A New Cold War in the
Caribbean?
By TIM PADGETT / MIAMI
Ever since the Monroe
Doctrine, the U.S. has
seen the Caribbean in
the way that the Romans
viewed the
Mediterranean: Mare
Nostrum, Our Sea. From
the Spanish-American War
through the Cuban
missile crisis and the
Central-American dirty
wars of the Reagan era,
Washington was always
quick to flex its muscle
over the rum-soaked
waters that stretch from
Florida to Venezuela.
The bad news: it ain't
our sea anymore,
gringos.?
The headlines of the
past week have
underscored the extent
to which U.S. hegemony
in the Caribbean has
faded. Whether it's
Russia reportedly
threatening to
reestablish a military
presence in Cuba, Iran
cozying up to U.S.
nemeses like Nicaragua's
President Daniel Ortega
or U.S. free-trade
partners such as the
Dominican Republic and
Costa Rica jumping into
energy alliances with
left-wing Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez,
Washington seems
increasingly on the
sidelines of a region
the Bush Administration
once called America's
third border.
"The U.S. let its guard down in the Caribbean after the Berlin Wall fell,"
says Johanna Mendelson-Forman,
a senior associate for
the Americas at the
Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
"As a result, we've gone
from unipolarity in that
region to multipolarity,
which isn't necessarily
a bad thing, but we're
in a real learning phase
as to how to deal with
it."
Chávez's visit to Moscow
this week — not only to
buy more than $1 billion
worth of anti-aircraft
missiles and submarines,
but also to commune with
growing anti-American
resentment in Russia —
resurrected old ghosts
for some conservative
yanqui lawmakers.
Florida Congressman
Connie Mack declared the
Caracas-Moscow
partnership a "stark
reminder of the cold war
partnership between the
Soviet Union and Cuba."
As if to encourage that
Dr. Strangelove
nostalgia, the Moscow
daily Izvestia quoted
high-level Russian
military officials as
suggesting that Russia
might begin flying
long-range bombers into
Cuba again, almost two
decades after the
Soviets bolted from
Havana. That prompted
U.S. Air Force General
Norton Schwartz,
President Bush's nominee
for Air Force Chief of
Staff, to tell a
congressional
confirmation hearing the
next day that if the
Russians were to base
nuclear-capable bombers
in Cuba, "I think we
should stand strong and
indicate that is
something that crosses a
threshold, crosses a red
line." Cuban President
Raúl Castro has so far
kept quiet about the
Russian report; his
older brother, Cuba's
retired President Fidel
Castro, commended his
brother's silence and
wrote on a government
website that Cuba "need
not offer any
explanations or excuses
nor ask forgiveness" of
the U.S.
The significance of the
Izvestia bluster isn't
that the Russians could
be coming again —
Moscow's Defense
Minister later said any
air force arrangement in
Cuba would most likely
involve stops for fuel
rather than actual bases
— but that they've
returned to the idea of
using the Caribbean to
try to leverage
Washington. The latest
gestures may be designed
as a warning to
Washington that if it
goes ahead with
stationing a missile
shield on Russia's
borders, Moscow could
reciprocate in America's
backyard.
Russia isn't the only
U.S. rival dipping its
toes into the Caribbean
of late. Iran has
parlayed its deepening
relationship with Chávez
into an alliance with
Nicaragua's Ortega.
China and India, aside
from receiving increased
crude imports from
oil-rich Venezuela, are
themselves poised to
help Cuba drill for an
estimated 5 billion bbl.
to 10 billion bbl. of
oil recently discovered
off the island's coast.
That find is so close to
Florida shores that
gringo oil execs are
clamoring for a
loosening of the
46-year-old U.S. trade
embargo against
communist Cuba so they
can get in on the act.
And Brazil, which will
also play a major role
in tapping the Cuban
crude, has exerted
itself as a security
player in the Caribbean,
assuming the leadership
of international forces
in strife-torn Haiti.
Most Caribbean and
Central American nations
have now defied the Bush
Administration's wishes
and signed on to
Chávez's regional energy
cooperative, Petrocaribe.
Started in 2006,
Petrocaribe lets the
basin's fuel-starved
countries buy Venezuelan
oil at just 40% of the
current skyrocketing
market price and pay
back the difference over
25 years at 1% interest.
Few Caribbean nations,
struggling to juggle
food and energy prices,
can refuse Chávez's
petro-diplomacy. His
critics call it
petro-bribery, using oil
to broaden his fledgling
anti-U.S. bloc in the
hemisphere. But this
month it won over
Guatemala and Costa Rica
to bring the number of
Petrocaribe members to
19. And in U.S.-friendly
countries that have so
far balked at Chávez's
deal, such as Barbados,
the governments have
taken heat from voters.
Costa Rican President
Oscar Arias was narrowly
elected in 2006 by
promising to keep
Chávez's influence out
of his Central American
country. But last week,
realizing that its oil
expenditures have jumped
88% over the past year,
he conceded that Costa
Rica needed "to benefit
sooner from this help."
Even before Chávez came
to power, the
U.S.-Caribbean bond
wasn't all that warm,
given the long history
of unwelcome U.S.
intervention in the form
of coups, invasions and
proxy warfare. Still,
the 1999 handover of the
Panama Canal to the
Panamanians was seen as
a magnanimous gesture,
and the Bush
Administration was able
to ink a free-trade pact
with Central America and
the Dominican Republic.
Colombia, meanwhile, has
emerged as the U.S.'s
staunchest ally in Latin
America. But a century
of imperious U.S.
misconduct, and a decade
of Bush Administration
indifference toward
Latin America, has left
the Caribbean more
willing to look
elsewhere for allies —
many of whom are at odds
with Washington.
So how can the U.S.
regain its stature in
the Caribbean? For
starters, it can stop
looking shocked to find
that countries with whom
it recently signed
free-trade agreements
have also hooked up with
Chávez. Free trade is
usually a good thing —
but not when it's
approached, as the Bush
Administration does, as
a development panacea
that doesn't address
Third World exigencies
like choosing between
food and fuel. The U.S.
and the U.N. have
pledged a combined $117
million in food aid for
starving Haiti this
year, but to compete
with Petrocaribe, the
U.S. needs to move
faster to help Caribbean
Basin nations develop
biofuels such as sugar
ethanol, while more
broadly engaging the
region diplomatically
with efforts to help
curb its nightmarish
violent crime and the
rising sea levels that
threaten to displace
entire coastal
populations. "It will be
the U.S., not Russia,
that has to absorb that
massive environmental
migration," says
Mendelson-Forman, who is
scheduled to testify
before Congress next
week about Petrocaribe.
"That should be enough
to make us take the
whole 'third border'
concept more seriously."
Back in Moscow, Russian
President Dmitri
Medvedev was ebullient
on Tuesday after Chávez
added to the more than
$3 billion he's spent on
Russian weaponry in
recent years. Chávez
crowed about a
"strategic partnership"
with Russia to
"guarantee the
sovereignty of
Venezuela, which the
U.S. threatens."
Medvedev gushed that it
was the "common task" of
Russia and Venezuela "to
achieve a more
democratic, just and
secure world." All in
all, it was a new
Caribbean day in the
Kremlin. |
