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Venezuela Venezuela and the United States
The strategic relationship between Venezuela and the
United
States has changed as rapidly as has Venezuela itself
during the
latter half of the twentieth century. Before World War II,
Venezuela was a relatively typical Latin American state,
ruled by
a succession of dictators and dependent on the cycles of
an
agriculturally based economy. As its growing oil wealth
changed
and modernized Venezuelan society, however, Venezuela
became a
more important strategic consideration for the United
States. As
Venezuela began to develop its own limited sphere of
influence,
the United States began to consider it as a potential
strategic
partner in the Caribbean area.
The basic strategic assumptions of the two countries,
although not identical, tracked closely enough to make
possible a
supportive and cooperative relationship during the 1960s.
As an
emerging democracy, Venezuela opposed authoritarian
governments
of both the right and the left. In the early 1960s,
Venezuela
came to share the United States conviction that the Castro
regime
in Cuba presented the most compelling threat to the
stability of
Latin America and the Caribbean. Cuban backing of
Venezuelan
insurgents confirmed this belief. Counterinsurgency
training
provided by the United States contributed to the
successful
quelling of the insurgency by the late 1960s.
During the 1970s, Venezuela and the United States
followed
more divergent paths with regard to security matters. The
global
strategy of containing communism drew the United States
into a
debacle in Vietnam. As the prestige and perceived
influence of
the United States waned, lesser powers such as Venezuela
moved to
pursue policies of independent outreach to the Third
World.
Although largely political in nature, Venezuela's
relations among
Third World nations had distinct security connotations as
well,
seeking as they did to promote development within a
democratic
framework that would yield a broader market for oil
exports.
By the 1980s, Venezuela had articulated such a
significant
range of differences with the United States regarding
security
matters--on such issues as intervention in the affairs of
other
states and the relative influence of external versus
internal
factors on regional stability--that the kind of close
identification of interests that characterized the
relationship
in the 1960s was no longer workable. Nevertheless, the two
countries continued to share certain basic strategic
interests
that bound them in a shifting and sometimes uneasy
partnership.
These shared interests included: the safety and free
passage of
shipping through Caribbean sea-lanes; concern for the
Caribbean
region as a market for exports; a desire to promote
political
stability by encouraging and supporting democratic
governments;
and opposing the expansion of Cuban presence and
influence.
Some of these shared interests came to the fore in the
debate
that preceded the United States sale of F-16 jet fighters
to the
Venezuelan air force in 1983. Despite some concern
expressed by
such other regional powers as Colombia, the administration
of
United States president Ronald Reagan pushed for the sale
on the
grounds that Venezuela needed advanced aircraft to help
protect
the Caribbean sea-lanes, to secure its oil resources
against
external attack, and to help secure the approaches to the
Panama
Canal. The Reagan administration argued that regional
allies such
as Venezuela should be encouraged to share strategic
responsibilities and to complement United States military
forces.
Military advances in Cuba and Nicaragua, along with the
potential
at that time for the Soviet Union's military use of an
expanded
airport base on Grenada, further buttressed these
arguments.
Despite such public characterizations of Venezuela as
an
active contributor to regional defense, both countries
accepted
the proposition that Venezuela fell under the strategic
umbrella
of the United States. As crucial as Venezuela's oil
resources
were to the nation's economic well-being, they were also
of
significant strategic interest to the United States, the
primary
consumer. The United States therefore fulfilled the role
of
unacknowledged guarantor of Venezuelan sovereignty if for
no
other reason than to maintain access to this important
source of
petroleum in the Western Hemisphere.
The threat of communist expansion that had undergirded
security policy even before the advent of the Castro
regime in
Cuba appeared to have waned considerably by the 1990s.
Nevertheless, it appeared likely that Venezuela and the
United
States would continue to cooperate in maintaining
stability in
the Caribbean Basin. Venezuela's economic setbacks,
however,
seemed to indicate that it would not soon return to the
regional
prominence it enjoyed in the 1970s.
Data as of December 1990
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