U.S.-Venezuela Relations since the 1990s

Coping with Midlevel Security Threats

Javier Corrales, Carlos A. Romero

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415895255
• eBook ISBN: 9781136622175
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Oil makes up one-third of Venezuela's entire GDP, and the United States is far and away Venezuela's largest trading partner. Relations between Venezuela and the United States, traditionally close for most of the last two centuries, began to fray as the end of the Cold War altered the international environment.

U.S.-Venezuela Relations since the 1990s explores relations between these two countries since 1999, when Hugo Chavez came to office and proceeded to change Venezuela's historical relation with the United States and other democracies. The authors analyze the reasons for rising bilateral conflict, the decision-making process in Venezuela, the role played by public and private actors in shaping foreign policy, the role of other powers such as China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in shaping U.S.-Venezuelan relations, the role of Venezuela in Cuba and Colombia, and the impact of broader international dynamics in the bi-lateral relations.

Part I
U.S.–Venezuela Relations and IR Theory

1
Introduction

Old Themes and Variations

A book on U.S.–Venezuela relations ought to begin by justifying itself. Why study a relationship between the United States and a seemingly feeble country with fewer than 30 million inhabitants? The answer, for us, is twofold.

First, during the 2000s, this bilateral relationship transformed U.S.–Latin America relations like no other factor had since perhaps the civil wars in Central America in the 1980s, and reintroduced themes of (in)security, competition, and distrust that in the 1990s had disappeared from thinking about the region. Second, the U.S.–Venezuela relationship demonstrates the power of some of the most important international relations theories, as well as some of their weaknesses. In this introduction, we elaborate on these two points.

U.S.–Venezuela Relations and the Return of Old Ghosts

There is no question that Hugo Chávez, in a matter of a few years, made the study of U.S.–Latin America relations attractive again, at least in the United States. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S.–Latin America relations lost appeal among both policy makers in Washington and scholars of international relations. Back in the 1980s, Latin America was at the center of U.S. attention. For individuals interested in security, the armed conflicts in Central America and the risky transitions away from pro-U.S. dictators toward uncertain democracies in South America provoked nervousness in Washington, feeding concerns about the possibility of growing Soviet influence in the region. For those interested in economics, the financial collapse of Latin America in the 1980s—one of the worse regional depressions in history—gave rise to some of the most polemical debates in economic thinking of the time and worries that the whole financial system built after Bretton Woods would collapse in sync with Latin America’s sinking economies.

With the end of the Cold War, however, these worries eased. Security circles in Washington actually began to relax toward South America during the 1990s as countries settled into relatively peaceful processes of democratic consolidation. These new democracies introduced economic adjustments that more or less eased chronic financial crises and foreign policies that for the most part turned toward greater rapprochement with the United States. As Crandall (2008) argues, security concerns became less important as democracy and globalization made governments more accountable and less radical. Although the United States continued to worry—perhaps more than ever before—about the impact of drugs on national security, U.S. primary historical concerns in the region—civil unrest, financial catastrophes, and partnerships with dangerous extrahemispheric allies—were becoming things of the past. By the late 1990s, Latin America seemed to be heading in the direction of democracy, markets, and hemispherism (Corrales and Feinberg 1999) and the United States could turn its attention to other matters around the world.

This complacency was ended definitively by President Hugo Chávez, who shortly after his 1998 election began to talk about issues that other Latin American leaders had either stopped believing or had politely refused to raise. For instance, he talked about the United States plotting coups, masterminding presidential assassinations, contemplating invasions to gain access to oil assets, pursuing development schemes designed to increase private gains for capitalists, and even promoting genocide. These incendiary statements were reminiscent of the radical left during the Cold War or of anti-imperialists after the late 1880s, and Chávez resurrected them all.

It is not surprising then that the mid-2000s saw a return of old ghosts in Washington thinking as well. Chávez forced U.S. officials to worry anew about the risks of civil unrest (either internally in Venezuela or deliberately fomented by Venezuela in neighboring states) and the potential for financial calamity (if, for instance, Venezuela decided to place an oil embargo on the United States). Concerns about the stability of the hemisphere also resurfaced with threats that Venezuela might become an unyielding veto actor at the Organization of American States (OAS) or might withdraw from the organization entirely, undermining what was left of the Western Hemispheric community. And by the late 2000s, Washington once again began to fear sinister alliances with dangerous extrahemispheric partners, as it observed Chávez acquiring satellite technology from the Chinese, becoming Russia’s largest importer of weapons, and engaging in secret trade deals with terrorist-sponsoring, nuclearaspirational Iran.

Yet, as we will discuss, both parties have avoided a mutually punitive relationship. Unlike a traditional enemy, Venezuela has not broken fully with the United States. It remains to this day the most reliable supplier of oil in the Americas. Chávez has acquired a massive amount of weapons, but he has fallen short of developing a real military threat to the United States. Despite rocky relations with Colombia and other neighbors, Chávez has been careful to contain those conflicts and avoid war, and while he talks about building new coalitions against the United States, Chávez has not actively destroyed the most important extant institutions of governance in the region.

Nor has the United States engaged in traditional efforts to overthrow or destabilize the regime. While at one point the United States responded to Venezuela with a sort of panic attack, Washington has generally settled into a policy of “talk softly, sanction softly, and keep watch” that makes neoconservatives in the United States impatient and nervous. The United States regularly talks about sanctioning the Venezuelan government, but other than an arms embargo, the sanctions imposed have lacked real teeth. While the argument could be made—and in fact is often made in Caracas and Washington—that each government represents a serious security threat for the other, cooler heads seem to have prevailed thus far, defying what rhetoric would lead one to predict.

This book is an effort to study how Chávez’s emergence on the global scene effected a “reversal” in U.S.–Latin America relations after the relative calm of the 1990s, as well as to examine the combination of factors that have nonetheless encouraged restraint on the part of both Venezuela and the United States.

U.S.–Venezuela Relations and International Relations Theory

Another reason to study the contentious relationship between the United States and Venezuela is that it provides a valuable tool for evaluating international relations (IR) theories. While Venezuela’s foreign policy has received enormous attention, few studies, if any, actually try to analyze the relationship between Venezuela and the United States in terms of IR theory. This is unfortunate because we feel, following Williams (2011a), that much can be gained by studying U.S.–Latin America relations in terms of existing IR theories.

Ultimately, the point of positivist theory in the social sciences is to offer explanations for the occurrence of puzzling phenomena. Theory is helpful because it offers arguments about the causal relationship that might exist between at least two variables. Theoretical propositions thus make the following formulation: the more a given variable changes in a given direction, the more we should observe our case move in a given direction (Bueno de Mesquita 2003, 71). In this book we seek to assess which variables have changed the most in order to explain a major change in U.S.–Latin America relations, namely, the rise of contained animosity in U.S.–Venezuela relations. While a single case study such as ours is insufficient to refute or accept theoretical claims, especially those theories cast in terms of probability rather than determinacy, the application and testing of theory against a case is nonetheless useful for obtaining clarity about posited causal factors (Gerring 200 7).

We argue that some of the most standard theories do a very good job in explaining important parts of this particular puzzle; however, none offers a full account. One of our objectives in this book is to use the case of U.S.–Venezuela relations in the 2000s to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of some of the most important theories of IR. In the following paragraphs, we lay out the major theories that we will examine in subsequent chapters.

We begin with structural neorealism. In broad strokes, structural neorealist theories predict that nations will balance against each other if they feel threatened by one another. This simple proposition alone helps explain much of the animosity that developed between the United States and Venezuela, as we explain in chapters 2 and 3. Chávez certainly has had reason to feel threatened by U.S. administrations. In the beginning of his presidency, Chávez was interested in reversing market reforms in Venezuela, whereas President Clinton was openly and actively committed to the promotion of market reforms in the region. After 9/11, the United States under President Bush pursued a policy of unilateralism and militarism, while Chávez loudly advocated a more multipolar world. Then in 2002, the United States refused to fully condemn the coup that overthrew Chávez; in fact, U.S. officials blamed Chávez for the unrest, sided with opposition groups, and tried (unsuccessfully) to create a coalition of Latin American nations to work against Chávez.

By the same token, there is plenty of reason for the United States to have felt threatened by Chávez, almost from the start. By 2000, Chávez was refusing to cooperate militarily with the United States. By 2001, he was siding closely with Iraq, Cuba, and the FARCs in Colombia, and was one of the few leaders in the world to condemn the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. By late 2003, Chávez had become the most vociferous critic of the United States in the world, actively campaigning to create anti-U.S. institutions and alliances and supporting the most anti-American political movements in the region and abroad. After 2006, Chávez forged close ties with the most anti-American governments in the planet—Iran, Syria, Libya, and Sudan.

Given these mutual security threats, it follows that the countries would develop defensive or antagonistic relations. One could even go as far as to say that the United States and Venezuela found themselves in what some realists call a typical security dilemma: as each party becomes more mistrustful of the other, each takes steps to bolster its defenses, which in turn exacerbates the insecurity of the other. Whether the threats were real or perceived, actual or anticipated, each nation did much to threaten the insecurity of the other, and this naturally led to conflict, including efforts on the part of each to balance the other, which is exactly what old-fashioned realism would predict.

And yet, realist theory displays enormous shortcomings when applied to the U.S.–Venezuela case, mainly in that it is unable to explain why Venezuela was more radical in its attitude to the United States than was any other nation around the globe. As Domínguez (2010, 14) explains, the Bush administration’s international behavior, especially its conduct of the war in Iraq and its disdain for international institutions during the president’s first term, created an international milieu conducive to “balancing” U.S. power. But Venezuela displayed by far the most radical policy response, not just in Latin America, but also around the world. So even if one assumes that Venezuela’s foreign policy was a response to U.S. policy, one still needs to explain its uniquely radical nature.

Perhaps the answer is that the United States picked on Venezuela more than any other nation precisely because it had the worst case of anti-Americanism. But that scenario raises yet another puzzle—what prevented this security dilemma from spiraling out of control? Overall, the level of conflict between the two nations has been less acute than the theory would predict. Venezuela remains one of the most reliable suppliers of oil to the United States, and one of the most open markets to Colombia’s exports (the strongest U.S. ally in the region). In the meantime, U.S. criticism of Venezuela has declined over the years, rather than increased. While the United States has imposed an arms embargo on Venezuela, it has neglected to impose one on Venezuela’s exports, oil, and oil derivatives. In other words, the United States has refused to deploy the one weapon that would hurt Venezuela the most.

The best explanation for this restraint comes from realism’s most important intellectual challenge—neoliberal institutionalism. This theory, which is the focus of chapter 4, is complex and exists in different versions, each of which would find enormous validation in the U.S.–Venezuela case. In general, it seeks to explain instances of cooperation and harmony among nations. It challenges realism by contending that realism overpredicts the extent to which nations choose conflict over peace or even cooperation.

Neoliberal institutionalism makes several predictions about international relations. First, it argues that engrained economic interdependence between countries creates political factions in favor of deepening cooperation across nations (see Russett and Oneal 2001). In U.S.–Venezuela relations, this proposition holds: Venezuela depends on oil sales to the United States to finance government expenses, and the United States depends on every source of energy it can afford.

Second, neoliberal institutionalism argues that nations will try to achieve their international goals by constructing international institutions. This, too, explains much in U.S.–Venezuela relations. The United States, for instance, has not completely abandoned its efforts to work with the OAS and Summits of the Americas, and has tried to use those institutions (rather than military force) as forums to challenge Chávez. Even Bush sponsored an OAS meeting in Florida in 2005. Chávez, for his part, has been a champion of institution-founding, more so than the leader of any other Latin American nation in the recent past. PetroCaribe, UNASUR, TeleSUR, ALBA, and CELAC are some of the most important new international organizations that Chávez has founded or cofounded, and which we will discuss further in later chapters.

And yet, even neoliberal institutionalism has its limits in explaining U.S.– Venezuela relations. It cannot explain why, for instance, the rhetoric against the United States continues to increase, even though interdependence has actually deepened. Keohane and Nye (1977) argued that one of the consequences of interdependence is not the elimination of conflict per se, but a “change” in conflict: as states become more interested in negotiating rather than avoiding interaction, traditional security/military issues become lower priorities, and nations rely more on multilateral institutions and transnational actors to conduct interactions. Yet, these are precisely the realms of interaction that are missing in the U.S.–Venezuela relationship. Rather than transforming conflict, the United States and Venezuela are hardly talking. Neoliberal institutionalism cannot explain why pro-U.S. forces in Venezuela have such little actual influence in government. And it cannot really explain why Chávez is both an institution-founder and an institution-killer, often providing less funding to institutions than he promises, and frequently imposing his agenda to the irritation of other members. By the same token, neoliberal institutionalism cannot explain why the United States continues to treat Venezuela as a pariah actor in the region.

One reason that the neoliberal institutional thesis might not work well is that interdependence is enormously asymmetrical: Venezuela depends more on trade with the United States than vice versa. Some strands of dependency theory, which draws from Marxism and especially Lenin’s theory of imperialism, would suggest that under such conditions, conflict between the powerful and the weak is inevitable, and that all else being equal, the less powerful ends up suffering the consequences of interventionism by the powerful (Smith 2007; Schoultz 1998). This line of thinking would place most of the blame for the conflict on the more powerful, more capitalist, and presumably more intransigent United States. The key idea behind this hypothesis is that the Venezuelan government would cooperate were it not for Washington’s antagonistic attitude. The most relevant pieces of evidence in support of this hypothesis are the possible role played by the United States in the events leading up to the 2002 coup, the ongoing debate in the U.S. administration over Venezuela’s alleged cooperation with terrorist organizations, the U.S. ban on arms sales to Venezuela, and sanctions against Venezuelan officials.

However, this hypothesis faces significant empirical difficulties. First, Venezuela’s distancing from Washington began much earlier than the 2002 coup— evidenced by Venezuela’s refusal of U.S. assistance during the 1999 natural disaster in the state of Vargas and its severe criticism of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Second, the Venezuelan government did not initially consider U.S. actions during the events that led to the 2002 coup to be all that relevant. Third, most of the conflict between Venezuela and the United States has little to do with economics and began even before the new wave of nationalizations of oil in 2007. And even those nationalizations were rejected by only two of the most important firms (ExxonMobil and ConocoPhilips) rather than by all U.S. firms. Fourth, anti-Venezuelan rhetoric and policies on the part of the United States have diminished since 2006, and yet the anti-American rhetoric and policies coming from Venezuela have only increased. Finally, the ban on arms sales to Venezuela may have driven it to seek closer relations with Russia and maybe Iran, but it does not account for the colossal and disproportionate expansion of Venezuela’s arms spending.

Ultimately, one can challenge all these structuralist theories—realism, neo-liberal institutionalism, and dependency theory—with the following argument: not enough has changed structurally in the relationship between the United States and Venezuela—internationally or domestically—to merit such a high level of discord. Something other than global structures might be at work. No doubt, Bush was a unilateral and militaristic force in the White House, but even under his regime, the United States maintained broadly the same levels and focus of involvement in Latin America as it had since the end of the Cold War. Washington has continued to focus on trade, fighting drugs, promoting its own view of democracy, tolerating pro-U.S. nondemocracies, privileging governments that deliver stability, and ensuring access to energy assets, even as it has paid far less attention to the region than it did during the earlier part of the 20th century. Likewise, Venezuela has not drastically transformed its economy, nationalized as many U.S. assets as might have been feared, or cut off the supply of oil to the United States. Against this basic continuity in the structure and political economy of this bilateral relationship, the observable change in discourse seems disproportionate.

Noting the continuities in U.S.–Latin America and U.S.–Venezuela relations is important because they highlight the relevance of constructivism, yet another theory of international relations. Constructivism is an approach to global politics that assumes that political s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• List of Acronyms
• PART I U.S.–Venezuela Relations and IR Theory
• PART II Neorealism, Soft Balancing, and Midlevel Security Threats
• PART III Beyond Neorealism: Trade, Ideas, and Institutions
• PART IV Regime Type and Other Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy
• PART V Overreaching and Outreaching
• Notes
• References
• Index