While the Obama administration prepares a strategic pivot to Asia to help jumpstart the U.S. economy in its second term, there are equally promising economic opportunities in our own hemisphere. Moreover, our national security establishment also must confront threats to regional harmony. Practical initiatives by Washington may help the United States and its neighbors to find common ground for our collective prosperity and security. The stakes are high: This is home to three of the top four...

Two days prior to the Venezuelan presidential election, Francisco Toro, a Venezuelan journalist and blogger, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times stating that Chavez and his movement have become irrelevant. As Chavez’s socialism is becoming increasingly authoritarian and has failed to reduce poverty, Toro claims that it is no longer an exemplary to other Latin American states; in his opinion, it is Brazil’s template-combining free enterprise and democracy with social programs...

The upcoming October 7th elections in Venezuela do not constitute just another round of elections in another country. These elections are crucial for the future of Latin America and for the security of the United States. In fact, it is no exaggeration to point out that the Venezuelan drama should be as great a concern as the elections in the young democracies of the Middle East that emerged in the aftermath of the Arab spring. Unfortunately, the Venezuelan electoral process has been...

Venezuela's cancer-stricken leader, Hugo Chávez, appears to be losing ground to opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, and the ruling party is taking dramatic steps to bully the opposition and to whitewash the results of the Oct. 7 balloting. Only in Venezuela could violent street gangs and a former U.S. president be on the same team. According to sources in Miraflores palace, about two months ago, Chávez began refusing cancer treatment and check-ups, insisting...

As anti-American feelings are being cultivated in large parts of Latin America, not much attention is being paid to the potential consequences that this may eventually have. Propaganda is easy to dismiss as non-sense. But propaganda can unfortunately work. It is sometimes easy for those who are better informed to disregard propaganda as being the work of fanatics whose discourse is so ridiculous that nobody in his right mind would take it seriously. Yet, the effects of propaganda are...

International organizations have a surprising ability to perpetuate themselves, even when they have lost their raison d'être. This phenomenon may explain the sustained survival of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Founded during the Cold War with the alleged objective of establishing a body that positioned itself somewhere between Western countries and the Communist bloc, the NAM survived the East-West confrontation, becoming an umbrella under which emerging powers like India joined forces...

LA MACANILLA, Venezuela - The Venezuelan government has trumpeted one major blow after another against drug traffickers, showing off barrels of liquid cocaine seized, drug planes recovered, cocaine labs raided and airstrips destroyed. But a visit this month to a remote region of Venezuela's vast western plains, which a Colombian guerrilla group has turned into one of the world's busiest transit hubs for the movement of cocaine to the United States, has shown that the government's triumphant...

In the past six months, Iran has been making an offensive on all fronts - on the commercial, military, diplomatic and information fronts - with Latin America as the scene, and without minding the cost. Tehran considers the region as one of the points of principal support, in order to overcome their growing international isolation which it is experiencing as a consequence of its nuclear program, and it has decided to act on all levels, multiplying its presence in a region of the world which...

The 42nd General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia on June 4, 2012. Again the coming together of all the nations of the Western Hemisphere was effectively used by the Bolivarian countries to weaken the OAS Democratic Charter and reduce the influence of the United States. As during the Summit of the Americas this past April, Venezuela and its allies in the Bolivarian alliance insisted on the inclusion of Cuba. One after another ALBA country...

LIKE most clubs of governments, the Organisation of American States (OAS) is widely seen as little more than a debating society. It makes decisions by consensus, and cannot force its members to do anything against their will. But many of those who complain about the OAS’s lack of effectiveness still concede that its watchdogs, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, have proved their worth. The IACHR consists of seven jurists,...