Obama's Frenemies

As for Chavez, the Bush administration's bizarre treatment of Venezuela—from reportedly trying to sponsor a coup in 2002 to treating Venezuela as a rogue state—represents a very strange decision to attempt to apply a failed Cold War approach to Latin America even though the Cold War itself is long gone.

In the decades following World War II, the essence of American strategy in the region was to bolster pro-American regimes and undermine pro-Soviet ones. This was the inspiration behind the embargo of Cuba, coups against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvadore Allende in Chile, and our sponsorship of Contra terrorists in Nicaragua and death squads in Honduras. One can argue about whether or not this was smart or moral policy. But without question, the point of all of this was to counter the threat that the Soviets would open up a "southern front" and undermine our system of containment.

Nowadays, the Soviets are long gone. And with them, all rationale for looking at the region through this lens. There's just no way to imagine a military threat to the United States emerging from Latin America. For all the rhetorical heat generated by Chavez's clashes with the American right, all he really wants from America is for Citgo to sell us oil and gas. And guess what? All we want from Venezuela is the ability to buy oil and gas. Latin America is close by, and, over a century, American meddling in its affairs has generated a lot of ill will. That ill will generates a certain number of movements powered by America-bashing rhetoric. The absolute worst thing we can do is respond by entering into a downward spiral of recriminations and cold shoulders that only builds more ill will. The best approach is to recognize that our interests in Latin America are limited in scope, so we should just do our best to be polite—cooperate with those governments who want to cooperate with us, and shake hands with the rest while perhaps making some small talk.

Instead, conservatives would have us double-down on decades of failed Cuba policy by extending the same treatment to Chavez and perhaps others such as Bolivia's Evo Morales, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. Realistically, all such a policy can achieve is antagonizing other Latin American leaders who don't have the luxury of imperiously "isolating" their neighbors to create a self-fulfilling prophesy of an anti-American bloc. Look around at reviews of Obama's performance at the summit, and outside the fever swamps of the American right the only criticism you hear is that the administration isn't going far enough toward improving relations with Cuba. And that's about right. After all, what was achieved by excluding Cuba from the meeting of hemispheric leaders? Citizens of all the countries of Americas should hope that the Obama-Chavez greeting won't be the new president's last controversial handshake.

Matthew Yglesias is a fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. He is the author of Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats.