Stupid Dictators. Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez seem to have a death wish.
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To take the more endangered first, Chavez, a supposed leftist, has retreated to the authoritarian bad old days of Latin American dictatorships, in a time when the U.S. can project its power to every part of the Hemisphere to crush any tinhorn dictator. Venezuela is not a closed society, and there are tens of thousands of members of the opposition who would gladly help the U.S. military pinpoint Chavez's whereabouts at any given moment, so that a "surgical strike" could kill him and his immediate circle without doing much damage to the larger Venezuelan society.
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Chavez needs to be reminded of the last Latin American dictator who trivialized U.S. power, one Manuel Noriega. On December 20th (my birthday), 1989, the United States invaded Panama for the express purpose of ousting Noriega from power, arresting him for drug trafficking and money laundering, and removing him to the United States for trial and imprisonment. He is in a Federal prison in Florida to this day, tho he may be released this September, almost 18 years later. His power is completely broken, and even if he should return to Panama, his chances of restoring his dictatorship would seem nil. Mind you, if he did succeed, we would just invade again, or kill him and his entire coterie with a brief "shock and awe" campaign.
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There is no room in the politics of Latin America for dictators. Not one. The Venezuelan legislature is not entitled to empower the 'president' to rule by decree. Decrees are for dictators. Presidents operate under the rule of laws duly passed by a legislature. They neither seek nor accept rule by decree.
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Members of the sane, humanist left understand that popular democracy is not just intrinsic to democratic socialism but indispensable to social justice, because you can't just hand people a better life. They have to earn it, and participate in their own liberation, or they will neither achieve personal liberation nor appreciate it, so lose it to the next authoritarian government, which may well have nothing like their economic nor political wellbeing at heart.
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I would like to believe that Hugo Chavez has the best interests of the downtrodden little guy of Venezuela at heart, but he is assuredly not acting as tho he does. Political opposition is important to the functioning of government. It's one major way you determine whether your programs are wise, by listening to criticisms. Even fools sometimes see foolishness in others.
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If Chavez will not allow political opposition in speech (TV, for instance), he may well have to face physical opposition in the form of guerrilla warfare. He must know that. He surely knows the violent history of dictatorship, revolution, new dictatorship, counter-revolution, and new dictatorship that has plagued Latin America for centuries. Can he possibly be so stupid as to think that he is immune to such forces? Democracy, with its free-speech steam valve, keeps societies from blowing up by giving people some power over change and the chance to blow off steam with words on placards, not guns and grenades.
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We don't have to put the people of Venezuela thru the torment of a protracted civil war. We can kill Chavez and everyone around him in one hour. Someone should tell him that.
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Several thousand miles to the northeast of Caracas, another stupid dictator is preparing his country for disaster. Not content with having lost the Cold War and seeing the Soviet Union break up, Vladimir Putin seems intent on embarking on a new brinksmanship that is likely to produce, if not World War III and the total destruction of civilization, then at least the devastating, humiliating defeat and breakup of Russia itself. Turning his back on democratic Europe and the United States, Putin is cozying up to the Butchers of Beijing, in the apparent hope of restoring Russian greatness by hitching Russia's wagon to China's (Red) star. It would seem that he is, after all, just the KGB thug he started as.
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Perhaps he has made the calculation that China will have one and a half billion people soon, and may simply pour across its long border into empty Asian Russia, in a replay of Russia's worst nitemare, a new Mongol Horde. To prevent that, Putin seems willing to risk war with the United States. China is so near; the U.S. so far.
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But, Mr. Putin, Europe is near, and it has 600 million people who are much better educated and more easily capable of mastering the technology of modern warfare than the typical Chinese peasant. In alliance with and directed by the United States (another 300 million people), Europe could be a monstrous problem for Russia.
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But Putin may think that European self-importance will prevent it from making common cause with its chief rival, the United States. That would leave Europe to its own devices, vis-a-vis Russia.
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Within itself, Europe is divided, despite the pretense of a European 'Union'. Communist China, by contrast, is united, under a centralized, authoritarian government. Europe's population is declining; China's, rising. Putin is making noises as tho he thinks the threat to Russia comes from the West, whereas it really comes from the east.
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Might he be developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles to hold in reserve against China while pretending they are to be used only against the United States and/or Europe?
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Russia is plainly capable of such cynical behavior. In the guise of the Soviet Union, Russia signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany, to buy time to build up its military to fite what it saw as inevitable war against that very country. Might Putin be buying time for Russia to build defenses against China?
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If so, he is going about it in an odd and dysfunctional way. Because the West , with which he might have to realign Russia if his plan to cozy up to Communist China doesn't work, takes literally his anti-Western rhetoric and takes gravely seriously the idea that he is arming for war against us.
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The Cold War left the West so angry with Russia that even after Yeltsin overthrew the Communists, the West continued to fite the Cold War, refusing to rush to the people of Russia the technical experts, economists, political operatives, union organizers, and educators needed to ease the transition to a market economy and democratic politics. Russia was left to fend for itself, and it has suffered badly.
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Is Putin intent on avenging that slite and the 17 years, and counting, of grotesque hardship Russia need not have suffered had the West been wise and generous? Is he really so furious and disgusted at Russia's mistreatment at the hands of the West, which should have welcomed Russia with open arms but instead held it a straight-arm length away, that he really is developing a war machine targeting the West?
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How stupid can he be?
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Would the United States and other Western countries really have difficulty in fomenting insurrectionary movements in various parts of Russia's national territory, and carrying terrorism on an unprecedented scale to the very heart of all major Russian cities? Would Putin's government find international covert aid and training poured into Chechnya and other disloyal areas easy to overcome? Or would Russia find itself overwhelmed, with first this chunk of its national territory, then that chunk, then another, ripped from Holy Mother Russia by the enemies that Putin seems intent on making?
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And if Russia is ripped to shreds in the Caucasus and other areas in the western part of its realm, will Communist China really honor its own, latter-day 'nonaggression pact'? Or will it join in the feeding frenzy to rip away huge chunks of Russian territory — and resources — while Russia is distracted and prostrate due to insurrections causing devastation in the Russian heartland, insurrections supported, even incited, by the West? China may be close, Mr. Putin, but Chechnya is even closer. If you make powerful enemies, they can make powerful friends of Russia's internal enemies, and fite proxy wars thru them that could reduce Russia by hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory, and fill its streets with blood.
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Way to go, Putin! If Russia has a history after your reign, what will it say about you?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,467 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:56 AM