Fighting a new cold war

Carlos Alberto Montaner

After World War II, when Stalin set off to conquer Europe, Harry Truman faced him off. With the help of diplomat George Kennan, Truman designed what was then called the ''containment strategy.'' Its elements went from the creation of NATO to the Bretton Woods economic accords, from the Marshall Plan to the launching of Radio Free Europe.

That was the beginning of the Cold War, formally won by the United States 40 years later, in 1989, when the Germans tore down the Berlin Wall and, a little later, the entire Eastern bloc collapsed, including the Soviet Union itself, which amazingly disappeared.

On a diminutive scale, with some grotesque features and without the danger of nuclear armaments, Latin America today is living through a similar experience. However, no one notices it or no one deems it important.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, with shrewd counsel from Havana (big experts in the manufacture of prisons) and equipped with billions of petrodollars, today attempts to rule a 21st century Moscow and has set off, with some degree of success, to achieve the political conquest of Latin America.

Chávez has already harvested a few triumphs -- Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua -- while he turns his eyes to Paraguay, Guatemala and El Salvador, the next countries in the sights of his neopopulist rifle.

The problem is that Chávez has no opponent.

The United States cannot try to stop him, nor does it wish to. Washington's essential objectives in the region are only three: to attempt to halt the illegal migratory flow, to reduce drug trafficking and to acquire some raw materials at market prices if the suppliers are willing to sell them. If Latin Americans insist on committing suicide like lemmings, almost no one in the United States will lose any sleep because of it.

Brazil doesn't want to play the anti-Chavista role, either. Brazil has never been a real regional power. Besides, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lives amid an extremely acute ideological dissonance. He carries a radical and collectivist soul in a democratic body that recognizes the virtues of the market.

Argentina, too, is out. President Néstor Kirchner is a Peronist, and Perón is Chávez's ideological grandfather. The foolishness and foolhardiness attempted by Perón more than half a century ago have magically reappeared in the actions of the Venezuelan. Surely Kirchner thinks that Chávez is an insufferable tropical parrot, but he cannot oppose him without betraying his own origins.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón, too, will opt to ignore his uncomfortable Venezuelan colleague. He came to power much weakened by his campaign struggle against Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Calderón will not wish to open an international combat front against the vociferous left while he tries to defeat the powerful drug-trafficking gangsters who operate in the country.

So the big countries of Latin America will fold their arms. Is there someone who can take a step forward and lead the Latin American resistence to this impoverishing and dangerous imperial spasm against democracy? There may be.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. He has enough talent and experience to realize that the risks are enormous. The expansion of Chavism will exponentially increase the poverty in the region and its propensity for conflict.

Arias also has the valor and determination needed to confront an adversary a lot more powerful than he. In 1987, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for successfully imposing his peace plan for Central America despite the opinion and threats of the United States. The man who was not daunted by Ronald Reagan will not fear Chávez.

Naturally, Costa Rica does not have the resources to wage this fight all by itself, but Arias has enough leadership and enjoys enough recognition to summon to democratic resistance other leaders who are concerned by the advances of Chavism: politicians with the heft of Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, Alan García of Peru, Antonio Saca of El Salvador, Oscar Berger of Guatemala and maybe Michelle Bachelet, the prudent president of Chile.

Everybody knows that the fire will die in a few years, but common sense recommends tackling it collegiately, dousing the flames together and trying to keeping them from spreading. That's how responsible governments behave. That's why the West won the Cold War.

February 20, 2007

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