Using Social Power to Balance Soft Power: Venezuela's Foreign Policy

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Linda Robinson, “Terror Close to Home” U.S. News, September 28, 2003, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/031006/6venezuela.htm; Dan Burton, “Opening Statement: Hearing on Venezuela,” testimony before the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, July 17, 2008, http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/43520.pdf; Fred Burton, “Venezuela: Documenting the Threat,” STRATFOR, December 13, 2006; Nima Gerami and Sharon Squassoni, “Venezuela: A Nuclear Profile,” Proliferation Analysis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Web site, December 18, 2008, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=22568&prog=zgp&proj=znpp&zoom_highlight=Venezuela+A+Nuclear+Profile; Chris Kraul and Sebastian Rotella, “Hezbollah Presence in Venezuela Feared,” Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/27/world/fg-venezterror27. 2. Joseph S. Nye, “Soft Power and American Foreign Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 119, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 255–270. 3. Robert A. Pape, “Soft Balancing Against the United States,” International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 7–45; T.V. Paul, “Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy,” International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 46–71; Andrew Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism, and Global Order: What Space for Would-Be Great Powers?” International Affairs 82, no. 1 (January 2006): 1–19. 4. Stephen Walt, “Can the United States be Balanced? If So, How?” (remarks, Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 2–5, 2004) (hereinafter Walt remarks). 5. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “Hard Times for Soft Balancing,” International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 72–108; Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “International Relations Theory and the Case Against Unilateralism,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 509–524; Keir A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, “Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back,” International Security 30, no. 1(Summer 2005): 109–139; Robert Kagan, “The September 12 Paradigm,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 5 (September/October 2008): 25–39. 6. Mark Eric Williams, “The New Balancing Act: International Relations Theory and Venezuela's ‘Soft Balancing’ Foreign Policy,” in The Revolution in Venezuela, eds. Jonathan Eastwood and Thomas Ponniah (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming 2009); Gregory Wilpert, Changing Venezuela: The History and Policies of the Chavez Government (London: Verso, 2007). 7. Wilpert, Changing Venezuela . 8. “Country Fact Sheet: Venezuela,” UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), World Investment Report 2007, http://www.unctad.org/sections/dite_dir/docs/wir07_fs_ve_en.pdf (hereinafter UNCTAD World Investment Report 2007). 9. This includes petrostates for which there is data: Algeria, Angola, Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Egypt, Gabon, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Kuwait was excluded from this list because with 47 percent of outward foreign direct investment it is a prominent outlier. See UNCTAD World Investment Report 2007. 10. See UNCTAD World Investment Report 2007; Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Foreign Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean 2007 ( Santiago, Chile: ECLAC, 2008), http://www.eclac.org/publicaciones/xml/1/32931/lcg2360i.pdf. 11. Maruja Tarre Briceño, “Abandonados en grandes ligas: Chávez Quiere ahora codearse con los grandes de la política mundial,” El Universal, August 24, 2008. 12. Gustavo Coronel, “Pedigüeños de todo el mundo: absteneosi¡” Las Armas de Coronel Blog, August 4, 2007, http://lasarmasdecoronel.blogspot.com/2007/08/pedigueos-de-todo-el-mundo-absteneos-ya.html 13. See “US Accuses Venezuelan Diplomat of Working for Hizbullah,” Jerusalem Post, June 19, 2008, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1213794272800. 14. Natalie Obiko Pearson and Ian James, “Venezuela Offers Billions to Countries in Latin America,” VenezuelaAnalysis.com, August 28, 2007, http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/2571. 15. Andrés Oppenheimer, “Alan García, Chávez y las Casas del ALBA,” El Nuevo Herald, March 16, 2008. 16. Sean W. Burges, “Building a Global Southern Coalition: The Competing Approaches of Brazil's Lula and Venezuela's Chávez,” Third World Quarterly 28, no. 7 (October 2007): 1343–1358. 17. Richard Feinberg, “Chávez Conditionality,” Latin Business Chronicle, June 4, 2007, http://www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article.aspx?id=1296. 18. “Food Aid Arrives in Haiti Amid Protests, Political Unrest,” FoxNews.com, April 19, 2008, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351830,00.html. 19. Jorge I. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe For Revolution: Cuba's Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 20. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, “Vietnam and the World Struggle for Freedom (Message to the Tricontentinental, published in 1967),” in Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution: Writings and Speeches of Ernesto Che Guevara, ed. David Deutschmann (Sydney: Pathfinder Press, 1987). 21. International Monetary Fund, “Honduras: Request for Stand—By Arrangement-Staff Report,” IMF Country Report, no. 08/241 (Washington, D.C.: IMF, July 2008), http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2008/cr08241.pdf. 22. “Petrocaribe heredó deudas y compromisos; Zelaya cerró las puertas a los organismos de financiamiento internacional para Abrazar los proyectos chavistas y embarcar al país en una dependencia financiera de largo plazo,” El Heraldo, August 3, 2009. 23. Julia Buxton, “European Views of the Bolivarian Progressive Social Image: Have the Revelations of Deeper Relations with the FARC Changed Anything? Does it Matter?” (paper, Miami, Florida, 2008) (presented at the Florida International University Summit of the Americas Center conference “Ten Years of Venezuelan Foreign Policy: Impacts in the Hemisphere and the World”). 24. Jack Levy and L.Vakili. “Diversionary Action by Authoritarian Regimes: Argentina in the Falklands/Malvinas Case,” in The Internationalization of Communal Strife, ed. Manus I. Midlarsky (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 118–146; Graeme A.M. Davies, “Domestic Strife and the Initiation of International Conflicts: A Directed Dyad Analysis, 1950–1982,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 5 (October 2002): 672–692. 25. See Demetrio Boersner, “Dimensión internacional de la crisis venezolana,” in Venezuela en retrospectiva: Los pasos Hacia el régimen chavista, ed. Günther Maihold (Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana and Vervuert, 2007) (in Spanish). 26. Janet Kelly and Carlos A. Romero, The United States and Venezuela (New York: Routledge, 2002). 27. Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold, “Venezuela: Crowding Out the Opposition,” Journal of Democracy 18, no. 2 (April 2007): 99–113; Francisco Monaldi, Rosa Amelia González, Richard Obuchi, and Michael Penfold, “Political Institutions and Policymaking in Venezuela: The Rise and Collapse of Political Cooperation,” in Policymaking in Latin America: How Politics Shapes Policies, eds. Ernesto Stein, Mariano Tommasi, Pablo T. Spiller, and Carlos Scartascini (Washington, D.C. and Cambridge, MA: Inter-American Development Bank and Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2008), pp. 371–417; David J. Myers, “Venezuela: Delegative Democracy or Electoral Autocracy?” in Constructing Democratic Governance, 3rd edition, eds. Jorge I. Domínguez and Michael Shifter (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), pp. 285–320. 28. Vitaly Kozyrev, “China's Continental Energy Strategy: Russia and Central Asia,” in China's Energy Strategy: The Impact on Beijing's Maritime Policies, eds. Gabriel B. Collins, Lyle J. Goldstein, and Andrew S. Erickson (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 2007), pp. 202–251. 29. Because supertankers are not capable of passing through the Panama Canal, oil shipments from Venezuela to China would need to go first south to the Strait of Magellan and then northwest across the Pacific or else entirely east through Cape Horn and then the Strait of Malacca. Either route would be one of the lengthiest in the world. 30. Farideh Farhi, “Iran in Latin America: Threat or Axis of Annoyance” (paper, Washington, D.C., July 10, 2008) ( presented at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars conference “ Iran in Latin America: Threat or Axis of Annoyance”), http://www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/Farhi.pdf. 31. Henri J. Barkey, “Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Energy Security” (paper, Washington, D.C., May 28–June 3, 2007) (presented at the Aspen Institute's sixth conference on political Islam “Political Islam: Challenges for U.S. Policy”). 32. Elodie Brun, La Place de l'Iran dans la politique étrangère du Venezuela (paper, Washington, D.C., July 10, 2008) (presented at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars conference “Iran in Latin America: Threat or Axis of Annoyance”), http://www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/Brun1.pdf. 33. Michael Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (New York: Metropolitan Press, 2008). 34. Burton, “Venezuela: Documenting the Threat.” 35. Veneconomía Opina, “¡Ni espejo de China es!,” Veneconomía, October 18, 2008. 36. Most Latin Americans doubt the leadership of Chávez. See “Global Unease With Major World Powers; Rising Environmental Concern in 47-Nation Survey,” Pew Global Attitudes Project (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, June 27, 2007), http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=256 (hereinafter Pew Global Attitudes Project 2007). 37. Michael Shifter, “A New Path for Latin America,” Current History 107, no. 706 (February 2008): 90–92. 38. Pew Global Attitudes Project 2007. 39. Peter Hakim, “The Next President's Agenda for the Americas” (paper, Washington, D.C., November 27–December 2, 2007) (presented at the Aspen Institute conference “U.S. Policy in Latin America”), http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/congressional%20program/Hakim_Paper.pdf; Abraham F. Lowenthal, “The Obama Administration and the Americas: A Promising Start,” The Washington Quarterly 32, no. 3 (July 2009): 119–136, http://twq.com/09july/docs/09jul_Lowenthal.pdf. 40. María Teresa Romero, “Expansión sin plata,” El Universal, January 7, 2009. 41. John Kiriakou, “Iran's Latin America Push,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2008, http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kiriakou8-2008nov08,0,878526.story. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJavier CorralesJavier Corrales is an associate professor of political science at Amherst College