South America, Russia, Obama and Bush

NY Times:

When President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia planned his coming trip through Latin America, his country seemed poised to present one of the most visible challenges in years to American influence in the region. With oil prices high, Russia was flush with cash and planning a variety of measures, including helping Venezuela build a nuclear reactor and strengthening military ties with Cuba, a former cold war ally of the Soviets.

But when Mr. Medvedev reaches the region next week, he will find it in flux in reaction to recent events — and in some cases less receptive to his overtures. Plunging oil prices and the global financial crisis, which have hammered Russia particularly hard, have raised questions about Russia’s reliability as an economic partner, while Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential race has raised hopes throughout Latin America of a new era of improved relations with the United States.

In this rapidly changing landscape, most Latin American countries are recalibrating their political interests, frustrating Russia’s efforts to deepen regional ties, like the ones China established in the past decade.

“Russia’s elites, including President Medvedev, look on China’s rising diplomatic and economic successes in Latin America and in Africa with envy,” said Stephen Kotkin, the director of Russia studies at Princeton University. “They also perceive an opportunity, much exaggerated, to send the U.S. a message in its supposed backyard.”

But Mr. Medvedev faces a hard sell in the region. In Cuba there are lingering suspicions over Russian intentions, as the Cuban economy collapsed when the Soviets withdrew in the 1990s, as well as a reluctance to alienate an incoming Obama administration that might push to end the trade embargo.

Brazil, Latin America’s largest country, which also places a high priority on relations with an Obama administration, wants to engage Russia not as a source of weapons or military assistance, but as an equal partner.

“We are not interested in buying defense products off the shelf,” said Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Brazil’s minister of strategic affairs and the architect of a new military strategy set to be officially unveiled in December.

“Unlike other South American countries we don’t go around buying things, and we are not interested in some kind of balance-of-power politics to contain the United States,” said Mr. Mangabeira Unger, a former Harvard law professor who taught Mr. Obama when he was at Harvard Law School. “We have friendly relations with the United States, and with the incoming administration intend to make them even more friendly.”

By contrast in Venezuela, itself battered by falling oil prices, Mr. Medvedev can expect a warm welcome. President Hugo Chávez has long sought closer ties, traveling to Russia seven times and forging deals to buy more than $4 billion in arms. Until recently, however, Russia showed little interest in expanding ties with Venezuela beyond weapons sales and a handful of energy deals.

But Russia’s position evolved in recent months, and it is now seeking a beachhead with a raft of oil, as well as mining, banking and military contracts. Yet in choosing to invest in Venezuela, energy executives and foreign diplomats say, Moscow is becoming involved in one of the most problematic countries in the region. Countries like China and Iran have faced a morass of corruption and institutional disarray while seeking to expand their presence here.

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Russia and Venezuela both share a nostalgia for the failed policies of communism. That appears to be their most common bond. The story seems to imply that the Bush administration was hostile toward South America, but the actuality is that most of the hostility was coming from the other direction and subsidized by Chavez. Perhaps it was sympathy for the narco terrorist of FARC that caused some in the area to be angry with the US for helping the legitimate government of Colombia defeat FARC. Chavez has been paranoid about a US invasion of Venezuela, but there is certainly no evidence to suggest that Bush ever suggested such a policy.

I don't see much change under Obama with the possible exception of being less supportive of the democratic government in Colombia and more supportive of the terrorist that government is fighting. Evidence uncovered from one of the FARC laptops suggested that an Obama administration might be more inclined to help the terrorist.

With the fall of the price of oil it will be more difficult for Russia and Venezuela to make mischief in South American which should give the new administration more leverage to improve relations.

Our relations with Colombia and Brazil have never been better. I think Colombia is where the new administration is more likely to screw up.