Good News For Once

Diplomacy sometimes works. It did in South America. Which is good -- we need both the oil to flow and our client-state in Columbia to remain viable. War would not have been in the best interests of any of the belligerent nations, which they must have all figured out fairly quickly. That and they wouldn't want to open themselves up to the idea of joint U.S.-Brazilian peacekeeping patrols.

Maybe It Starts Where You Aren't Looking, or, Cocaine and Armaments and Uranium Oh My!

Admit it. You weren't paying any attention at all to South America. Well, maybe you'd better start, because a three-way shooting war looks like it's about to get started there.

Here's the deal. Columbia's President, Juan Uribe, is considered a "right wing" leader, and has warmed ties with the United States. American troops and agents have been active in Columbia for years, with the collaboration of the Columbian government, quietly going after narcoterrorists (defined as military or paramilitary groups that fund themselves through "taxing" or sponsoring the trade in cocaine, Columbia's most lucrative export after coffee).

This, by the way, is what we want to be done with narcoterrorists. Until this country wises up and decriminalizes drugs, cocaine will always be expensive to get and available only through criminal sources. So that leaves us with the only politically palatable alternative of interdiction as a way of fighting the drug trade -- which has the sad effect of ensuring that only the most clever and strong criminals are the ones involved in the manufacture, transport, and sale of the stuff, meaning that that Pablo Escobars of the world have been edged out by military groups. Groups that had their origins in the Cold War, and which survived their loss of Soviet sponsorship by edging out the Mafia-style thugs who formerly controlled the cocaine trade.

In the case of Columbia, the left-wing terrorists who fund themselves with American and European drug money have been waging a civil war to overthrow the government of Columbia for close to forty years now. Sure, you know that right-wing governments in Latin America can be pretty nasty. So can left-wing governments. Not to excuse the bloody excesses of governments the U.S. cozied up to like in El Salvador, Panama, and Chile, but there have been at least as bad things happening in places run by left-wing dictators, like Nicaragua and Cuba. Only through discarding both right-wing militarism (if not outright fascism) and also left-wing communistic ideologies, and then adopting pro-business liberal democracy have these countries been able to enjoy financial success -- witness, for example, Brazil, Costa Rica, and post-fascist Argentina.

But I digress. Columbia is bordered by five neighbors -- Panama, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Ecuador and Venezuela are governed by leftist leaders who are pushing towards reforming their governments to be more autocratic. Ecuador's last three democratically elected Presidents were all driven from office by popular protests. Before that, there was functionally a military government during a five-year border war with Peru. Venezuela, formerly a close ally of the United States, has fallen under the sway of Hugo Chavez, who has staked his political fortune on being a gadfly to the United States. Unlike their neighbor in common Columbia, Ecuador and Venezuela both have significant petroleum reserves, which form the basis of their economies.

And because their governments are leftist, they would prefer to see Columbia governed by leftists, also. Alas, the Columbian voters continue to return right-wing coalitions to power there, in no small part because they are sick and tired already of leftist terrorists blowing up their cafes, bus stations and city halls. They like that their government is doing what it can to root out and eliminate these criminals. Very recently, six Columbians were taken hostage by the bad guys -- including a retired member of Columbia's Senate. In 2002. And they're still holding these people captive today.

So the Columbians (likely with our assistance) located a master cell of the terrorist group. Just across the border in Ecuador. And without a by-your-leave, a Columbian strike force (probably assisted by the U.S.) raided the place, killed a bunch of bad guys, and took a bunch more prisoner. This included taking out two of their top guys and seizing a bunch of their computers. And what did they find?

Well, it's been an open secret for a long time that Chavez allows the Columbian rebels to operate within his country. Venezuela has a strong enough military that Columbia treads carefully around its border. And Chavez feels an ideological affinity for his fellow leftists. So it's not a great leap to think that coca harvested and possibly refined in Columbia is sent through Venezuela for distribution to points abroad in order to fund the military operations against the government of Columbia. But no one expected to learn that Chavez was actually funding the rebels. However, that's what e-mails found on the rebels' computers said, mentioning, inter alia, a recent three hundred million dollar gift from Venezuela to them. Or suggestions that Chavez had taken money back from them in the form of a substantial campaign contribution during the recent elections in Venezuela.

Why Columbia does not consider these things acts of war against it, with Venezuela cast as the aggressor, is anyone's guess. My guess is that we are partially responsible for Columbia not going to war with Venezuela already as we have let the Columbians know that if they do that, we will withdraw our military support for their government. The reason for that, as I describe below, is that despite our distaste for Venezuela's current government, we cannot afford to see the Venezuelan oil stop flowing.

The response of both Ecuador and Venezuela to the Columbian raid has been outrage, including the termination of direct diplomatic relations between these nations. They have withdrawn their ambassadors, Chavez has said that if it had been Venezuela he's have declared war on the spot, and everyone is flying to Washington so the Brazilians -- debatably the only sane ones in the mix -- can preside over an OAS mediation of the situation tomorrow. As it stands, three nations -- including an OPEC member and a strategic ally of the U.S. that we've propped up for a generation -- are on the brink of a shooting war into which the U.S. can do little but offer intelligence and munitions support.

Oh, and did I mention that the Columbian rebels tried to buy a hundred pounds of uranium? Hah hah! I almost let that little detail slip. Silly me -- after all, this could have easily become not just a shooting war but a nuclear war. Now that would be something to put in the scrapbook for the ol' grandkids!

We've had our eye focused so closely on the Persian Gulf for the past five years that we haven't been paying a lot of attention elsewhere. This is what happens. First, it seemed that we wouldn't be able to contain North Korea; fortunately, that turns out to (barely) be within our abilities thanks to the confluence of China's need for peace and prosperity in the Korean Peninsula dovetailing with our own and Russia's desire to not see Vladivostok turned into a smoking ruin by Lil' Kim.

But we don't have friends like that in Latin America. We've spent the better part of two centuries telling the rest of the world to keep their damn hands out of the Americas, and pretty much only the Soviets (and before them the French) have been able to get away with ignoring us (and the UK, at least ever since we kissed and made up with them in the 1850's). We're going to have to figure this one out on our own; Brazil and Argentina and Chile are rich and have substantial militaries but not substantial enough to project their power into the Crown of the Andes. About the only substantial ally we have south of our own border is Mexico. And if we wouldn't take Mexico's help when our own people were dying in New Orleans, it seems like a hard sell to get them on board with cleaning up this mess.

We can't just wash our hands of it all and leave these various nations to their own devices. A glut of cocaine is what would result from that. We need an alliance with Columbia if we're going to keep our current drug policy in place. Disrupting the economies of two oil exporting states is also not an option, even if their leaders are overtly hostile to us. We need as much oil as possible going into the world market, whether that means cozying up to Hugo Chavez or not. Allowing this war to happen is not an option. Deterring it is not within our power. We'd better hope that we, and the Brazilians, have some damn good diplomats.

Good News Monday

Good news on the international front brought to you today by the BBC.

First, it appears that our evaluation (meaning that of the United States) of the threat of a nuclear Iran has been ratcheted down from "high alert" to merely "on guard." That's about where the anxiety level should be for detente and containment, which seem to be the only strategies that are both realistic and effective for dealing with Iran. Holy crap do we not want to go to war with Iran. Not that we wouldn't win on the battlefield, but turning all of central Asia into an anarchy and nearly every Muslim in the world into an America-hater (as opposed to only a significant fraction of them, as we've done now) would be decidedly not in our best mid- or long-term interests. And for the future, proceed with all due care, Madam President!

Second, by a very narrow margin, Venezuelans have chosen democracy. A few days ago, I wrote about Hugo Chavez's bid to be able to run for President indefinitely and otherwise make himself the effective dictator of that country. By a margin of 49%-51%, votes chose "No" over "Si" to that proposed Constitutional change; Chavez himself seems to have accepted that defeat at the polls. He may try again in the future, but for now, he's still looking at term limits in a year or two. (Good riddance.)

Finally, Sudan's President has agreed to allow the teacher who let her schoolchildren name their teddy bear "Mohammed" go back to the UK with a pardon, and indeed a pardon given while her head was still attached to her neck, so the pardon will actually do her some good. Apparently some Muslim members of the House of Lords appealed to the "President" of Sudan and persuaded him that things would be better this way. No doubt they were right.

So, there you have it. Sometimes, good things do happen in the world.

Why The Customer Is Always Right, Or, Hugo Chavez Threatens To Cut Off His Own Nose To Spite The United States

Hugo Chavez, the unabashedly America-baiting leftist wannabe-dictator of Venezuela, is trying to push through a referendum that would restructure Venezuela's constitution, permit him to run for re-election indefinitely, and allow him to sidestep the legislature and courts of that country pretty much whenever they got in the way of him imposing his unilateral will on the people. The outcome of the vote is very much in question.

So, Chavez has threatened to expel foreign journalists who report on results unfavorable to him, silence domestic media that does the same thing, and to cut off oil sales to the United States if anyone even accuses the "Si" campaign of engaging in any kind of voter fraud. What a champion of freedom and liberty this guy is. South America should be proud.

I'm particularly intrigued by the idea that he would cut off oil supplies to the U.S. For all of the heat of the rhetoric exchanged between Chavez and the U.S., the two countries are very close trading partners indeed. Sales of oil to the U.S. are far and away Venezuela's biggest source of income, either foreign or domestic. And 15% of all petroleum products consumed in the U.S. are derived from oil pumped in Venezuela.

So what would happen if Chavez really did cut off oil shipments to the U.S.? Two things.

First, oil prices here would immediately rise, probably by about a dollar a gallon for gas. People would be really pissed off for about two weeks. Then, the inelasticity of the demand curve for gasoline would kick in, and people would pony up the money and buy the gasoline anyway. When the crisis eventually passed, gas prices would slowly fall back, more or less, to their current levels (which are already higher than consumers are accustomed to paying for more than a few weeks at a time, but we've got to learn to deal with that no matter what Chavez does).

In the meantime, we'd buy more oil from Mexico and eventually swallow our environmental pride and open up our Alaskan petroleum reserves, and otherwise get the oil we want from elsewhere, because as a nation, we can afford to pay top dollar. So we'd survive just fine, although it would be a drag on the economy and a short- to mid-term economic hardship, particularly for lower-income Americans.

And who knows? We might just develop economically efficient shale oil extraction technology. Then we'd tell Chavez to take his low-grade petroleum and... ah, use it for lubrication.

But then, Venezuela's economy would start to dry up like a big dog. Of course, there would still be all this petroleum-extraction infrastructure and tens of thousands of people whose jobs are related to it, so what would they do? Without U.S. money flowing to Venezuela in exchange for the petroleum, Chavez would have three choices about what to do with his national oil industry. First, he could try to find new customers, who would simply re-sell the oil, at a profit, to the U.S., thereby completely defeating his threatened embargo after moderately inconveniencing us with a modest price increase.

Second, he could build up his reserves of crude and thus bank against the day that he could proclaim victory and sell again -- if he had the storage capacity to do so, which is quite unlikely. He certainly lacks the ability to refine the crude; there are almost no refineries anywhere in the world capable of refining Venezuela's high-sulfur crude oil into a useful fuel product -- outside the United States. (This inconvenient fact would probably make option #1, finding other customers for his oil, a rather difficult proposition for Chavez; sure, a country like Brazil or South Africa might buy it, but what are they going to do with it once they get it?)

Or third, he could lay off his petroleum industry for the duration of the crisis to save money on paying their wages, thereby shifting the expense of supporting these people to his public welfare system. In the meantime, the lack of funds coming into the government would reduce his government's ability to provide for social welfare services (like, say, medical care or electricity) and his economy would spiral into a substantial recession and eventually his people would either rise up in revolt against him and throw his fascist ass out of office, or he would be forced to fold his hand like Gorbachev after eating a 1980's-sized bowl of SDI.

Who do you think could last the longest in this game of economic chicken? If you picked "Hugo Chavez," you made the wrong call. Chavez has forgotten the Golden Rule.

Wages of Demagoguery

One of the world's leading challengers to U.S. hegemony demonstrated his strength and grasp over power today by shutting down a TV station that aired points of view in opposition to his own.

It is no coincidence that nations unfortunate enough to see a consolidation of power in the hands of their executives also see the voices of opposition political thinkers censored and silenced. And it is no coincidence that such nations wind up with leaders who have no respect for the rule of law and arrogate dictatorial powers for themselves.

We are not immune from this disease ourselves. It is easy to remember that we have enemies who would take our freedoms from us. It is more difficult, but equally important, to remember that we must protect those freedoms ourselves. We in the United States may find ourselves the target of many of the attacks of such nations, for ever has the United States been the enemy of tyrants and despots.

Today we rightly thank and honor those who laid down their lives for this country and the principles of individual liberty and limited, divided government upon which it was founded. Let us not disrespect their memories by becoming what they fought against.