Pubdate: Thu, 12 Jan 2006
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2006 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Robert Charles
Bookmark: 
http://www.mapinc.org/people/Evo+Morales
Bookmark: 
http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bolivia
Bookmark: 
http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

BOLIVIA AT A CROSSROADS

What does the rise of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia mean for the
average American? More than you might think. Less than you might be
inclined to have nightmares about. Here are the core facts.

First, Mr. Morales is committed to legalizing coca growing, implicitly
supporting cocaine and coca paste syndicates in rural Bolivia's
Chapare regions. If real, such a policy would accelerate coca growth
all over the nation, upending longtime gains and U.S. policy.
Bolivia's tottering economy would face the sort of self-inflicted
wound not seen in decades. It would last years.

Coca legalization, if really pursued, would be a major reversal of
fortunes for a nation that dramatically reduced coca growth over the
last five years, and saw rising incomes from legitimate crops, like
pineapples, bananas, heart of palm, honey, cotton, corn and dairy products.

Criminal elements would prosper. Western investment scatter. The
gut-punch to international confidence would slow alternative
development, suffocate bilateral and multilateral lending, and -- in a
phrase -- invite cocaine and heroin poppy producers, traffickers and
regional terrorists to ravage a small, long-suffering and luckless
ally.

Is Mr. Morales's rise the latest domino in a push by Cuba's Fidel
Castro and Venezuela's Mr. Chavez for more anti-U.S., anti-capitalist,
anti-democratic nations in South America? Maybe, since the
Castro-Chavez-Morales troika froths with enthusiasm for converting
disenchanted electorates across the region -- into a 21st-century
version of warmed Soviet-style socialism.

Either way, this widening turn toward anti-Americanism is reason
enough for more Bush administration attention to this often forgotten
region.

Should we be worried? For Bolivia and her neighbors, yes. That worry
is compounded by Mr. Morales' nonsensical pledge to nationalize oil,
gas and resource production, which together represent nearly $4
billion of long-valued foreign investment. That is no way to win
friends or influence enemies, never mind keep folks employed.

Expect the obvious. Production would fall -- or stop. Prices would
rise. Wages would tumble, jobs end. A wave -- economists call it the
multiplier effect -- of vanishing petro-dollars would throw dependent
Bolivians into recession. Is that all? No. Taken together, these two
policies would cause the economy to shrink faster than these workers
could run to be noticed. Bolivia would return to the bad old days of
hyper-inflation, unemployment, riots and rogues.

To these wounds, Mr. Morales had added another dash of salt. Risking
internal class warfare, he moves toward intra- and interindigenous
name-calling, intriguingly framed as rewriting the constitution to
favor those who elected him.

Never mind the philosophical questions. How long does this sort of
populist bumbling go on before chaos shatters the happy celebration?
Answer: Not long. If these policies are pursued, the silver lining is
already visible. Bolivia will become ungovernable, as it did a decade
and a half ago, with avalanche speed. Human rights will come under the
stabilization knife. Riots will spread in La Paz and elsewhere. The
world will shake its head, and we will hear more than we wanted to
about another postconflict area deserving special attention.

Sad to say, Brazil and others now drawing on Bolivian oil and gas will
recoil, finding other suppliers. At the same time, cocaine traffickers
can seek and gain a foothold in a country formerly reducing coca,
interdicting drugs at record levels, and converting wholesale to other
incomes.

We will be back to the future, only worse. Foreign investors will
remember the wound, find other emerging markets and walk a wide circle
around this risky nation.  
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake