Venezuela wouldn't be that much of a reach

OPINION: "The Tehran-Caracas Nuclear Axis," by Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 15 December 2009.

Stephens on the likelihood that Iran is prospecting for uranium in Venezuela. Seems like a decent and logical bet.

And what will we do when and if that package is discovered?

Chavez miscalculates if he thinks he's somehow untouchable due to his "powerful" friends. None will lift a finger when the hammer comes down.

Because this, after all, remains our "front lawn," where crazy is most definitely dealt with, when it reaches a level we consider dangerous.

Comments

[Alex]

Going by this reasoning, Georgia and Ukraine are also Russia's 'front lawn' and NATO needs to stop knocking on the door. Sometimes the post-modern model of 'core' vs 'gap' articulated in your work seems to slip back into geopolitical neo-imperialism arguing for a good ol' 'American Century', where America enjoys greater rights than any other power in the international arena due to its 'exceptional' nature. Please attempt to be consistent one way or the other, I genuinely respect your analysis, but as a european 'from Venus', I don't get the American obsession with beating up on Chavez. You yourself have stated previously that he is no kind of threat, and band wagoning against hegemony is surely an eminently normal phenomenon in international relations.

[Tom Barnett]

The Core-Gap delineation has always been presented as accounting for three particular rule-set domains: 1) a Core dominated by connectivity and rules and thus no war; 2) a Gap plagued by too little of each and thus plenty of conflict; and most importantly 3) the perceived rule-set concerning Core great-power intervention inside the Gap. On that last one, there logically remains a sense of places where individual great powers have special interests. For the US, that reach is basically global--as Leviathan. For everybody else, the reach is more limited--witness NATO's long debate on out-of-area ops. For Russia and the Caucasus, there is no great argument, as I have long noted, for anybody else other than the Russians to own that set of problems. At least I've never heard anybody make a compelling case for anybody other than the Russians.

With Chavez, left to his own devices, he's not much of a threat, but actually a good reminder to the region of what stupidity looks like. The drugs will probably never rise to the level of triggering a serious intervention, nor the meddling in Colombia.

But mining uranium for direct sale to Iran? That will get our attention, because Venezuela is easier to squeeze right now relative to Iran (where all the squeezing has already occurred and few new opportunities remain). The Right will also harp on Obama to do something, and then there's the historic sense that this is our neighborhood to police.

In general, then, I've long been accused of having little to say about LATAM and my response is always, "I just don't see the scenario worth discussing, especially once we de-criminalize the softer narcotics."

But Chavez exporting uranium to Iran will cross our big bugaboo line of WMD.

Of course, for Chavez to be going in this direction, and threatening nationalization of auto makers and such, suggests he's really fearing the continued recession there caused by his idiotic economic policies. So the worse that goes, and the more dangerous he behaves, he sets in motion confrontations that will get progressively harder to control, and uranium is a big leap in this direction--hence my post.

[Petrer]

I can answer that question, Alex. Chavez is no direct threat to the US, but he is a threat to Columbia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Honduras, or anywhere he can get his hands into, and effectively a proxy threat to the US, and especially our interests. At the least, he instigates low level noise, at the worst, he is enabling authoritarians throughout the region.

The best parallel I can give would be Lukashenko sticking is damn hands in Poland or Slovakia...but he is really walled out by the EU, and so he has to reach his hands to Chavez or anyone who will listen!

It is more of a farce than a true movement against hegemony...kinda similar to the Soviet obsession with imperialism...the Soviets were imperialist!