Chavez strikes again

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez hardly lets an opportunity to take a jibe at America go begging. But there is a compelling method in his consistent anti-US madness.

Published: Thu 9 Aug 2007, 8:36 AM

Last updated: Sun 5 Apr 2015, 12:51 AM

Bailing out fuel-short Argentina and promising the same for the rest of Latin America, he did not fail to point at the chief cause of oil-shortages – the US, with “five per cent of the world’s population, but it consumes more than 20 per cent of the energy used in the planet”.

Chavez has timed the toning up of his rhetoric right in two ways. First, it comes when much of South America is energy-dependant (which he can cater to), and secondly he hits at Washington’s underbelly when it is caught in unprecedented diplomatic/military quagmires in the Middle East and South Asia. And then he has also offered ‘energy security treaties’ to Uraguay, Nicaragua, Equador and Bolivia.

Mounting diplomatic pressure at a time when needless, self-created compulsions bar Washington from flexing muscles is indeed pushing the uni-polar world into virgin diplomatic territory. And since each claiming to spearhead the winds of change is in ways the superpower’s chief nemesis, surely the international order is not drifting in directions that suit chief powerbrokers.

While provocation invariably leads to undesirable standoffs, it is also pertinent to look into causes behind angry blocs emerging in defiance of the established order. The American polity definitely has some soul-searching to do. And, at the risk of repetition, such an exercise may prove far more useful and affordable than employing muscle against those not of its liking.

The globalisation era dictates that economic interests form the basis of political alliances. And with political tensions growing, the whole process of global integration runs the risk of collapsing. All parties concerned should look for amicable solutions than momentary point-scoring.