The House of Representatives will soon take floor action on a piece of legislation know as the Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act, aimed at protecting American citizens from Iran and defending American interests and assets in the Western Hemisphere. Introduced last March, the legislation requires the Secretary of …
On two recent occasions, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s populist authoritarian president, expressed warm support for President Obama. In Chavez’s book, the President is the “good guy” among American political figures in what he calls “the empire.” This was the dubious sort of offhand endorsement from a schizophrenic tyrant that even the …
President Obama has been stumbling on the economy, and this week he added more proof of his weakness on foreign policy. He told a popular Miami TV station that Venezuela’s aggressive President Hugo Chavez “has not had a serious national security impact on us.” Chavez certainly doesn’t reciprocate Obama’s gentle …
In an interview with a popular Miami TV station, President Obama was asked yesterday about the danger Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez poses to U.S. security. The President responded: “My sense is that what Mr. Chavez has done over the last several years has not had a serious national security impact …
Although numerous uncertainties surround Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s secretive battle with cancer and his ability to live until the October presidential elections, Chavez was sufficiently active to appear recently on television defending Syria’s sovereign right to massacre its citizens, mass graves and all, and to meet with a senior emissary …
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has long been Iran’s greatest ally in the Western Hemisphere, but as Chavez’s cancer grows and his country’s future becomes increasingly uncertain, Iran may need to find a new best friend in Latin America—and fast. Enter Bolivia. Since Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first visited Bolivia in 2007, …
Since 1999,Venezuelahas continued sliding deeper into authoritarianism, populism, militarism, and anti-Americanism. Displaying formidable skills in winning elections, demagoguery, and public showmanship, Hugo Chavez has dominated Venezuela’s polarized politics and run his country as a personal fiefdom for more than a decade. This situation may be about to change. In the …
Standing before a mural of Eva Peron Duarte (wife of Argentina’s legendary strongman Juan Domingo Peron and the “first lady of populism”) Argentina’s recently re-elected President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner unveiled a plan to seize majority ownership in Argentina’s chief energy company YPF and return it to state control. “We …
