Andy Rowell, 22 May, 2006.
  Sometimes international politics throws up a delicious sense of irony
that just cannot be ignored. We have just witnessed one such occasion.
After twenty five years of being branded a supporter of international
terrorism, last week Libya was welcomed back into the club of accepted
nations.
The US announced that it was restoring full diplomatic relations with
Libya and removing it from the State Department’s list of countries
that sponsor terrorism. Gone were the memories of the 1988 bombing of a
Pan Am flight that crashed over Lockerbie, in Scotland. Colonel Gaddafi
was no longer an international paiah, but Washington’s friend.
But who should be visiting Gaddafi at the time of the announcement?
None other than the West’s new bogeyman: no not Saddam Hussein – nor
the Iranian President (who the West would love to get rid of), but Hugo
Chávez from Venezuela.
On the same day as the Gaddafi announcement, the US said that it was
imposing a full arms ban on Venezuela, claiming the country had failed
to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. The main reason, the State
Department said, was that Venezuela had forged close relations with
Iran and Cuba, which are both classified by the US as state sponsors of
terrorism. So just as Gaddafy became Washington’s new friend, Gaddafi’s
friend Chávez, became Washington’s enemy.
It was the latest move in an escalating diplomatic spat between the two
nations. Bush would love to go further but is constrained by one very
simple economic truth: the US imports around 15 per cent of its oil
from Venezuela.
The tirades to describe Chávez from Washington are becoming more
extreme. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has labeled him “Hitler”;
whereas Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls him "one of the most
dangerous men in the world" . In response, Chávez says that attacking
him as supporting terrorism is the latest attempt by Washington to
smear him and discredit his government.
In retaliation, Chávez does not mice his words either. He has called
the Bush Administration the “greatest threat to this planet .” Earlier
this month Chávez said that the “final hours of the North American
empire have arrived ... Now we have to say to the empire: "We're not
afraid of you. You're a paper tiger”.
As the war of words escalates between Washington and Caracas, where
does London fit in? As usual, Tony Blair is tugging the coat-tails of
the Americans. Blair says Chávez is "ignoring the rules of the
international community, " due to his close relations with Castro.
Chávez, in turn, calls Blair “an ally of Hitler” and "a pawn of
imperialism" .
Relations between London and Caracas are now severely strained. Tony
Blair recently attacked Chávez for abusing his power. How different it
was just four years ago, when Chávez was invited for tea at Buckingham
Palace with the Queen, an occasion he remembers with “great affection”.
He then met Tony Blair.
Last week on a visit to London, Chávez met
neither. But he was the guest of London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who is
a Chávez fan. Livingstone argues: “For many years people have demanded
that social progress and democracy go hand in hand, and that is exactly
what is now taking place in Venezuela” .
Despite Livingstone’s support for Chávez, the British press has been
hostile, accusing him of supporting terrorism. To coincide with his
visit, The Times ran an article that asked: “Which international leader
publicly threatens to blow up his country’s oilfields, supports Iran’s
nuclear programme, says that the Falklands belong to Argentina and
believes that Robert Mugabe is a “true freedom-fighter”? The answer is
none other than Hugo Chávez” .
The Conservatives meanwhile have compared Chávez to the Russian despot
Stalin. But Stalin was a leader who betrayed his people. Not so Chávez.
When the military tried a US-sanctioned coup against him in April 2002,
it was the people who came to his rescue. A million demanded his
release.
Here is another irony of the Chávez story. It is not really Chávez’s
support for Castro or Iran or even Mugabe that really annoys the US.
Washington's hostility to Chávez began when he sought to take control
of his country's oil industry and stopped it being privatised. What is
also worrying Washington is that this kind of revolutionary act is now
spreading. Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales, recently nationalized
Bolivia's gas fields.
The oil industry is worried. Earlier this month the influential
Business Week magazine ran a front page article complaining that how
“Big Oil” was “surprisingly vulnerable”. Big Oil, it seems, is running
out of oil. Many of the “mature” fields such as the North Sea off
Britain and Gulf of Mexico are running dry. Some of the remaining
reserves are politically off-limits. The stark reality for the Western
oil companies is that in the 1960s 85 per cent of oil reserves were
open to them, but today the figure is only 16 per cent. Nearly
two-thirds of reserves are now owned by national oil companies. A
further 19 per cent are seen as having “limited international access”.
One of these countries where access is now limited is now Venezuela.
Business Week complained that it had been “brutal year” for oil
executives in Venezuela. In March this year, Chávez signed a document
that brought much of Big Oil’s existing production in Venezuela under
state control. The Big Oil men hated it. “Its left a bad taste in my
mouth” said one.
How times have changed. In the early nineties Venezuela opened 32
fields up to the international majors, who rushed in investing billions
of dollars. Now the country is taking back control of its oil reserves
and the international oil companies stand to lose billions. Chávez has
also increased taxes and royalties to an estimated 80 per cent, much to
the dismay of oil companies such as Shell, BP, and Chevron.
But there is one brutal truth that Big Oil and Bush and Blair will find
hard to swallow. Historically oil revenues have been squirreled away by
western oil companies, to line the pockets of their executives or the
Wall Street or London banks. But the opposite is now happening in
Venezuela. Using oil revenues that are inflated due to high oil prices,
Chávez is fuelling a petro-revolution to fund not the rich, but the
poor.
Maybe for the first time in history, black gold is being put to good
use. He has funded an anti-poverty drive, a literacy drive and build
health clinics in slum areas. There are also promises of aid to single
mothers, and free treatment of HIV / AIDs sufferers. The London Mayor,
Ken Livingstone explains why he is such a fan of the South American
President. “For the first time in a country of over 25 million people,
a functioning health service is being built. Seventeen million people
have been given access to free healthcare for the first time in their
lives. Illiteracy has been eliminated. Fifteen million people have been
given access to food, medicines and other essential products at
affordable prices. A quarter of a million eye operations have been
financed to rescue people from blindness. These are extraordinary
practical achievements,” he argues.
The veteran investigative journalist, John Pilger, has just spent three
weeks filming in the slums of Caracas, and witnessed first hand the
Chávez revolution. One 95 year old told Pilger that before Chávez came
to power "We didn't matter in a human sense. We lived and died without
real education and running water, and food we couldn't afford. When we
fell ill, the weakest died … Now I can read and write my name, and so
much more; and whatever the rich and their media say, we have planted
the seeds of true democracy, and I am full of joy that I have lived to
witness it."
This may be the ultimate irony of the Chávez era. For once oil is
actually benefiting the people of the country it was found in. Unlike
other countries that continue to suffer. The front page of Time
Magazine in Europe this week has a picture of the oil-rich but
dirt-poor Niger Delta descending into chaos. The people of the Niger
Delta have campaigned for over forty years to see a greater share of
the oil wealth that is being drilled from beneath their feet, but have
little to show for it apart from poverty and pollution. Iraq, with the
world’s second largest oil reserves, is slowly descending into chaos
too.
Globally, we are now entering the twilight era of the oil industry.
Declining oil reserves and climate change mean that the world is moving
away from fossil fuels to alternative and cleaner sources of energy.
This will take decades to happen, and whilst it does, Hugo Chávez is
funding his petro-revolution for the benefit of his people. How long
will it be before the US decides that Chávez should be overthrown? Not
long, I fear.
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