The U.S.-Venezuela Diplomatic Crisis

The handshaking act of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was considered helpful in reducing tensions in the bilateral relationship.

That handshake on the sidelines of the inauguration of Brazilian President Ny Dilma Rousseff last week in Brasilia, Brazil’s capital, attracted attention because it occurred in the middle of mounting tensions between the two countries. It is not clear what was talked about, but the handshaking and smiling are considered signs of decreasing tension in the relationship.

The U.S.-Venezuela relationship indeed heated up last week, when the U.S. revoked the visa of the Venezuelan Ambassador to the U.S. That act of expulsion was retaliation for the decision by the Chavez government to reject the U.S. candidate for Ambassador to Venezuela. This latest crisis in American-Venezuelan relations is certainly not separate from the general issue of bad feelings between the U.S. and Venezuela and a number of other Latin American countries.

At a deeper level is the basic conflict of social and political ideology between the U.S. and its neighbors in Latin America. Several Latin American countries that are steered by Chavez have refused the ideology of liberal-capitalism. On the other hand, Chavez and several Latin American leaders have developed neo-socialism.

Latin American countries feel the need to develop their own ideology and discover their own road. Although Latin America is situated in its backyard, the U.S. pays the region scant attention. The U.S. instead pays greater attention to Europe, Asia and Africa.

On top of that fact, the meaning of the doctrine “America for America”, proclaimed by U.S. President James Monroe in the year 1823, has come increasingly into question. The Monroe Doctrine barred foreign intervention in Latin America — European intervention specifically — and pushed for internal cooperation in the region of the American continent. Nonetheless, after its enactment, an increase in cooperation in the region didn’t happen, mostly because the U.S. was oriented more toward regions outside the American continent.

The U.S. developed mostly on its own, letting its neighboring countries in the southern region and the Caribbean wallow in poverty under authoritarian governments. U.S. influence in Latin-America and the Caribbean is prone to weakening. The U.S. cannot dictate its wishes upon its neighbors in the south. Moreover, the main opposition to the U.S. as a superpower comes from its neighbor, Cuba.

After this appears Chavez, who vocally opposes the United States’ attempts to dominate the American continent, while simultaneously threatening the ideology of liberal-capitalism promoted by the U.S. Anti-U.S. sentiment and opposition to the concept of liberal-capitalism as a dialectic strengthens the neo-socialist movement in the Latin-American region.