The two amigos
The AP has a report from two delightful fellows who are predicting and planning the end of the established order, in modest terms of course:
“Here are two brother countries, united like a single fist,” Chavez said upon his arrival in Tehran, according to Venezuela’s state-run Bolivarian News Agency. “God willing, with the fall of the dollar, the deviant U.S. imperialism will fall as soon as possible, too,” Chavez said after a two-hour closed meeting with Ahmadinejad, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported…Chavez said over the weekend at the OPEC meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that prices would more than double to $200 if the U.S. attacked Iran or Venezuela.
“The U.S. empire is coming down,” Chavez told Venezuelan TV, calling the European Union’s euro a better option and saying Latin American nations were also considering a common currency.The leftist Venezuelan is a fierce critic of President Bush, and Iran’s Islamic government is in a bitter standoff with Washington over Tehran’s nuclear program. The U.S. accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a claim Tehran denies, and Iran has been hit with two rounds of U.N. sanctions for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.
Ahmadinejad backed his “dear brother” Chavez in their joint fight with the Bush administration. “We have common viewpoints and we will stand by each other until we capture the high peaks. God is with us and victory is awaiting us,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by IRNA. He said he and Chavez would stick together to defend their “nations and ideals to the end.”
History never repeats itself precisely. Neither Iran nor Venezuela is an important military power, but of course the kind of warfare they have in mind is asymmetrical. Still, historical analogies do come to mind. There is something about a slight, ascetic rabble-rouser and his orotund, loudmouth companion, both possessed of delusions of grandeur, that seems vaguely familiar. Where have we seen two amigos like this before?
November 20th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
My impression at the beginning of this administration was that it was deliberately letting the dollar drop, probably for squalid reasons. Now the clucking of returning chickens is too loud to ignore.
“The U.S. empire is coming down,” Chavez told Venezuelan TV, calling the European Union’s euro a better option and saying Latin American nations were also considering a common currency.
An near-term American collapse? Unlikely but not impossible. A long-term decline? Presumable but not inevitable.
Things were even more messed up during the Carter administration than they are today–of course, Bush has over a year left in office–, and then Reagan restored the country for a generation. No one of Reagan’s stature seems in the wings; then again, the 1980 Reagan did not have the stature he acquired as President.
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I’ve come across little analysis of why OPEC chiefs of state are meeting only for the third time in history; previous summits were in 1975 and 2000. Is the dollar all by itself serious enough to convene such a meeting, or are there other issues as well? The OPEC press release is not enlightening:
And promulgating platitudes…