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What Soured the U.S.-Venezuela Alliance?
Debate with Angelo Rivero Santos and Andrés Martinez
The Los Angeles Times
July 15, 2008

Which is good, because your second point is, well, absurd. To say that Venezuela supports the war on terror but opposed the military action against Afghanistan would be like me saying I am leading the charge against lung cancer but smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. Chavez's flirtations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (I once watched Chavez going on and on about him on the Venezuelan talk show "Alo Presidente," as if the Iranian leader were Gandhi) and his cheerleading (if not outright support) of Colombia's FARC narco-guerrillas further belie your assertion.

On debates over economic integration and trade, your oil riches give your government the luxury to play spoiler without paying much of a price. As stated above, barring all-out war someday, there will always be an important trading relationship between our nations because of simple energy supply-demand issues. Until and unless it diversifies its economy, Venezuela will not feel the same need as do Colombia or Peru for a regional or bilateral (with the United States) free-trading regime.

Still, I think all of Venezuela's alternative integration schemes (such as the ALBA or the Bank of the South) ring hollow and don't amount to much more than propaganda. Despite Chavez's exhortations, most Latin American countries will continue to seek better access to the American market and more foreign investment flowing in. And to the extent that American policies are blocked from time to time in South America, it's far more likely that the nation calling the alternative shots is Brazil, not Venezuela.

Andrés Martinez is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

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