It's about time!
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Via RealClearPolitics (which linked to this morning's post in its "buzztracker" section) is a very timely article about the situation in Latin America, which echoes many points I have made, uniting them in a way I hadn't thought of: Contrary to the Monroe Doctrine, we're allowing China (which was also caught today shipping weapons to the government of Hamastan) to colonize the New World and become a serious threat to our national security!
The news from Bolivia - a country that is nationalizing, or, if you prefer, stealing, foreign-owned assets - is just the latest in a string of anti-capitalist, anti-American developments in South America. In recent years, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile have all elected left-leaning governments, determined to reverse "globalization" and thwart American influence. And similar governments are likely to win soon in Peru and Mexico.This is very sobering, and very timely. I might be inclined to complain that the article had failed to mention Chavez's control of a company that makes electronic voting machines in the States (above) or his coziness with Iran, but there's so much wrong in Latin America that I can still safely keep my mouth shut, sad to say.
In particular, the oil-empowered Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, an avowed fan of Cuba's Fidel Castro, is emerging as a genuine U.S. enemy [who may soon be able to affect American elections --ed]. Americans, of course, have been mostly preoccupied with the Middle East, but the problems to our south - trade, energy, immigration, narcotics trafficking - are likely to worsen as North-South cooperation worsens.
...
But we could be losing our "home-field advantage" as anti-yanqui feeling rises and as techno trends shrink the world. Nationalist fervor forced the United States to give back the Panama Canal - whereupon key infrastructure was snapped up by a company controlled by the People's Republic of China. In addition, the Chinese have "peacekeepers" in Haiti and reportedly are helping Cuba drill for offshore oil. Monroe Doctrine, RIP. [links added]
-- CAV
4 comments:
Why is it that Latin America has never implemented capitalism to any significant extent? Is it Christianity? Is it the lack of exposure to the Brittish Enlightenment? Why have they made so little progress in so long? This always confuses me.
D. Eastbrook
D.,
I suspect that at least part of the answer would lie historically, in the differences between what the Spanish colonies were as opposed to the English ones.
Disclaimer: I'm shooting from the hip and boiling this down to essentials. Anyone with a broader or deeper knowledge of history than I is encouraged to put in his own $0.02.
The Spanish colonies were, by and large, military installations and Christian missions. Spain itself, a culture less condicive to capitalism already, did not really "colonize" its holdings, but merely ruled them as it plundered them of gold and other valuable resources. Whenever the Indians had had some level of civilization, that was decimated by disease and pillaging, with the remnants being hastily converted to Christianity. These were primitive, beaten people with no cultural tradition of enlightenment or realistic aspirations to self-rule. They lived as serfs under the lordship of the Spanish, who needed the armies of Spain to keep them in power. (And these elites, not made up of people who rose by their own merits, probably saw freedom of their underlings as a threat.) Their colonial period strikes me as basically feudal.
On the other hand, the English actually moved into their colonies and lived there. There weren't mounds of gold to take. They had to do productive labor in their colonies in order to have anything useful to ship back to the homeland. Thus, TRADE, rather than PLUNDER, occurred. Also, because the people settled in larger numbers (and without armies sent to take loot to back them up), their dealings with the Indians were more as equals. This meant either warfare -- not entered into lightly -- to drive out hostile tribes or peace treaties with friendlier ones. In these cases, we see people who are present, not as agents of some imperial power, but living their own lives. A foreign presence would not only have been unnecessary, it would have been seen as intrusive by colonists who had to do everything for themselves, including governing themselves.
This is just the barest of sketches, and indicates that the two kinds of colonies did not start out on equal footing, experientially. This is partly a consequence of the differing cultures of their respective colonial powers, too. Cause and effect may seem confounded here, but that is because the real-life outcomes of ideas not based in reality are negative. The ideas of the English enlightenment thus had a positive feedback effect on colonies that started out ahead and vice versa for the Spanish colonies.
Gus
Latin America was long ignored by the free world. Everything was Europe and the US. Thus, Socialism took firm root and is likely going nowhere.
Gus, when you shoot from the hip you shoot pretty good. Thanks so much.
D. Eastbrook
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