Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

Whose the most powerful of them all? Bush is trying to make sure that Chavez isn't. Chavez, is mobilizing all of Latin America to make sure the United States isn't.

Chavez, whom Christian televangelist Pat Robertson says the US should assassinate, has been traveling the hemisphere offering preferential oil deals, barters, and loans to leftist and left-of-center governments. In the past 30 days, the leader of the world's fifth-largest oil exporting country, has inked deals with Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay. Thirteen Caribbean nations signed a deal for cheap oil in June. And since April, Cuba has been getting almost all of its oil from Venezuela in exchange for doctors and gym teachers.

It is, Chavez says, his way of helping neighboring countries cut energy costs and improve living standards in the region. 'Altruism,' says Eric Wingerter, a spokesman at the Venezuela Information Office in Washington, D.C., simply. 'This is part of larger process involving regional solidarity and helping other countries economically.'

But critics charge Chavez is buying friends and influence with the objective of extending his regional hegemony - and undermining the US.

'Chavez is a man with a mission. He is determined to use the enormous windfall from record oil prices to pursue his Bolivarian Revolution on the regional stage as aggressively as possible,' says Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington, D.C. 'He is intent on building a counterweight to US influence in the Western Hemisphere.'

Chavez's antiglobalization and anti-US discourse, which comes part and parcel with the petrodollars, adds Shifter, 'is resonating more and more with marginal sectors throughout the region, many of whom have been ignored by the US and are now looking for alternatives to their stubbornly acute poverty.'

Critics of Bush say he is trying to "extend hegemony" in the Middle East (check out the master plan at the PNAC site). But, Chavez's approach, whether seeking hegemony or not, has been far more effective than Bush's ill-fated mission in Iraq. Instead of trying to villify and discredit Chavez, perhaps he needs to take some notes from him.