Tinkering with Venezuela

From BoRev:

The Washington Post editorial page cares, really cares, about Venezuela, and only wants what’s best for its stupid, ignorant population. They want Chavez out because Venezuela’s democracy is either “dead, dying or in danger,” and because this year its economy, and that of its allies, is doomed. “The people of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba,” it seems “may be headed for a miserable year.”

Wow. Does the Post know something we don’t? Because last time I checked, Venezuela had the fastest-growing economy in Latin America, two years running.

Perhaps they’ve been talking to former Secretary of State (and Halliburton Director) Lawrence Eagleburger, who may have something up his sleeve. Appearing on Fox News last night, this Bush I figure lamented that the Venezuelan economy was not crashing fast enough for his taste.

When asked by David Asman if we should “just wait for the economy to collapse or do we push it in that direction?" Eagleburger replied :

"I think we have to push...anything we can do to make their economy more difficult for them at this moment is a good thing but let's do it in ways that do not get us into direct conflict with Venezuela if we can get away with it."

Why? I mean, really, why?

The only legitimate worry I can see, although I don't subscribe to it myself because I think it's overblown, is Chávez's growing ties to Ahmadinejad and other anti-American forces. In this case, the question for the US might plausibly be one of "national security." But, knowing Venezuela, chavismo among the population has nothing to do with anti-Americanism and everything to do with anti-imperialism. As I've said over and over, the extent to which the US takes the historical imperial stance towards South America is the extent to which South American nations move away from the US. On a personal level, however, Venezuelans and Americans are quite close. Many Venezuelans have family in the US and admire most Americans as a sympathetic people led unfortunately by an archaic imperial presidency. Indeed, this is not unlike how many Americans increasingly view their present government. The "national security" concern cannot be plausibly taken as a risk of terrorism or some such thing. The notion is ridiculous to Venezuelans across the political spectrum, except apparently for the rightwing Cuban / Venezuelan terrorist nexis, which includes Luis Posada Carriles, who is currently in an El Paso prison on US immigration charges and who Venezuela wants extradited to Caracas to face terrorism charges (which the US is resisting) for a series of bombings and hundreds of deaths.

It's difficult to say that the concern is Chávez's growing dictatorial powers either. The US traditionally has little problem with non-democratic governments when they are aligned with US interests. I'm personally worried about Chávez's new powers of decree, and I think they're inexplicable unless Chávez does indeed have dictatorial ambitions. He says these new powers are necessary to speed up the institutionalization of the Bolivarian revolution. But it's just not clear to me - and to many chavistas as well, I suspect - why such powers are necessary apart from a generic notion of greater institutional efficiency. This is the real point about which we should be worried. But we should be worried about it as democrats. Although it's no excuse, I would urge you to keep in mind the executive power grab in the US as well - see torture, war, loophole overrides of congress, signing statements, no-bid contracts, the ongoing replacement of federal judges with Republican cronies, etc. We should be at least as concerned about all this as democrats.

Furthermore, it couldn't be a concern about economic oppression in Venezuela. The economy is booming, driven by oil revenues. The people are generally satisfied that economic progress is being made. Unemployment has dropped again. GDP is up. The poverty rate continues to fall.

"National security" corresponds, rather, to economic interests that the US seeks to preserve in Venezuela and South America more generally. Given Chávez's current push to nationalize other industries such as telecommunications, some US companies in Venezuela - see Verizon - face potential losses in the country. This is the most plausible explanation for an American national security concern regarding Venezuela.

But notice that this is precisely the other side of the coin to the growing South American rejection of American economic interference, economic liberalization, and globalization (all of which are thought of by most people in the South as North American hegemonic illusions). When Eagleburger says "anything we can do to make their economy more difficult for them at this moment is a good thing," he is supporting what South Americans call US imperialism. They know that this comes not from economic tinkering but from the installation of nasty political regimes. They know that these regimes, often with direct US support and always at least with indirect support, committed some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.

If you were in Venezuela right now, how would you react? David Rieff reminds us of the dynamic:

In moving from rhetoric to action, Chávez may indeed have set the stage for the end of his rule. But the Chávez phenomenon should not be dismissed. Not only is he still immensely popular within Venezuela, but he also has become an iconic figure for many people across the world who see the United States as the principal threat to world peace, not its benevolent guarantor. In fact, he has come to play the same role in 2007 that Fidel Castro played in 1967. Perhaps, globalization or no globalization, the world has changed less than most people thought.

Of course, it is anything but clear that communism in Cuba will survive the death of Castro. Indeed, Cuba hangs on economically only because Venezuela provides it with subsidized oil in much the way the Soviet Union did before it collapsed. At the same time, however, the left-wing surge throughout Latin America continues unabated. Ecuador’s new president, Rafael Correa, joins not only Chávez but also Evo Morales of Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. It’s significant that President Ahmadinejad — who, it should be noted, is not a Socialist or particularly hostile to capitalism of the crony kind — met with all of them. More significant still is that all these men were swept into power by an electorate for whom globalization is an epithet, not the collective economic destiny of humanity in the 21st century.

If the US really wanted to do something in its own interests as well as the interests of others, it would get rid of dinosaurs like Eagleburger, Bolton, Cheney, et al., and take a deliberative, dialogical stance towards countries such as Venezuela. An interest in democracy would be a good place to start, since chavismo says that at its core it is a democratic movement. An open, fair, genuine dialogue about democratization would first of all be a good start in renewing relations with South America. Furthermore, it would put all of our cards on the table and show to the world who's really the democrat and who's not.

UPDATE (Jan. 29th, 1:00pm):

Via Anon, in the comments, comes this piece on the "rule by decree" business. I'm still a bit concerned, however, that we're not getting the full picture. Not from the US media, mind you - they've taken the administration's tack on Venezuela and haven't looked past their noses, which seem to grow any time they try. Some chavista sources of mine are themselves concerned.

Here's what's actually happening: The Venezuelan assembly is poised to pass a law that will give the executive branch greater leeway to establish norms on a certain range of issues. Most of these involve guidelines for the president's own cabinet-level agencies. In other words, the Venezuelan version of the IRS will map out the country's tax structure; the Transportation department will devise its own strategic plan for public transit nationwide, etc. This represents a shift of certain powers from the legislative branch to the executive, to be sure, but on paper they don't seem to stray too far from the powers that the executive branch in the United States already has. Venezuelanaysis.com has a full listing of the ten issue areas that are affected.

It is important to note that this type of power-transfer is allowed under the Venezuelan constitution of 1999, which expressly permits the President to issue executive orders specifically within these issue areas. Of course, the constitution continues to guide the country's overall legal framework, which is to say that no "decree" can supercede constitutional law.

What's more, this "enabling law" is not new to the current constitution. Venezuela's previous constitution allowed for similar powers shifts to the executive, and you can be sure that past presidents took advantage of this authority on multiple occasions throughout the 70's, 80's and 90's. Here are a few examples:

In 1974, Congress gave President Carlos Andres Perez the right to "rule by decree" on a number of economic matters, which he used to pass a slew of new regulations-instituting a minimum wage increase, freezing the market price of "necessary" goods, instating tax relief on agricultural activities, increasing government pensions, and even establishing new state institutions, including the National Institute of Housing and an Industrial Development Fund.

But Perez was a close ally of the US government, so there was little controversy from Washington.