South America, Peace Operations and MINUSTAH: The View from Venezuela

Abstract

This article explores the opposition to the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) articulated by the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frias and the broader Bolivarian critique of militarized intervention and the liberal peacebuilding agenda. It argues that the structural drivers of South and Central America's embrace of peace operations were fundamentally absent in Venezuela, placing the country on the outside of regional peacekeeping initiatives building up to and including MINUSTAH. The article addresses Venezuelan efforts to craft an alternative peace and security agenda, concluding that there are significant fiscal and institutional challenges to this being realized.

Notes

Rut Diamint (ed.), Control civil y fuerzas armadas en las nuevas democracias latinoamericanas [Civilian Control and Armed Forces in the New Latin American Democracies], Buenos Aires: Universidad Torcuato di Tella/Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1999; Wendy Hunter, State and Soldier in Latin America: Redefining the Military's Role in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, Washington, DC: US Institute for Peace, 1996.

An approach associated with US Defense Secretary William Perry. See Ashton Carter, William Perry and John Steinbruner, A New Concept of Cooperative Security, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1992; Andrea Oelsner, International Relations in Latin America: Peace and Security in the Southern Cone, London: Routledge, 2009. Most infamously, Southern Cone militaries colluded in Operation Condor, a strategy of state terrorism that targeted the political left. See J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

Hunter (see n.1 above); David Pion-Berlin, Civil–Military Relations in Latin America: New Analytical Perspectives, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Significantly, and in the context of Venezuela's later opposition to MINUSTAH, the Santiago convention stressed the long-standing regional principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention in line with the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance and 1948 Pact of Bogota.

See Justin Vogler, ‘In the Shadow of the Condor’, PhD thesis, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, 2010.

Francisco Rojas Aravena, Argentina, Brasil y Chile, Integración y Seguridad [Argentina, Brazil and Chile, Integration and Security], Buenos Aires: FLACSO, 1999.

Carlos Escudé, Foreign Policy Theory in Menem's Argentina, Miami, FL: University of Florida Press, 1997; David Mares and Francisco Rojas Aravena, United States and Chile: Coming in from the Cold, London: Routledge, 2001.

Daniel Levine, Conflict and Political Change in Venezuela, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973; Daniel Levine, ‘The Transition to Democracy: Are There Lessons to be Learned from Venezuela?’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol.4, No.2, 1985, pp.47–61.

Julia Buxton, The Failure of Political Reform in Venezuela, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001; David Myers and Jennifer McCoy, The Unravelling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

John di John, From Windfall to Curse? Oil and Industrialization in Venezuela, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 2009, p.23.

President Luis Herrera Campins of Venezuela, at reception hosted by President Ronald Reagan, 17 Nov. 1981, at: www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43263

The two South American oil producers provided discounted petroleum to petroleum-importing states in Central America and the Caribbean.

Herrera Campins (see n.11 above).

Harold Trinkunas, Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela: A Comparative Perspective, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Although this power is still extensive, including responsibility for the administration of national highways, customs and immigration and the prison service; the security of strategic industries and energy production; enforcement of federal taxes on alcoholic beverages; and responsibility for security zones in border and coastal areas (see: www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/venezuela/fan.htm).

Marta Harnecker, ‘The Venezuelan Military: The Making of an Anomaly’, Monthly Review, Sept. 2003, at: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/175

Agustin Blanco Munoz, Habla El Comandante Hugo Chávez Frias – Venezuela Del 4 Febrero 92 Al 6 De Diciembre [Commander Hugo Chávez Frias Speaks – Venezuela from 4 February to 6 December 1992], Caracas: Universidad Central De Venezuela, 1998.

Matthew Brown (ed.), Hugo Chávez Presents Simon Bolivar and the Bolivarian Revolution, London: Verso, 2009; Richard Gott, In the Shadow of the Liberator, London: Verso, 2001; Marta Harnecker, Militares Junto al Pueblo [Military Juntas and the People], Caracas: Vadell Hermanos, 2003; Bart Jones, Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution, New Haven, CT: Steerforth, 2008.

Jones (see n.18 above) p. 47.

Ibid.

The nationalized oil sector had been progressively opened to private sector investment through the apertura process in the 1990s. The terms were wholly injurious to Venezuela's sovereign and economic interest. See Bernard Mommer, The New Governance of Venezuelan Oil, Oxford: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, 1998.

Pro-Pais involving the armed forces in social service, Pro-Patria in encouraging community self-sufficiency and Pro-Naçion in assisting national economic development.

Hugo Chávez, ‘The Military and the Revolution’, ZNet, 9 Jan. 2003, at: www.zcommunications.org/the-military-and-the-revolution-by-hugo-Chávez

Art.3 of the 1999 Constitution, at: www.ejercito.mil.ve/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27

Details of the military education system are available at the Fuerza Armada Nacional (FAN) website, at: www.ejercito.mil.ve/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27

See ‘Fact Sheet: Organic Law of the Bolivarian Armed Force’, Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Washington, DC, at: www.embavenez-us.org

Chávez (see n.23 above).

Sarah Bermeo, ‘Clinton and Coercive Diplomacy: A Study of Haiti’, Princeton University paper, 2001, at: wws-edit.princeton.edu/research/cases.xml; Lyn Duff and Dennis Bernstein, ‘The Other Regime Change: Overthrowing Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’, in Dennis Loo and Peter Phillips (eds), Impeach the President: The Case against Bush and Cheney, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006, pp.235–52.

Intervention began with the Joint UN–OAS International Civilian Mission in Haiti (MICIVIH). The 1994 UN Security Council backed deployment of 20,000 multinational (largely US) peacekeepers after the failure of the UN Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) to fully deploy due to non-cooperation from the Haitian military authorities. Foreign troops remained in Haiti for a further five years under various frameworks including UNMIH, the UN Support Mission to Haiti (UNSMIH), the UN Transition Mission in Haiti (UNTMIH) and the UN Civilian Police Mission in Haiti (MIPONUH). These were overwhelmingly missions that dealt with issues related to the police, and had very small military components. Technical support was provided by private US military contractors, such as DynCorp which advised on the restructuring of the Haitian National Police, the island's principal armed force after the disbanding of the Haitian Armed Forces in 1995.

James Cockayne, ‘Winning Haiti's Protection Competition: Organized Crime and Peace Operations Past, Present and Future’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.16, No.1, 2009, pp.77–99.

Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment, London: Verso, 2008; Randall Robinson, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2008; Daniel Hellinger and Steve Ellner, Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era: Class, Polarization, and Conflict, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004.

Aristide called on the French government to pay US$21 billion in restitution to Haiti. BBC News Online, ‘Haiti's Aristide Accuses France’, 5 Mar. 2004, at: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3534781.stm; Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, ‘A Call for $21 Billion from France Aims to Lift Haiti's Bicentennial Blues’, Boston Globe, 4 Jan. 2004, at : http://boston.com/news/glob/ideas/articles/2004/01/04/reparation_day/; Nikolas Kozloff, Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

They included Otto Reich, Eliot Abrams, Roger Noriega, Dan Fisk and John Negroponte, officials who were all actively engaged in the promotion of the National Security Doctrine in the Southern Cone during the 1970s and 1980s and in supporting right-wing military authoritarianism. See Jessica Leight, ‘Rice's Imminent Confirmation Bad News for Latin America’, Compardre Offiçiales Hecho y Ariba, 24 Jan. 2005, at: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/892

Bart Jones, ‘US Funds Aid Venezuela Opposition’, National Catholic Reporter (Kansas City), 2 Apr. 2004, at : http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/448; Eve Golinger, The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela, London: Pluto Press, 2007.

The organization refused to answer questions on its links to the IRI for over a year. Robert Ménard, ‘Forum de discussion avec Robert Ménard’ [Discussion Forum with Robert Ménard], Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 18 Apr. 2005, at: www.nouvelobs.com/forum/archives/forum_284.html; Christian Lionet and Calixto Avila, ‘Zero Tolerance for the Media: An Enquiry into the Murder of Journalist Brignol Lindor’, Reporters without Borders (Washington), 10 Sept. 2002, at: http://en.rsf.org/hitic-zero-tolerance-for-the-media-an-10-09-2002,03755.html; Michael Norton, ‘Journalists Group Urges Sanctions for Haiti's President’, Associated Press, 10 Jan. 2002. See also Dan Beeton, ‘Bad News From Haiti: U.S. Press Misses the Story’, at: https://nacla.org/node/4951.

See US Department of State, ‘U.S. Official Praises OAS, Summit of the Americas Process. Roger Noriega, US Envoy to OAS, Discusses Hemispheric Concerns’, at: www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2003/April/20030429162843neerge0.3930475.html

See Larry Birns and Julian Armington, ‘The State Department's Shannon’, Compardre Offiçiales Hecho y Ariba, 21 Dec. 2005, at: http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_12/issue_01/opinion_06.html

See ‘Fact Sheet’ on military expenditure (n.26 above).

After the United States imposed an arms embargo on Venezuela in 2004 Russia emerged as an important source of weaponry. In 2005–06, Venezuela purchased over 50 combat helicopters, 24 Su-30MK2 fighters, 12 Tor-M1 air defence missile systems and 100,000 AK-103 (Kalashnikov) rifles under contracts worth US$4 billion. Under a loan agreement signed in 2009, Venezuela pledged to purchase a further US$5 billion of Russian hardware, including Project 636 diesel submarines, Mi-28 combat helicopters and airplanes and around 20 Tor-M1 air-defence systems. See Mark Smith, Russia & Latin America: Competition in Washington's ‘Near Abroad’?, Shrivenham: Research and Assessment Branch, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, 2004.

Wenche Hauge, ‘A Latin American Agenda for Peace’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.16, No.5, 2009, pp.685–98.

See ‘General Assembly, Acting Concurrently with Security Council Makes Peacebuilding Commission Operational’, 60th General Assembly Plenary, 66th Meeting, UN doc., GA/10439, 12 Dec. 2005, at: www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/ga10439.doc.htm

Eva Silkwood, ‘OAS's and Chile's Jose Miguel Insulza’, Compardre Offiçiales Hecho y Ariba, 19 June 2007.

Jonah Gindin, ‘Latin America Defies US over Venezuela at OAS’, Venezuelanalysis.com, 6 June 2005, at: http://venezualanalysis.com/news/1173?page=25&quicktabs_2=2

See ‘General Assembly’ (n.41 above).

Ibid.

A Haitian Creole expression meaning ‘just because the intentions are good, doesn't mean the actions aren't bad’, signifying that ‘the road to Hell is paved with good intentions’.

See also Juan Tokatlian, ‘Intervención en Haití, misión frustrada. Una crítica de América Latina’ [Intervention in Haiti, mission frustrated], Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE), Madrid, Oct. 2005; Vogler (see n.5 above); Anna Ioakimedes, ‘Brazil's Peacekeeping Mission in Haiti: Doing God's or Washington's Work?’, Compardre Offiçiales Hecho y Ariba, at: www.coha.org/brazil%E2%80%99s-peacekeeping-mission-in-haiti-doing-god%E2%80%99s-or-washington%E2%80%99s-work; Alex Sanchez, ‘Peacekeeping and Military Operations by Latin American Militaries: Between Being a Good Samaritan and Servicing the National Interest’, Compardre Offiçiales Hecho y Ariba, at: www.coha.org/peacekeeping-and-military-operations

See ‘Haiti Gets Help from Venezuela and Cuba; President Rene Preval Must Tread Lightly to Keep U.S. in Line’, NotiCen: Central American & Caribbean Affairs, 15 Mar. 2007, at : http://repository.um.edu/bitstream/handle/1928/11234/HAITI%20GETS%20HELP%20FROM%20VENEZUALA%20AND%20CUBA%3B%20PRESIDENT%20RENE%20PREVAIL%20MUST%20TREAD%20LIGHTLY%20TO%20KEEP%20U.S.pdf?sequence=1; ‘Venezuela to include Haiti in PetroCaribe deal’, Alterpresse (Port-au-Prince), 4 Oct. 2005, at: www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article3356

See ‘Chávez and Venezuela: Duty, Not Charity, to Haiti’, Venezuelanalysis, 12 Mar. 2007, at: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2289.

In 1993 Carlos Andrés Pérez was forced from office in a major embezzlement scandal. An interim president handed over to octogenarian Rafael Caldera, who won the 1993 presidential election with less than 30 per cent of the vote. Caldera presided over the collapse of the banking system and the acquisition of a further US$1.4 billion loan from the IMF. Frequently rumoured to be dead during the last year of his tenure, Caldera failed to address the urgent need for reform and implemented US$6 billion of budget cuts ahead of the 1998 election.