A War of Words: The Avoidable Bush/Bolivia Meltdown

In the Beginning – A Bilateral Optimism

Beneath the surface, however, there was a good deal of optimism and commitment on both sides about making the new US/Bolivia relationship work. I heard that optimism directly from both governments.

A few weeks before he was inaugurated, I had a conversation about US relations with the Vice President-to-be, Alvaro Garcia. It is like a chess game, he said, every move had to be thought out, strategic. Bolivia would press its interests but with diplomatic savvy. On the eve of the inauguration I had a similar conversation with a friend of mine who was appointed to be Bolivia’s ambassador to Washington.

On the day after Morales and Garcia took office – amidst a huge national celebration and in the presence of more than a dozen heads of state – I found myself sitting across an airplane aisle from the Bush administration’s official representative to the swearing in, Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon. We spent some time during the day chatting about Bolivia and I asked him how his visit worked out. He was genuinely affected by the cordial way in which he was received by the new government, both in public and in private. Morales even went so far as to recognize Shannon by name during his inaugural speech.

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that it was an optimistic report from Shannon working its way through Condoleeza Rice and to the White House that led to President Bush’s surprise move a couple of weeks later – a personal call to Morales congratulating him on his new presidency. Morales used the call to put a few issues on the table that he hoped the two countries could negotiate amiably – trade, coca eradication, etc.

Ironically, it may have been that same phone call that planted the first seeds of the decline in amiability that was soon to follow. One source privy to the call told me a funny story later. At some point during the friendly Bush/Morales chat Evo evidently made reference to his political party, "Movement Toward Socialism." Bush, the source says, could be heard asking with surprise to his advisors, "He’s a socialist?" So much for White House briefing papers.

A Meltdown Set-off by Rhetoric Instead of Issues

It was always certain that there were going to be tough issues for the US and Bolivia to sort through, chief among them the US "war on drugs" in Bolivia. What is unfortunate however, and was utterly avoidable, is that the breakdown in Bolivia/US relations really isn’t over any of the concrete issues; it is the product of a war of rhetoric, much of it silly.

Officially, I think it is safe to say that the current round of the "war of words" was started by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a fellow who seems to have made a habit out of starting regrettable wars.

Just days after Bush’s promising phone call to La Paz, Rumsfeld gave a speech at the National Press club in which he compared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Adolph Hitler and then sounded alarm bells about Morales, "We’ve seen some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries. And elections like Evo Morales in Bolivia take place that clearly are worrisome." In the new South American gospel according to Rumsfeld, governments dedicated to appealing to their people are a threat.

It is also fair to say that, in Bolivia, President Morales’ knack for launching rhetorical missiles against the US government had not gone into hibernation either. Morales has endured a decade’s worth of withering attacks from US officials, as a terrorist, a narcotrafficker, and more. Some of Morales’ more recent salvos include his claim in May that the US government was organizing teams to assassinate him and his declaration last week that US soldiers were sneaking into Bolivia disguised as students and tourists. The evidence to back up both claims was pretty flimsy by presidential standards. But, then again, Bush led the US to war in Iraq on flimsier facts and with far, far higher stakes.

Not to be outdone, the Bush administration responded with its own stepped-up rhetoric on Bolivia. Last week a senior USAID official warned that the upcoming Constituent Assembly to write a new Bolivian constitution could be used by Morales to promote, "potentially anti-democratic reforms.” President Bush even weighed in directly with a rare comment, recently expressing his deep concern about "the erosion of democracy" in Bolivia.

The Tipping Point – "Nationalizing" Bolivia’s Gas and Oil

Whatever goodwill seemed left between the US and Bolivia governments, it seemed to have been done in by Morales’ dramatic May 1 presidential decree "nationalizing" Bolivia’s gas and oil. The imagery and rhetoric of the announcement could scarcely have been planned to make Morales look more like a South American radical to his foreign critics. He made the announcement on the day that comes closest to the global left’s own holiday (Day of the Workers). He sent army troops into oil fields operated by foreign oil companies, and declared that "we are about to defend our territory." For two weeks afterwards Morales seemed joined at the hip with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, George Bush’s fiercest Latin American critic.

Bolivia has every right to pursue the policies it wants, but it is also a very safe bet that Morales’ fiery rhetoric and gestures were planned with no thought at all as to how they would play with opinionmakers abroad. Morales’ audience was his countrymen and with more than a little domestic politics in mind.

On the eve of launching his party’s campaign for seats in the new Constituent Assembly, Morales set out to project the image of a president acting tough in defense of the nation’s interests and fulfilling his central campaign pledge. But how all that played abroad, and especially in the US was essentially "Evo gone wild." Media outlets such as bloomberg, the Associated Press and others called the move "radical" and warned that Morales was "seizing" foreign corporate assets not true. It was in response to the decree that President Bush made his comments about the "erosion of democracy."

The funny thing is, beneath all its radical flash, Morales’ actual decree on oil and gas isn’t especially radical at all. He aims to negotiate and buy back majority government ownership in five foreign companies that own what used to be the state oil industry. He also announced a comprehensive audit of oil company earnings to set the basis for renegotiating Bolivia’s foreign oil contracts and setting higher tax rates on oil companies – a policy that wouldn’t be half bad in the US either right now.

Diplomacy on Ice

The Bush administration has heard a chorus of voices, including from Congress and from political analysts on the right, that it needs to engage governments like Bolivia’s, not shun them. And yet, shunning is exactly what the Bush policy toward Bolivia is starting to look like. A proposed working visit to the US by Bolivia’s Vice President has been put on ice by Washington. The Rumsfeld wing of the Bush camp seems to be holding more sway over Latin American policy than its more moderate State Department camp, an eerie repeat of the administration wrangling that got the US into Iraq. Of course, Morales hasn’t made the work of aministration moderates any easier with his wild declarations of soldiers in disguise and the like.

Bolivia is a sovereign nation with its own mind, a fact the Bush administration will simply have to get used to. On the other hand, Bolivia still needs to deal with the US strategically – along the lines of that chess game the Vice President talked about in December, instead of the new approach which seems more like "accusation of the week."