Brazil has refused
to allow inspections that would reveal the
capacity, characteristics and scope of the equipment developed
by its navy to enrich uranium. These inspections would assist in
determining whether Brazil is seeking the enrichment of uranium
for peaceful purposes or is pursuing a weapons program.
by: Phil
Brennan
The war on terror has preoccupied Washington policy-makers with the Middle
East, even as America’s own backyard festers in political crisis.
Since the days of FDR
the U.S. has pursued America’s "Good Neighbor policy," aimed at
fostering close ties and friendship with the nations south of the Rio Grande.
But today that policy
is in shambles as one major Latin country after another has fallen to anti-American
leaders who admire Fidel Castro. Behind the growing anti-U.S. atmosphere is
a carefully planned and executed drive to turn South America into a Marxist
stronghold challenging the U.S. and eliminating every shred of its influence
there.
This special report explores
the Latino attitude towards the United States and how it is affecting U.S.
policy on South and Central America.
Venezuela’s Castro
Wannabe
Nothing is more indicative
of the growing surge to the extreme left south of the border than what happened
at the end of the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey on Jan. 14, when Venezuela’s
leftist President Hugo Chavez jetted off to Havana for one of his frequent
chats with Fidel Castro. Communist-led Cuba was the only country in the Western
Hemisphere not invited to the 34-nation meeting.
The summit of freely elected
heads of state wrapped up its gathering the night before. Chavez was the only
leader to sign the final declaration with reservations because of his opposition
to free trade. He refused to attend the official dinner and called the gathering
of regional leaders a "waste of time."
He said he missed one
luncheon because he was on the phone with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi
planning a summit between Latin American and African nations.
Tensions have increased
between the U.S. and Venezuela since Chavez called national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice a "true illiterate" for noting he has not played
a constructive role in Latin America.
Rice had said Chavez should
show "that he believes in democratic processes" by allowing a recall
referendum on his rule. He responded by saying that U.S. officials shouldn’t
"stick their noses" in Venezuelan affairs.
Argentina and
Brazil
Relationships between
the U.S. and Argentina have also soured.
Washington has yet to
get a handle on Argentina’s president, Nestor Kirchner. While the United States
has praised his leadership it has also criticized him for not taking "difficult
decisions" to deal with Argentina’s staggering $81 billion debt. Moreover,
Washington officials warn that Kirchner is a little too buddy-wuddy with Castro.
And while the White House
feels all warm and cuddly about Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula
da Silva’s economic policies, he is busy plunging his nation into communism
and allying himself with Castro and Castro’s puppet in Venezuela, Chavez.
Moreover, there is friction
between the U.S. and Brazil over new U.S. security measures that include photographing
and fingerprinting foreign visitors. Brazil has retaliated by imposing similar
measures for U.S. travelers entering crime-ridden Brazil.
Angry About Iraq
Disagreement over the
war in Iraq has added to the rift. Most Latin American nations refused to
support the U.S.-led war, and Honduras has just decided to follow socialist
Spain’s cue and leave Iraq.
In the United Nations
Security Council, Chile and Mexico opposed a resolution authorizing force
in Iraq. Only seven out of the 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations supported
U.S. military action in Iraq.
Throughout Latin America,
there was strong and widespread resistance to an American strategy that Latinos
viewed as unilateral and pre-emptive. That ill will has continued among nations
whose support for U.S. actions have long been taken for granted.
Gabriel Marcella, a Latin
America expert at the United States Army War College, told the New York
Times that Latin Americans "were asked by the United States to support
a preventive war."
"They did not,"
he said. "The ugly head of unilateralism seemed to reappear."
Peter Hakim, the president
of Inter-American Dialogue, a forum for leaders in the hemisphere, told the
Times: "I don’t think you can overestimate the damage to the U.S.-Mexican
relations. No relationship was more damaged, with the possible exception of
France."
Colombia ran into trouble
with the administration on the International Criminal Court. When Bogotá
balked at signing an exemption from prosecution for American personnel, the
administration withheld some aid and threatened to cut off $160 million more.
Colombia, which gets more American aid than any other country except Israel
and Egypt, eventually acceded.
Communist China, fast
becoming a favorite trading partner, draws in airplanes from Brazil, soybeans
from Argentina, thus boosting economies and leading to new political alliances.
Brazil’s exports to China surged 81 percent in the first 11 months of last
year to $4.23 billion, Dr. Constantine C. Menges reports.
Brazil’s Lula last year
persuaded China to join a bloc of developing nations that forced the collapse
of the World Trade Organization’s talks by demanding that the United States
and Europe abandon their farm subsidies.
"China is importing
from others and selling to us," said David Malpass, chief global economist
for Bear, Stearns in New York. "As in any commercial relationship, they
are treated well as a customer. This raises China’s importance relative to
that of the U.S."
But these are merely symptoms
of the turmoil in U.S. relations with its southern neighbors. The danger lies
in the steady advance of a Latino version of the Soviet Union.
Already three major South
American countries are infected with the Marxist virus: Venezuela, a major
source of oil for the U.S.; Brazil; and Cuba, where Fidel Castro is acting
as the midwife for communism’s rebirth.
Danger in Brazil
Brazil is the locus of
the newest Marxist threat to the region. Since "Lula" da Silva took
office in January, 2003, Brazil has become a new staging area for communism
in our hemisphere. It has toyed with becoming a nuclear threat.
Working behind the scenes
is Lula’s foreign policy adviser, Marco Aurélio Garcia, a notorious
hard-line Marxist operative and founder and executive secretary of São
Paulo Forum, a coalition of leftist parties and revolutionary movements dedicated,
he admits, to "offsetting our losses in Eastern Europe with our victories
in Latin America."
In an article he wrote
about Marx’s "The Communist Manifesto," he concluded: "The
agenda is clear. If this new horizon which we search for is still called communism,
it is time to re-constitute it."
In other words, rebuild
shattered world communism in Latin America.
An investigation by NewsMax.com
revealed that Garcia, as head of São Paulo Forum, controls and coordinates
the activities of subversives and extremists from the Rio Grande to the southernmost
tip of Argentina.
In a policy dictated by
Havana, Garcia has shown special interest in the terrorist Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC). Every year since 1990, Garcia has made it his priority
to meet with murderous FARC. The meetings have not just taken place in Havana
(with Castro himself always present), but also in Mexico, where Garcia traveled
to meet with FARC member Marco Leo Calara on Dec. 5, 2000.
Brazilian-American Gerald
Brant, a former candidate for federal deputy (Congress), wrote that in his
native land, "a country of significant social inequalities, Marxism in
Brazil has always been a force, but it has never been as close to realizing
true power in this country as it is now. By abandoning the traditional Marxist
strategy of launching an armed insurgency and revolution, Brazil’s Workers’
Party, known as the `PT,’ has been able to effectively elaborate a `Gramscian’
[inspired by renowned Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, widely read
in PT circles] strategy of penetrating the key institutions of civil society
and democracy first, and then using the legitimate authority conferred by
elections to abridge constitutional restraints to establish a Marxist state."
Look Who’s Being
Unilateralist
The Times reported
that Brazil would resist a plan by the International Atomic Energy Agency
that would allow for spot inspection of nuclear sites.
In addition, "Brazil
has announced that by mid-2004 it expects to join the select group of nations
producing enriched uranium and that within a decade it intends to begin exporting
enriched uranium. But it is balking at giving international inspectors unimpeded
access to the plant that will produce the nuclear fuel.
"Government officials
say efforts to enrich uranium are entirely peaceful in purpose … as a
peaceful nation, Brazil, which has the world’s sixth-largest known deposits
of uranium, should not be subject to the same regimen of unannounced spot
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran and
Libya have recently accepted."
Brazil has refused to
allow inspections that would reveal the capacity, characteristics and scope
of the equipment developed by its navy to enrich uranium. These inspections,
if allowed, would assist in determining whether Brazil is indeed seeking the
enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes or is pursuing a weapons program
that many officials within the Brazilian government have occasionally alluded
to in the past.
These are indicators of
movements toward development of nuclear weapons.
Luiz Vieira, president
of Nuclear Industries of Brazil, admits that the technology developed by the
navy’s São Paulo Technology Center could be used to build an atomic
bomb.
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com – http://www.newsmax.com,
where ths article appeared originally. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday
on the Web – http://www.pvbr.com – and
was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s.
He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee
and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska
Statehood Committee, which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee
of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former
Intelligence Officers He can be reached at phil@newsmax.com.
