MB Civic

Weisbrot in The Guardian ..

Although the Bush administration intervened in the internal affairs of countries such as Bolivia and even Brazil, it was somewhat better at keeping its “eyes on the prize” .. The prize, of course, is Venezuela – home to the largest oil reserves in the world .. Washington’s goal there for the last decade has been regime change .. it’s nothing personal, really – Chávez could have chosen to be the perfect diplomat and he would still be treated in much the same manner by the US government. And it’s not the oil itself .. It’s just that any country with that much oil is going to have regional influence; and Washington just doesn’t want to deal with someone who has regional influence and doesn’t line up with its own goals for the region – not if it can get rid of them. And they have come close to getting rid of Chávez, in the 2002 coup – so they are not giving up. But Washington is losing ground there, too. A big blow was the change in Colombia’s foreign policy last summer, when President Juan Manuel Santos took office .. Although Colombia’s previous president, Álvaro Uribe, was very much allied with the United States’ strategy toward Venezuela, Santos immediately rejected it and decided to make peace with Chávez

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