Chavez Gone and Soon Forgotten ...May God Bless Venezuela With Freedom & Liberty

USA TODAY editorial, March 5

Few Americans will lament the passing of Hugo Chavez, the charismatic leftist leader who relentlessly antagonized the United States during 14 years ruling Venezuela. But the more significant fact might be that few will even care.

Chavez, who died of cancer Tuesday at 58, spent his career trying to be a latter-day Fidel Castro, to whom he was both protege and patron. He nationalized Venezuela’s oil industry, lambasted what he called Yankee meddling in South America, and allied himself with Cuba to spread the Castro creed and subsidize the failing Cuban economy. But with one brief exception, tacit support for a failed coup that briefly deposed Chavez in 2002, the United States avoided taking the bait.

It launched no trade embargo like the one against Cuba. It spewed no vitriol to match Chavez’s steady stream of invective. For the most part, it avoided meddling in Venezuela’s internal affairs, leaving its people to live with their democratically elected choice.

And in so doing, it deprived Chavez of the weapon he most needed to attain his ambition: spreading his “Bolivarian revolution” throughout Latin America. Without an active U.S. foil, he could not as easily exploit the region’s long-standing anti-American grievances.

That’s not to say that he didn’t try, or that he didn’t attain some success.

Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Argentina have leftist leaders allied to one degree or another with Chavez and Castro. They all share Chavez’s ambitions, but lacking his charisma and Venezuela’s oil wealth, they’re even less likely to succeed. If the post-Cold War emergence of stable, economically successful democracies in the region continues, they’ll eventually be replaced.

Even in Venezuela, Chavez’s legacy is in doubt. His chosen successor, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, faces a stiff challenge from a Chavez opponent in elections expected next month. Maduro might win with sentiment and Cuban support, but compared with Chavez, he is a relatively bland figure unlikely to be another “president for life.”

In fact, it could well turn out that Chavez’s legacy will be a familiar and pedestrian one: that of the popular leader who came to power democratically then behaved more like a dictator, claiming virtually all power for himself and leaving behind little but instability. South America has seen it before.

Before World War II, Argentina was as wealthy as the United States. By the time it disposed of Juan Peron, a populist of the Chavez sort, just more corrupt, it was a basket case.

The lesson for the United States is that absent a direct threat like the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, our southern neighbors should be left to find their own way, even if it is dead wrong. Chavismo, like its many ideological predecessors, will eventually fail.

Had the United States historically taken such a hands-off approach, anti-Americanism would be far less of a problem in the hemisphere today.

Had it taken that approach with Cuba for the past 50 years, the U.S. would have spared itself and Cubans a lot of needless grief. Instead, it imposed an embargo that has achieved nothing other than to give Castro an excuse for his failures.

The lesson to be learned about the Chavez era is that populist leftists are permanently woven into South America political fabric, and the best way to handle them is to wait them out and let them fail on their own.