Bolivian nationalization of resources

As you've seen by now, Evo Morales has ordered the Bolivian military to take control of their natural gas industry. This action mirrors that taken by Chavez in Venezuela a few years ago. The latter has actually been rather successful since foreign oil companies have mostly met the new obligations willingly in order to continue earning massive sums from Venezuela's petroleum resources.

The language used in the press yesterday and today is "seized," which underscores the claim that this is an aggressive taking of resources that belong to others. One main thing to keep in mind - a big part of the reason Morales is now president of Bolivia - is that Bolivia in the past (like many "developing" countries) has owned nearly none of their own national resources. That honor went to Brazil, the US, and others. As such, the country has remained in extreme poverty.

This may be an over-simplification but the tradeoff is between foreign ownership of resources (and little trickle-down, but at least a "healthy" investment climate!) versus solving perhaps the most pressing problem of South America: extreme and pervasive poverty. One can only fully make the case for the former if one overlooks the latter.

I like ND Blue's take:

It's kind of funny that we are so worried about Iran and Iraq, we are letting countries in Latin America nationalize their energy companies. That is the same thing Iran tried to do after WWII and their attempts got them a CIA lead coup against a democratically elected leader.

If there is anything good to come out of Bush's insane foreign policy, it is the loosening of the economic stranglehold on Latin America....