http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=38435d75-d7c7-45dc-9dbe-4625056d42b6&p=8

It’s based on the recent book by the author.

Chavez groupies downplay the role played by Ceresole (who died in 2003), even though recently Chavez called Ceresole a great friend and a wise man. Here is a bit on Ceresole from the link above:

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In devising his Bolivarian ideology, Chavez might not have read Carlyle, but he certainly read his “great friend,” the Argentinian sociologist Norberto Ceresole. He met Ceresole after he was released from prison, traveled with him around Venezuela, and for many years the professor was a close advisor. Ceresole, who was born in 1943 and died in 2003, moved easily between the Soviet left and the neo-Nazi right. He was an advisor to Juan Velasco Alvarado; a member of the Montoneros, a Peronist guerrilla group; a spokesman for Peron during his exile in Madrid; a leader of the Carapintadas, an ultra-right military movement; a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a professor at the Soviet Military Academy; a representative of Hezbollah in Madrid; a neo-Nazi militant and a vociferous Holocaust denier. Ceresole was the author of several books of geopolitics explicitly inspired by the Nazi general Karl Haushofer. And this brings us to another element of classical fascism that Hugo Chavez has not hesitated to exploit: anti-Semitism.
In his book Terrorismo fundamentalista judio , or Jewish Fundamentalist Terrorism, which was published in 1996, while he was associated with Chavez, Ceresole revived the theory of an international Jewish conspiracy actively set on seizing control of Latin America. …
In his work Caudillo, ejercito, pueblo: La Venezuela del Comandante Chavez , or The Caudillo, the Army and the People: The Venezuela of Comandante Chavez , which was published in 1999, Ceresole wrote:

In Venezuela, the change will be channeled through one man,
one “physical person,” not an abstract idea or a party….
The people of Venezuela created a caudillo. The nucleus of
power today lies precisely in the relationship established between
the leader and the masses. The unique and differential nature of the
Venezuelan process cannot be distorted or misinterpreted. What we
have here is a people issuing an order to a chief, a caudillo, a military leader.
///

In any event, before Chavez there was much more freedom of the press and political opponents where not persecuted and harassed as they are now. And how about crime? Even though Venezuela’s crime rate was not low there was MUCH less crime than before Chavez. Now Caracas has the dubious honor of being the murder capital of all of the Americas and most of the victims, as usual, are poor. I can go on and on, from schools getting worse, food shortages that didn’t use to exist, an oil industry that is becoming less and less efficient, the lack of credibility of government statistics, etc, etc. And all that despite Chavez being extremely lucky in his timing. Venezuela’s income is basically oil and Chavez’s rule coincided with the boom in oil prices. Now, of course, things are becoming tough. By the way, the Venezuelan president during the oil boom of the 1970s was also very popular back then–not a coincidence. But people believe what they want to believe and in the US some lefties naively give credence to American analysts such as Weisbrot and Wilpert–men with ties to the Chavez regime. (The holes and biases in their reports have been written about in detail in many places. Some of their strongest critics are honest lefty analysts.)

That said, what’s far more important is that he’s ultimately a rational actor and striking a partnership with Venezuela is objectively in the US national interest – for the aforementioned reasons to do with oil, geopolitics, and retaining US cultural influence in Latin America. On the contrary, a similar reconciliation with Iran is pretty much out of the question now – even disregarding the unpleasant nature of that regime, US and Iranian national interests are simply too divergent for it to work.

Of course you’re not a neocon, what with your opinions on Serbia and Russia. My main issue with them is not even their overweening arrogance and hypocrisy, but their substitution of rigid ideology in place of national interest-based Realpolitik in foreign policy, which have led to disaster after disaster. In that sense they’re similar to Bolsheviks, or radical Islamists for that matter.

And just to be clear, since you mentioned the neocons at the beginning of this post, I’m not overly fond of them myself, just to let you know. So of course you can disagree with what I’ve said, but please don’t label me a neocon because I am certainly not one

When you put that against statistics provided by Anatoly, you don’t come out ahead. I am genuinely curious about an educated debate on all the points raised in this blog entry and I would really appreciate it if all counterarguments were of the same quality as the original thesis.

So there’s no misunderstanding, I don’t think it’s wrong for Obama to engage in such a way.

I was just noting the kind of opposition he faces when doing so.

I don’t think there’s a major problem with Obama engaging characters like Hugo Chavez. First, and mostly importantly, it serves US national interests, regardless of whether or not Chavez is a good leader – on which there is plenty of controversy, as this very thread attests. Second, it is not even politically damaging for a Democrat like him – almost all the folks who favor would favor a hard-line approach, are going to oppose him regardless.

@Kolya,

I know, you made it clear in a previous thread here. I’m not sure what my views on Venezuela – on which topic I admit to knowing much less about than on, say, Russia – have to do with my “other pronouncements”, which you are in any case free to challenge when I post them up.

PS. Though I don’t like stating the obvious, the folks who dropped out of poverty, the adults who got the opportunity for a previously unattainable education and the hundreds of thousands now getting free eye-care operations and the tens of thousands getting anti-retroviral treatment for HIV would by and large disagree with your assessment that “the country is in worse shape than before”, I’d imagine.

What you write about Venezuela makes me doubt the wisdom of your other pronouncements–which I often found interesting even if I didn’t entirely agree with them.

On the latter, he might not get such a hard time. The Cuban-American community shows signs of support for bridging the gap along what Obama has said.

Overall in Venezuela, it has been said that the wealthier White community is more prone to oppose HC, unlike much of the rest of that country.