Into the Crystal Ball, Darkly

By John Ross, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted March 7, 2002.

The Sept. 11 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center have shattered all crystal balls, and the seers peering into the tunnel of 2002 are in the dark. Divining the future seems to have become a game of blind man's bluff in which the sole touchstone is the worst-case scenario.

One of the few certainties left in these tremulous times is that when the over-arching power in a unipolar world is gravely wounded by surprise attacks, global political relations are bound to experience radical transformations. The U.S. response to the attacks has been to declare a new world war against yet another "-ism." Preemptive strikes have been launched against those Washington lists as terrorists, and more could come.

Latin America is among the first to feel the effects of the ongoing re-ordering of imperial priorities. In our hemisphere, the White House is circling its wagons, shutting down borders, and seeking to extract unequivocal allegiance from its neighbors for the new North American crusade.

But how neighborly are people in countries like Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico really feeling?

Argentina's bank default came as a severe jolt to the hegemony of Washington's chief instruments of control in the region, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. And the resulting street protests—rooted were just a sampling of the discontent that the "Washington Consensus" economic model is breeding in the region. Bridling at decades of structural adjustment, many Latin Americans are poised to emulate the Argentine response.

How long will the United States suffer such foolishness? In 2002, housewives banging pots and pans, in the now-classic cacerola demonstrations of Buenos Aires, Quito, La Paz, Lima, Santiago, Sao Paolo, and Mexico City run the risk of getting tagged as terrorists for obstructing Bush and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's economic and energy strategies for the continent. A glance at history's lesson plan reminds us that not so long ago this same brand of dissenter was tarred as communist, and the generals of Latin America were unleashed at Washington's behest to crush out their kind in the name of hemispheric security. Is such a worst-case scenario in the wings for 2002?

Next door to ravished Argentina, Brazil is approaching a presidential election in which notorious globalphobic Luis Da Silva ("Lula") is leading the pack-a fact that must terrorize Bush and associates.

Further north, in Venezuela, Bush sets his sights on another potential terrorist. President Hugo Chavez has earned this satanic status by huddling with Saddam Hussein, Moamar Quadaffi, and Old Scratch himself, Fidel Castro. Could calls for Chavez' destitution by members of Venezuela's military be the result of efforts by Bush Inc. to demonize and destabilize the Chavez regime?

Up the coast, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have long been a fixture on the U.S. terror list. Now President Andres Pastrana's cancellation of peace talks makes way for the United States' Plan Colombia—originally an anti-drug scheme—to fuse the "War on Drugs" with the "War on Terrorism." Don't forget that Bush's father and former U.S. president, George Bush Sr., coined the concept of the narco-guerrilla. Are preventative air strikes and deployment of U.S. ground troops on Colombian soil in store for the year ahead?

As is de rigueur with U.S. wars, Bush's War on Terrorism is not just a little about oil. Nearly 42% of all U.S. imports now flow from the Americas, 27% alone from Mexico and Venezuela, with Canada supplying the rest. Colombia is the third-largest U.S. oil source in Latin America, which makes control of such conduits as the Cano Limon pipeline (bombed 130 times by guerrillas in 2001) a national security priority for Washington.

In the wake of Sept. 11, Washington wants the American producers to provide at least half its oil barrels while it reduces the 13% share furnished by the Saudi royal family, leaders of an increasingly unstable regime in a country whose populace appears to be ever more hostile towards the United States.

For Mexico, which ships 86% of its export oil output to the United States, a key concern must be whether it is inside or outside of Fortress America.

By enlisting in Bush's War Against Terrorism, harnessing security and energy production to Washington's war machine, Mexico repeats a familiar pattern—World War II, the Cold War, and the War on Drugs are instructive examples.

Bush is going to need a lot of Mexican oil to fly his bombers and fuel his envisioned lifetime war. He also has announced intentions to finally fill the 19 million barrels of the U.S. Strategic Reserve in Louisiana, historically supplied by Mexico.

Now as the Bush vampire brain trust thirsts for even more Mexican oil, this distant neighbor's resistance to increasing extraction of diminishing reserves and its reluctance to privatize its national oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) must be weighed against Bush's "you-are-either-with-me-or-with-the-terrorists" doctrine.

One area that oilmen like Bush and Cheney drool over is Pemex' exploration and development sector, where transnational contractors have made significant inroads in recent years. Uncovering new sources to ease the drain on the nation's shrinking reserves-now estimated at lasting no longer than 20 years-is an energy priority in Mexico.

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