch terrorist strikes, kidnap or kill innocents and sabotage electricity and oil pipelines. The narcotics trade and guerrillas are both now spilling out of Colombia into Ecuador.

    Shining Path terrorism is returning to the countryside in Peru, where the State Department has issued a travel warning to Americans. The triple border area of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina is home to a number of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist cells. In Argentina, the government is bankrupt, tariff barriers on consumer goods have been hiked to 35% and a bank run has triggered capital controls.

    But nowhere have conditions deteriorated faster than in Venezuela under President Chavez, whose role model is Fidel Castro. Responding to Monday’s nationwide strike, Mr. Chavez donned military fatigues as fighter planes roared overhead. “Now we will begin tightening the screws,” he said. “Nothing stops this revolution.” He has already passed laws that will allow him to confiscate private farmland, and on Tuesday Fidel himself paid a visit and praised his handiwork.

    As for Central America, crime and kidnapping rings are chasing out foreign investment, the great hope of so many jobless poor. Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide — restored to power by Bill Clinton — behaves like a mafia don in his destitute nation, where critics of the government are murdered with impunity. The refugee exodus has resumed, with the U.S. Coast Guard reportedly intercepting more than 300 this month.

    Despite anti-Yankee rhetoric for local consumption, Latin America has long relied on the U.S. for leadership. The region is in enough trouble now that if Secretary of State Colin Powell didn’t have a war to worry about, he would have no choice but to make Latin America a priority. And the crisis explains why Messrs. Bush and Powell are both adamant in supporting Mr. Reich, a Cuban immigrant and former ambassador to Venezuela with a lifetime of experience and contacts in the region.

    Mr. Dodd knows that Mr. Reich would be confirmed if he got to the Senate floor, which is why he wants to block even a hearing. He and Latin America aide Janice O’Connell bear a grudge against the Cuban-American going back to their days on opposite sides of the battle over Central America. But rather than face that difference squarely, Mr. Dodd’s strategy has been to smear Mr. Reich’s reputation, accusing him in a letter to this paper of, among other things, being soft on terrorism. U.S. officials say the public record refutes those charges, which may be why Mr. Dodd doesn’t want Mr. Reich to get his chance to make his case in the Senate.

    We keep wondering when Mr. Dodd’s Democratic betters are going to call him to account for such behavior. It’d be nice to know, for example, how Florida Democrats Bob Graham and Bill Nelson feel about this treatment of a Cuban American. Tom Daschle recently met with Mr. Reich, but the majority leader has been reluctant to overrule his party’s junior barons when they get the bit in their mouths.

    Mr. Bush has the recourse of a recess appointment for Mr. Reich once the Senate leaves town. Given the worsening state of Latin America, and Mr. Dodd’s irresponsibility, the President can justify such a move in the urgent national interest.



    What’s Your Line?

    (Washington, D.C.): Four years ago, the moderator of tonight’s debate between the presidential candidates, PBS’ Jim Lehrer, found himself in the unhappy position of purveying questions for the 1996 contenders from an audience preoccupied with domestic affairs. At one point, he pleaded for a question about foreign policy; all that was forthcoming was a bank-shot about the trade deficit with Japan.

    Tonight promises to be different. For one thing, Mr. Lehrer is asking the questions and there are few in the business more skilled at the task. And second, the evidence that foreign policy is going to become a principal preoccupation for the next occupant of the White House makes vetting Vice President Gore and Governor Bush on the emerging crises in the Middle East, the Balkans, East Asia and our own hemisphere arguably the most important purpose to which tonight’s debate — and those to come — will be put.

    Questions Worth Asking

    Consider a few of the questions that demand answers from the men who would be President:

    • Do you believe that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is a reliable partner for peace with Israel given: his continuing incitement of violence — notably, the current mayhem in Israel and the disputed territories; his repeated calls for jihad against the Jewish State; and his encouragement through various means (including school textbooks) of his people’s expectations that the ultimate objective of liberating all of “Palestine” (that is, including Israel proper) will be met?

      This is a particularly important question for the Vice President since — as Robert Pollock pointed out last week in the Wall Street Journal, as a United States Senator in 1986 — Al Gore joined nearly half the Senate in writing then-Attorney General Edwin Meese demanding that Yasser Arafat be indicted for the murders of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel and Charge d’Affaires G. Curtis Moore in Khartoum, Sudan. A follow up to the Veep might be: Since there is no statute of limitations on murder, do you still believe that Arafat should be prosecuted for this crime?

    • What would you do if Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic conjures up a crisis in Montenegro in order to justify a crack-down on his domestic opposition? The prospects for this — or some other — scenario for intensified repression by Belgrade are growing each day Milosevic refuses to honor the obvious desire of the Serb people to end his misrule and the pariah status to which it has condemned their nation.

      In light of the murderous suffering and economic mayhem Milosevic has sown in the wake of the Dayton accords, do you think the United States was right in legitimating him as an indispensable part of the “peace process” in Bosnia and Kosovo — rather than dealing with him only as the indicted war criminal that he is?

    • How would you propose to deal with the unraveling of hemispheric security as the cancer of Marxist, narco-guerrillas in Colombia begins to metastasize and spread to neighboring countries? In an article on Sunday, the Washington Post reported that, “As the Colombian government, backed by a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, prepares an offensive against the traffickers and their allies, Colombia’s civil war is seeping into neighboring countries, and things here have suddenly taken a violent turn.” The most vulnerable of these neighbors, Ecuador, is literally being overrun with Colombian rebels in its border towns, but Brazil, Venezuela and Panama are also witnessing dramatic increases in incursions across their porous borders by the rebels and their allies.

      Doesn’t this situation demonstrate the folly of having U.S. forces removed from their forward-deployed positions adjacent to the Panama Canal and will you take steps to reverse that action?

    • What message would you convey to the People’s Republic of China, which may have been emboldened by the Congress’ recent approval of Permanent Normal Trade Relations, to dissuade Beijing from further threatening democratic Taiwan? This question is especially important as the Communist Chinese may be particularly tempted to engage in aggression if they believe a lame-duck President well-established as a “friend of China” would be unwilling to act during the interlude between the election and inauguration day.
    • In recent days there has been much discussion about energy, with each of you mapping out sharply contrasting positions concerning drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and opening up part of the Alaska National Wildlife Arctic Reserve to drilling for oil and gas. The renewed focus thus placed on the importance of domestic sources of energy to our economic and national security, calls attention to a new threat to those interests:

      According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daniel Fine, the mere threat of a ballistic missile attack against the energy sources of Alaska would, over just 10 days, so dramatically affect trading in crude oil and other commodities that it would cause a net loss to the U.S. economy of between $4 and $6 billion. How would you prevent this outcome given that North Korea is acquiring missiles of sufficient range to make such a threat credible, yet the United States still has no anti-missile defenses deployed to prevent even one such weapon from reaching our shores?

    • A new congressional analysis of U.S. relations with Russia over the past eight years concludes that: “To find a foreign policy failure of comparable scope and significance, it would be necessary to imagine that after eight years of American effort and billions of dollars of Marshall Plan aid, public opinion in Western Europe had become soundly anti-American and Western governments were vigorously collaborating in a strategic partnership’ against the United States.”

      To what extent has U.S. policy toward Russia contributed to the latter’s failure to achieve a transformation to a functioning, viable free market democracy and given rise, instead, to a newly assertive potential adversary actively colluding with Communist China via arms deals, geopolitical activities and diplomatic initiatives inimical to U.S. interests? And what would you do differently in the future?

    The Bottom Line

    This election is about hiring somebody capable not only of leading the Nation on education reform, tax relief, saving Social Security, providing prescription drugs to the elderly, etc. It is a moment when we will be entrusting someone with responsibility for safeguarding our vital interests and perhaps even our lives in the face of an increasingly dangerous international environment. While the full import of that danger may not become clear until after November, we had better know before then what Messrs. Bush and Gore intend to do about it.

    The Slippery Slope toward Life-Support for Castro’s Regime

    (Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, congressional leaders agreed to the most
    significant erosion of
    U.S. sanctions against Communist Cuba in four decades by approving the sale of American food
    products to that island nation. According to the 28 September editions of the New York
    Times    ,
    the deal would allow Cuba to make cash purchases of U.S. food products, financed through third
    countries. The agreement, hammered out after intense lobbying by U.S. agribusinesses, would
    also eliminate restrictions on travel to Cuba for those who seek to export foodstuffs there.

    The move is a giant bound onto the slippery slope toward full normalization of relations with
    one
    of the world’s last unreconstructed totalitarian regimes — something the Clinton-Gore
    Administration clearly intends to effect before leaving office. At this point, the only impediment
    to House and Senate adoption of this deal will be if the proponents decide to try to get all they
    want in one bite, rather than the two contemplated by the current approach.

    Even in this electoral silly season, with the remnants of budgetary discipline being sacrificed
    left
    and right in the quest for votes, many legislators are clearly uneasy about not just selling Castro
    food but having the American taxpayer pay for it. Since the only prospects
    for large-scale
    sales of U.S. food to the impoverished Cuban people and/or government is to have them
    subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer     (e.g., in the form of Commodity Credit Corporation
    credits),
    the greediest of the agribusinesses and their champions on Capitol Hill are intent on striking from
    the pending compromise restrictions on CCC and other taxpayer-subsidized lubricants to trade.

    The case for opposing even the relatively modest — to say nothing of the more costly — of
    these
    openings to the Castro regime was made by the Center for Security Policy’s President, Frank J.
    Gaffney, Jr., in testimony last week before the U.S. International Trade Commission. In the
    following prepared statement and orally delivered remarks, Mr. Gaffney made clear that, while
    easing the embargo may advance the interests of a relatively small number of
    American
    companies (as opposed to individual farmers, who are unlikely to benefit appreciably from
    the
    sweetheart deals Castro will secure from unscrupulous multinational agribusinesses    ), the
    net
    effect is likely to be to provide economic life-support for Fidel’s despotic government. This
    would be in the interests of neither the United States nor the long-suffering Cuban people.

    Submitted Testimony by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
    President, The Center for Security Policy

    Before the International Trade Commission

    Washington, D.C.
    19 September 2000

    ‘Freedom is served by Maintaining Sanctions on Cuba’

    I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before the International Trade Commission to
    address
    the impact of the economic embargo the United States has long maintained against Fidel Castro’s
    Cuba. I do so from the perspective of a former senior official in the Reagan Defense Department
    and as the current President of the Center for Security Policy — an organization that concerns
    itself with strategic developments that bear on our national defense and international interests.

    As the Commission evaluates the impact of the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, you will be
    urged to embrace three seductive notions. Permit me to address each in turn briefly:

    Untrue: The Embargo has ‘Failed’

    The first of these is the proposition that the embargo has been a failure. In
    making this claim,
    critics of our present economic sanctions define success, at least implicitly, in terms of removing
    Fidel Castro from power.

    To be sure, this certainly would have been desirable to have accomplished years ago — for
    both
    the United States and for the Cuban people who have long-suffered under Castro’s totalitarian
    misrule. Economic sanctions, especially ones actively undercut by other nations, have limited
    ability to effect regime change.

    That does not mean, however, that the embargo has “failed.” In fact, I believe that it would
    be
    more accurate to describe the effect of the embargo on Cuba as an incomplete success, and
    certainly no abject failure.

    After all, there can be no doubt that U.S. economic sanctions have succeeded in crippling
    Castro’s ability to amass the wealth that would have enabled him to assemble a far more
    formidable military and other threats to U.S. interests.

    That said, Fidel has certainly pursued — and continues to do so — what are known as
    “asymmetric” threats to the United States, its forces and interests. These are believed to include
    biological weapons programs, information warfare capabilities and a nuclear reactor program
    that, if brought on-line, could threaten to unleash Chernobyl-like levels of deadly radiation
    upwind from millions of Americans.

    These potentially lethal means of doing harm to the United States pale by comparison,
    however,
    with the magnitude of the threat a richer Castro regime would surely have sought to mount in an
    international marketplace awash with long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear and other
    weapons of mass destruction.

    Of course, no one can say for sure how much worse things would have been in these and
    other
    ways had the constraints imposed by the American economic embargo not been present. We do
    know, however, that when Castro was able to offset them with the largesse of his Soviet
    sponsors, he managed to dispatch expeditionary forces to Africa and to provide underwriting for
    a variety of Marxist and other terrorist groups and odious governments in the Western
    hemisphere.

    Fortunately, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of what President Reagan accurately
    described as the “Evil Empire,” however, its Cuban outliers had their hands full just keeping the
    Castro regime afloat. Given the dire straits into which Fidel has plunged Cuba’s economy, even
    the considerable cash flow the government is garnering from illegal narco-trafficking (with
    which Castro is reportedly personally implicated) has been insufficient to support the sort of
    aggressive international agenda Cuba pursued as a Cold War proxy for the USSR.

    Had this not been the case, it seems unlikely that the hemisphere would have
    reached the
    point it did during the 1990s when Cuba was the only nation in the hemisphere that did not
    enjoy democratic rule.

    Unfortunately, that happy state of affairs has already begun to unravel. In Venezuela,
    Ecuador,
    Colombia and Panama, for example, we are witnessing developments that suggest trouble ahead
    for the political stability and economic opportunity of the region. Notably, Venezuela’s
    dictator-in-the-making, President Victor Chavez, has publicly declared that he “loves” Fidel and
    is
    actively working to inflict upon his country Castro’s “revolutionary” model.

    In short, in weighing the success and shortcomings of the U.S. embargo, it may be difficult
    to say
    with precision how much worse would things have been without it. But the embargo has, in my
    judgment, helped reduce Castro’s capacity for malevolence. Should it be removed or eased
    while he retains power, moreover, a fundamental truth will likely apply: The more cash Castro
    has at his disposal, the better able Fidel will be to cling to power — and to try to make up for lost
    time by reinvigorating and consolidating his anti-U.S. and anti-democracy campaigns throughout
    much of Latin America.

    Untrue: U.S. Farmers and Businessmen Are Missing a
    Windfall

    Second, those who claim the embargo has failed often insist that its only effect has been to
    punish American concerns who could otherwise be making good money selling food, medicine
    and other commodities to the Cuban market. Here again, the facts suggest that “it ain’t
    necessarily so.”

    For one thing, it turns out the rest of the world is not making huge profits selling
    in the Cuban
    market. Last year, for example, the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles
    Times     published reports
    documenting the fact that Canadian, European and Latin American governments and companies
    that once were convinced they could make a killing investing in Cuba (with the Americans held
    at bay) have been sobered by hard experience with the Cuban government.

    As the Journal reported on 28 June 1999, “‘[In 1993], there was an effervescent
    feeling that
    Cuba had opened up a process of change,’ says Archibald Ritter, a prominent Cuba scholar at
    Carleton University in Ottawa.”

    In light of Fidel’s double-dealing (e.g., giving proprietary information developed at one
    company’s expense and contracts based upon them to competitors), his capriciously instituted
    impediments to doing business in Cuba (e.g., confiscation of portable copiers on the grounds that
    they could be “subversive tools”) and his regime’s determination to maintain control over foreign
    investments, even the companies that seemed to delight in defying U.S. policy — like Canada’s
    Sherritt International Corporation — have pulled back.

    The Journal reported that Sherritt “had raised nearly $500 million three years
    ago to invest on
    the island. Now the mining and energy company is looking elsewhere; it just bought a share of a
    nickel mine in Australia for about $35 million. ‘There’s a limit to the rate you can invest in
    Cuba,’ Sherritt Chairman Ian Delaney told reporters after the company’s annual meeting in
    May.”

    In words that were intended to be prescriptive to other businessmen, moreover, a Canadian
    entrepreneur — who once was enthusiastic about investing in Cuba — last year wrote in a
    financial newsletter quoted by the Wall Street Journal that “The best way to see
    Cuba is on a
    holiday package to the island’s beautiful beaches. Don’t waste time in the business district.”

    An underlying fact of life is that the Cuban people have no money with which to buy
    American
    products — any more than they do those of our competitors.

    In other words, the only way in which American farmers and businessmen are likely
    to
    prosper from selling their products in so impoverished a place as Castro’s Cuba is if
    American taxpayers subsidize their sales    .

    Under certain circumstances, such subsidies can be rationalized. But in every case, before
    the
    taxpayer is obliged to underwrite transactions that can not only wind up costing the U.S.
    Treasury dearly but that can have undesirable political and strategic repercussions, to boot, these
    subsidies must be subjected to the closest scrutiny. National decisions to do business in that
    fashion should then proceed, if at all, only after open, informed and above-board deliberation.

    It is deeply distressing that the present, frenzied effort to get the embargo lifted appears to be
    a
    stalking horse for securing such subsidies, instead, through a non-transparent and back-door
    manner. Presumably, this is because the huge agribusinesses — which tend to benefit far more
    from this sort of taxpayer-subsidized trade than do the small farmers whose plight is far more
    often touted by those who would end U.S. trade sanctions — are reluctant to be seen seeking a
    renewal of the sorts of Commodity Credit Corporation hand-outs that previously cost the
    American people hundreds of millions of dollars worth of write-offs on grain sales to countries
    like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Soviet Union.

    Untrue: ‘Engagement’ Will Free Cuba

    Finally, proponents of doing more business with Castro’s Cuba often try to dress up their true
    motivations — namely, greed — with pious pronouncements that doing what will profit them is
    actually noble. They typically contend that economic “engagement” will not only improve the
    lot in life of the people they intend to sell to, trade with and employ in countries like Cuba; it is
    said that it will also produce, at least over time, desirable political reforms.

    Unfortunately, time after time, in country after country where this practice has been applied,
    it
    has proven to be cynically exploited by the government in question to secure legitimacy and
    financial life-support from the West, while staving off political liberalization. This was true with
    the first Communist government in Lenin’s Soviet Union — which survived its infancy only by
    securing Western investments and other cash infusions. It has, moreover, had similarly dismal
    results in each of the Communist nations where it has subsequently been applied.

    For example, reasonable people can disagree about the significance and extent of changes
    U.S.
    and Western “engagement” has effected in the economic system in China. But trade on basically
    Beijing’s terms has, to this point, certainly has not created the liberty, the freedoms — to say
    nothing of the democratic institutions — that have often been promised as the inevitable result of
    “engaging” the Communist Chinese.

    The point is, if we are genuinely interested in promoting freedom, then enriching
    those who
    are responsible for repressing it is a real formula for failure. And that, regrettably, would
    be the ineluctable consequence of lifting the embargo while Castro remains in power.

    What is more, were we to lift the embargo while Fidel remains in charge, we may well make
    more problematic the chances for real reform after he finally goes. In this connection, I
    commend to the Commission’s attention the views of one of our government’s most astute and
    informed observers of developments in Cuba — Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart — who believes that
    Cuba would probably enjoy a transition to democratic capitalism unless the U.S. embargo
    were
    lifted now    .

    In that case, Rep. Diaz-Balart has warned, chances are good that Castro would be succeeded
    by a
    government determined to pursue the “Little China” model of fascist capitalism — under which
    foreign infusions of capital are welcome, provided they are effectively controlled by
    the state
    (e.g., through joint ventures, state-owned entities, etc.) and political control remains firmly in the
    hands of the regime and its adherents.

    Conclusion

    I would like to conclude my remarks by quoting an individual whose savoir faire
    in the world of
    international business is the stuff of legends. In an op.ed. article in the 27 June 1999 editions of
    El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language version of The Miami Herald,
    Donald Trump made the
    following observations:

    “I perfectly understand the arguments that are frequently used in favor of lifting the embargo.
    The Cold War has ended. Castro has not much time left. Investing money in the Cuban economy
    would benefit a people that has suffered for a long time. It would be a way of exerting pressure
    so that Cuba “opens up”: it would help export democracy and promote free enterprise.
    All those
    arguments are totally false.

    For me, there are no doubts regarding the embargo. Of course we must keep the
    embargo. We
    must keep it until Castro goes.”

    In short, Mr. Chairman and members of this distinguished Commission, I
    am convinced that —
    even if some small subset of America were to benefit economically from lifting the U.S.
    economic embargo — it will not translate into, on net, a positive result for the Nation
    as a
    whole    . And it certainly would not help the people of Cuba.

    Enriching China Unlikely to Advance U.S. National Security

    (Washington, D.C.): In recent days, President Bill Clinton and his National Security Advisor, Samuel Berger, have asserted that U.S. national security requires that China receive Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status. The stridency with which they have adopted this line suggests that — despite the favorable “spin” proponents of PNTR are giving their prospects for success when the House of Representatives votes on that legislation on or about 22 May — they are having trouble overcoming skepticism concerning claims that the American economy will benefit greatly from China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Unfortunately for the White House and its business and other allies, it is unlikely that a dangerous China will become less so if it has even more resources at the disposal of its military-industrial and security services.

    To the contrary, past and present Chinese behavior — notably the following activities — strongly suggests that Chinese hardliners are exercising full control over the regime. They will likely redouble these and other efforts if they are, in effect, rewarded for them by being spared yearly NTR reviews.

    A Bill of Particulars

    China’s Long-term Strategy seeks to dominate Asia and become a global superpower. It is pursuing these goals with patience and determination. The People’s Liberation Army sees the United States as “the main enemy” and the only impediment to accomplishing this goal.

    This strategy was brilliantly dissected recently by Mark Helprin in a recent edition of National Review entitled “East Wind.” Of particular note is Helprin’s discussion of the vital role that economic expansion plays in this strategy as summarized in Deng Xio Peng’s “16 Character” diktat which calls on the Chinese people to “Combine the military and civil; combine peace and war; give priority to military products; let the civil support the military.” No one should be under any illusion: Beijing envisions using its economic expansion to fuel its military buildup and expansionist ambitions.

    • Penetration by PLA- and Chinese government-affiliated entities of our capital markets: The problem posed by China’s economic program is not limited to trade. China is, among other things, making an increasingly aggressive bid to penetrate the U.S. capital markets — one of this Nation’s last great monopolies.

      As incredible — not to say absurd — as it may seem, U.S. pension funds, mutual funds, life insurance, corporate and private portfolios are all seen as sources of cash with which China can put our interests at risk. A case in point is an Initial Public Offering issued by PetroChina, a subsidiary of the PRC’s largest energy company — an entity providing resources that are allowing Sudan’s government to engage in activities from genocide to slave-trading to support for terrorism and the proliferation of weapons mass destruction. For companies like PetroChina, other state-owned and -affiliated “bad actors,” the vast resources of the U.S. debt and equity markets represent “found money” — funds that are undisciplined and largely non-transparent. It must be asked: To what uses will they be put?

    • China’s Military Modernization Program: A principal beneficiary of course is China’s military, which aspires to make what Mao once described as a “Great Leap Forward.” The PRC’s long-term strategy calls for the People’s Liberation Army to achieve a massive modernization program capable of transforming its 1950s and ’60s vintage equipment and tactics into those at the forefront of the 21st Century. In the hope of accomplishing this enormous task as rapidly and as inexpensively as possible, Beijing is taking maximum advantage of technology acquired legally or illegally from us, as well as through a growing strategic axis with Russia.

      Of particular concern is the emphasis being placed by the People’s Liberation Army on a doctrine that envisions using asymmetric means and technologies to counter American military power. Thus we see China pursuing: Information Warfare; weapons of mass destruction and long-range ballistic missiles; advanced nuclear-armed anti-ship missile systems from Russia designed to destroy American carrier battle groups; electro-magnetic pulse weapons; etc., rather than concentrating (for now at least) on building up conventional forces comparable to our own.

    • The PRC’s Regional Agenda: The Chinese are assiduously dividing and intimidating U.S. allies in the region — Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea. They are doing this in a variety of ways, for example, by abetting North Korean belligerence and Pyongyang’s long-range ballistic missile program, as well as by brandishing their own ability to attack even American cities like Los Angeles with nuclear weapons.

      This campaign is designed to impress upon our democratic allies that the United States is a declining and unreliable power and China a rising one in the Western Pacific and East Asia. In the absence of credible American security guarantees, China is running what amounts to a protection racket, impressing upon our friends that Beijing’s help will be needed to counter North Korean and other regional threats.

      The Chinese military is also exhibiting increasing assertiveness around the Pacific Rim and Asia — from Pakistan, to Myanmar, to Malaysia, to Taiwan and the Philippines. It is actively establishing bases, intelligence collection facilities and other dominant positions from which to project power.

    • China’s espionage: The former long-time chief of the FBI’s Chinese counter-intelligence unit, Paul Moore’s made the point in a powerful op.ed. article in the New York Times last August that the PRC is pursuing a comprehensive, patient and deadly approach to intelligence collection against this country. In so doing, he notes, Beijing appeals to and/or coerces overseas Chinese to help in that effort.

      Mr. Moore explained in his essay that such practices make it very difficult to catch, let alone to prosecute successfully someone like Wen Ho Lee, suspected of spying at Los Alamos. Such individuals generally are not doing it for the money, fancy cars or bigger houses. They may not even be aware of exactly what they are doing. This makes for a huge — and possibly insoluble — counter-intelligence challenge.

    • China’s penetration of our hemisphere: This problem has been much in the news lately, from Long Beach and Palmdale here in California to strategic bases at either end of the Panama Canal. There are estimated to be several thousand front companies working for the People’s Liberation Army and/or Chinese intelligence services in this country. The Chinese are also actively engaged in drug, alien and arms smuggling into the US. They are also actively insinuating themselves in an ominous fashion into other parts of the Western hemisphere including: Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba.
    • Chinese proliferation: The PRC is the leading exporter of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology to dangerous developing nations — nations they see not as we do, as “rogue states” but as clients. Indeed, Beijing sees such trade as more than simply a means of securing vital energy resources from oil-rich countries like Libya, Iraq, Iran and Sudan.

      The Chinese also understand that, by building up the offensive power of these states, as well as that of Cuba and North Korea, their clients can help buy the PRC freedom of maneuver by distracting, tying up and otherwise stressing the world’s one global power, the United States. Proliferation can also prove helpful in increasing pressure on America’s democratic and other allies to seek China’s influence and protection. Israel’s sale of powerful early warning aircraft and other advanced weapons technology is a case in point.

      PRC efforts to increase the forces of instability around the world has even had the effect of augmenting China’s leverage on the United States as we seek its help in controlling such threats.

    • China’s penetration of our political system: Last, but hardly least, there is the matter of illegal Chinese campaign contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaigns. Is it a coincidence or is it cause and effect that Clinton has made momentous changes in granting China access to satellite and missile technology, supercomputers, embraced Beijing’s position on Taiwan, largely ignored the PRC’s violations of human rights (recently it failed to secure votes in Geneva for resolution condemning China’s record), given China access to the WTO, etc.?

      Such behavior on the part of China is all the more worrisome because it comes against the backdrop of significant internal unrest in China. Will Beijing engage in what the political scientists call “social engineering” — using phony claims of “external aggression” as a pretext for imposing greater control at home and diverting public anger from a failed government to foreign “barbarians”? Will China actually accelerate its timetable for using force against Taiwan, leading to conflict with the United States?

    The Bottom Line

    It is unlikely that the American economy as a whole will, on balance, benefit from granting China Permanent Normal Trade Status. There is, however, no chance that a China engaged in such an ominous array of malevolent activities while it is, at least nominally, subject to close annual scrutiny as part of the Normal Trade Status review process will become less of a threat to U.S. national security once that leverage no longer exists. Representations to the contrary are cynical, reckless and a disservice to the very important debate about PNTR now taking shape.