04 July 2005

It is the 4th of July, and the BBC is working in London, though the bureau is not working in Washington. They have approved the Strongman series, and would like me to record it, perhaps tomorrow. Today works better, but I have a feeling things are going to get away from me....Happy fireworks!

The Next Big Thing

I. Empires

John Walton, a billionaire son of the Wal-Mart empire, died in a plane crash in Wyoming last month. He was worth $18.2 billion dollars and ranked as the 11th richest man in the world. He was just behind a brother, and tied with another. His mother and sister were just behind him on the list.

The Walton family dinner table is wealthier than a lot of nation-states. The money came from Sam Walton, the founder of WalMart, who was the richest man in the world when he was alive. Sam was responsible in large part for accelerating the globalization that catapulted China into what might become their own private century.

The Walton Family fortune represents a sort of transfer tax on the American way of life, moving small town jobs across the ocean, and returning them as bales of athletic socks.

Great Empires have their cycles of prosperity, and with underlying factors of energy and good earth, can continue to grow and prosper. Rome lasted eleven centuries, after all. In my own short life I have heard men like Henry Kissinger declare that there could be no victory against the Soviet Union , only slow accommodation to the inevitable. He was wrong, of course.

Iraq is an interesting policy problem in that regard, and it could prove to be one of Secretary Rumsfeld's tipping points of history.

There is another one next door to Iraq , in the ancient land of Persia . I call myself a Cold Warrior, since the bi-polar world of my youth is how we defined ourselves. But in my career, literally from my first year, I have been confronted by the boiling spirit of old empires fueled by an intoxicating faith.

I arrived offshore to witness the major traffic wreck of the taking of the American Embassy in Iran in 1979. I watched our leaders try to deal with the consequences of the failed policy that seemed to have provoked it. I cannot say that it was the abrupt reversal of the Nixon position on the Shah that did it. The descendents of Xerxes are proud people, after all.

I think it is fair to say that things might have worked out differently if Carter hadn't pulled the plug on the Pahlavi Dynasty.

The President-elect of Iran is Mahmoud Ahmad-in-e-jad. He is a darkly handsome fellow who may- or may not- have been one of the student radicals at the Embassy. He beat former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by a margin of nearly two-to-one, drawing his strength from the religious underclass.

People were emotional about this election. Turnout in the primary round was heavy. The result put the former mayor of Tehran in a position to exercise a mandate, arguably a stronger position than the American President.

The Iranians are a regional policy issue. The Chinese are not. They are up to something global. The would like to purchase Unocal with the bushels of WalMart dollars they are hoarding. They funding activities in Africa, and building telecommunications links with India . They are talking to the Panamanians, and helping rebuild the railway alongside the American-built Canal . With oil at sixty dollars a barrel, they are also talking to another man of vision, with fire in his belly. He lives in Venezuela and his name is Hugo Chavez.

He believes in tipping points, just like Secretary Rumsfeld. He thinks that the time of the Yankees should pass away. He thinks he might just be the man to pull Uncle Sam's beard right off, not just yank it like Fidel.

The Chinese just smile their patient smile. They have plenty of time. I find it disconcerting to think that the Cheshire Cat grin on their faces is that of Sam Walton.

II. Shelf Life

Latin strongmen come in various shapes and sizes, and have indefinite shelf-lives. I am tempted to make a comparison between the length of the regime and the height of the strongman- tall Castro versus squat Noriega, for example- but that would be misleading. There is much more to it. I would be interested to hear what President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela would make of my theory.

I met wizened old Joaquin Balaguer, Presidente of the Dominican Republic , in 1994. He had been in power since his predecessor Rafael Trujillo was murdered nearly thirty years before. He was in his eighties, stooped and nearly blind. His personal guard had close-fitting black uniforms and Uzis. His protocol officer was a spectacularly beautiful woman.

Trujillo , a man of ordinary height, had become a threat to regional order. Balaguer was not.

I never had a chance to meet Manuel Noriega personally, not before he became a threat to regional order. But I have always had a connection to his Panama

My grandfather worked provided telephones to the Canal Zone and Panama City , which was actually in Panama . Under the Treaty, the Zone had been the United States , a swath of land five miles on either side of the Canal, and forty miles long. In the 1950s, there were more than a 100,000 US citizens living and working in a tropical version of small-town America .

In the 1960s, riots broke out in Panama City over the provisions of the 1903 Treaty. The American presence in Panama was likened to a hostile power occupying the banks of the Mississippi River , north to south, for a century.

Jimmy Carter saw the inequity, and he negotiated an orderly twenty year turnover with strongman Omar Torrijos, who had come to power after an orderly coup in 1968. He ran what he liked to call “a dictatorship with a heart.” The Canal Treaty came in two versions, one acceptable to the US Senate, and the other acceptable to Torrijos. They were never reconciled, but the Carter Administration accepted it.

The night in 1979 when the gates to the Zone opened up for the first time, Panamanian taxis flooded the area, honking their horns. A giant Panamanian flag went up on Ancon Hill, flying twenty-four-seven, brightly lit at night as a reminder.

Torrijos died in a helicopter crash in 1981, having had a shelf-life of 12 years. After three years of maneuvering, and five governments, career solider Manuel Noriega took over. In a trip in 1983 I was surprised to find his cops roughing up American officers who violated the Treaty provision that banned the wearing of their uniforms.

Noriega thought he was bulletproof, since he could drain the upper lakes that fed the Canal and shut it down for years. His increasingly erratic behavior was predicated on his perception of invulnerability, which was erroneous.

I was an inadvertent participant in an aborted covert plot to arrest him for drug trafficking in the summer of 1989. The 82nd Airborne arrived as part of Operation JUST CAUSE in December of that year. 

The Canal was secured, and the strongman took refuge in the Papal Nuncio's residence, where he was surrounded by US troops who blasted loud rock n' roll music at the building until he surrendered.

He was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration and eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison. That was later reduced to 30 years, and with good behavior, he is eligible for release when he is 88.

They say that with the exception of a mild stroke, the Strongman has adapted well to his new life in Miami .

III. Bantam Despot

Strong men come in many sizes and flavors. The strong man in Haiti in July of 1994 was a plucky little Creole Brigadier named Raoul Cedras. He was short of stature, but built like a bantamweight fighter.

He had that  in common with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela , but he was a bit of a reluctant strongman; he was the best face that the junta could put on the group that ousted the mad priest Aristide, who was elected in the ambiguous legitimacy that made the Americans squirm in their commitment to democracy.

That is why I was there. The Administration was in a funk over Haiti , held hostage by Randall Robinson's hunger strike and the demands of the Congressional Black Caucus, there was a growing consensus that only an invasion to re-establish Aristide could salvage the overall agenda.

Raoul wanted a chance to get his family and his liquid assets on the afternoon flight to Miami , the gentile exit for deposed strongmen back in the day, and not the machete.

My boss had dinner with the Junta the night before. Mrs. Cedras cooked it herself, and it was a lavish presentation of tradition and elegance. There were appearances by the three Cedras children. The General wanted to show that he was a devoted family man, and misunderstood. My Boss said Mrs. Cedras was gracious, and the kids seemed nice.

General Biambi of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti- the FRAPH- objected strongly to his characterization as a “thug” over dessert. He felt the American view of the Front as a death-squad was unwarranted, and the removal of the elected government was actually an act of national salvation.

Police Chief Colonel Francois was not present, and though he might have been busy monitoring the Ambassador and me, it could also have been a signal that the Junta was willing to through him to the dogs.

It is awkward when a dictatorship asks directly for the United States to sanction some action. Normally this is better stage-managed through surrogates. But Cedras and the Junta could not just turn things over to Aristide's Lavalas Family political party without being hacked to pieces. The question was terms and guarantees.

My Boss got the same offer from Cedras that it took Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell and the 82nd Airborne to get later that year, which was safe conduct and a cash buy-out. Unfortunately, the situation had to ripen a bit before Washington would act.

President had Clinton called the little strongman a "thug" "stooge" and a "killer,” noting that 4,000 civilians had died while he was in power. Given the severity of the rhetoric, the flight to Miami was not an option.

When finally the time for invasion was ripe, Cedras reiterated his offer to go quietly and it was accepted. He left by military transport, the same was Artistide did a few years later. Certain frozen Haitian assets were thawed, and three Cedras properties were leased by the embassy for a tidy monthly sum.

The Cedras and Biambi families now reside in Panama City , where the plucky strongman operates a computer graphics store downtown, over a Dairy Queen.

Police Chief Francois was not as lucky. He got out through the Dominican Republic , and spent several months in jail before he avoided deportation to the US . But last I heard, he was operating a furniture store in Honduras .

 IV.  National Holiday

This might be the best time of the year at Big Pink, the apartment complex where I live in a little unit just off the pool. The leaves are full, sheltering me from the blazing sun, and the water cools the air at night, with the pool lights glowing under the blue water. It makes me think of the color of the Caribbean, near the island of Hispaniola .

I like the Dominican Republic vibrant Hispanic culture, pulsing Meringue music and lovely beaches. I once served as a sort of travel agent in the islands, crisscrossing the Caribbean on private jets.

I remember one late afternoon approach into Santo Domingo . The blue sparkling waters were dimming to dark. I saw the monument erected by strongman Joaquín Balaguer to honor the 500th anniversary of Columbus ' arrival from the Old World .

The “Columbus Lighthouse” is a massive cross of concrete and earth. Outlining the arms are powerful searchlights. When turned up full, they drain the power reserves and plunge the city into darkness in order to illuminate the heavens.

Balaguer had miscalculated. The public work hugely expensive, and he failed to recognize that the anniversary of the Columbus 's arrival was being commemorated most places as a global tragedy.

It was a topic of lively discussion over cold Presidente beer, the local favorite.

We drank it in the square next to the Alcázar de Colon where Diego Columbus lived as Governor. The area had become a slum for a few hundred years until previous strongman Rafael Trujillo had the idea of cleaning it up to celebrate the importance of this oldest place in the New World .

In 1955, he had the shanties ripped down and the poor ejected and restored the plaza and the Alcazar to something like their original glory. From our table you could see where the Dominican snipers were positioned near the docks during the last incursion of the American Marines in 1965.

Trujillo was a prototypical strongman, like Papa Doc Duvalier was on the other side of the border in Haiti . Trujillo had been a clerk in the Telegraph Department when the Marines ruled both nations in the 1920s.

General Smedley Butler was one of the commanders there, one of my heroes from the age of small wars. He said later that he had made Hispaniola safe for the United Fruit Company.

The Marines strengthened the military of the DomRep to preserve order when they left. Essentially, they turned it over to Trujillo , who pronounced himself Generalissimo. So long as American interests were respected, that was the end of it. Even if he was an unpleasant and greedy man.

US Secretary of State Cordell Hull said "He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch."

Trujillo stayed in power for over 30 years, but toward the end he alienated his patrons. Castro was rising in Cuba , and the Eisenhower administration felt that Trujillo 's autocratic behavior was encouraging a similar popular movement. He became a threat to order.

The last straw was association with an assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Romulo Bétancourt. In May, 1961, Trujillo 's car was ambushed on the beach road after a rendezvous with his mistress. He was not permitted the luxury of the afternoon flight to Miami .

I had access to an embassy car and driver, and went out on the beach road to stand at the wide spot off the highway where the Generilissimo was murdered. There are plastic bags and broken bottles of Presidente beer, but no monument. But the view to windward is spectacular, and the water an incredible blue.

V. The Next Big Thing

The strongman who runs Venezuela is a pugnacious ex-paratrooper named Hugo Chavez. He has a vision of regional coordination under his socialist leadership. He is perhaps the next big thing in Latin America . Based on what he has said and done lately, it seems he senses the Yankees are overstretched and vulnerable.

Perhaps he is going through that assertive phase that some Latin American Strongmen go through. The one of supreme self confidence, which is sometimes delusional. He may think that he has an insurmountable advantage, and perhaps he does. Oil is $60 dollars a barrel, and the Americans are thirsty for it. They pay him handsomely, no matter what he says or does.

Chavez calls his new socialist revolution Bolivarism, after the South American revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar. It is a bit like what the Germans tried in the 1930s, having strong state central control over the economy but permitting private enterprise. Political opposition is likewise allowed, within limits. But the systemic problems of wealth distribution remain.

He has sidestepped the issue of confronting local landowners by nationalizing a huge cattle ranch owned by Agroflora, the local subsidiary of British owner Vestey Group.

His diatribes against the Yankees are legendary. Yanking Uncle Sam's beard is as good a strategy for him, just as it has been for Uncle Fidel.

Chavez and Castro's mutual affection for each other began a decade ago when Chavez visited Havana . Then-Colonel Chavez had just been released from prison in 1994, after staging a failed coup. He often works in tandem with Fidel, and he has replaced some of the subsidies Cuba lost when the Soviet Union collapsed.

I say that Hugo Chavez may be the next big thing because of the intersection of ambition, and the price of oil. Nearly 15% of American imports come from Venezuela . As a hedge, he announced this spring that he was going to upgrade his defenses against the threat from the North. He is going to purchase fifty Russian MiG-29 fighter jets, some fast patrol boats for his Navy, and a hundred-thousand Kalishnakov automatic rifles.

I don't know what he is thinking, but I think it is indisputable that he is enjoying the same feeling of exhilarating invulnerability that Manuel Noriega felt in Panama City before the invasion. Noriega believed his Canal was too important for the Yankees mess with him. He could destroy it, after all, just by dynamiting the dams on the upper lakes.

Hugo can turn off the oil spigots, and watch the Yankees run out of gas. It is an intoxicating logic, and leads to a sense of destiny. It can also lead to ruin, and for Hugo, the afternoon flight, should it occur, will almost certainly not be to Miami .

Close Window