'Summit of the Anti-Americans' meant to challenge Obama

November 21, 11:42 AMConservative Politics ExaminerKathy Shaidle

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Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez

Alliances among America’s enemies have been accelerating at an unprecedented rate. Russia, Cuba and Venezuela have recently signed numerous economic and military agreements. Now, at the end of this month, the three nations are gathering once again for a series of historic meetings.

The timing of these summits is no coincidence. “Viewing the transfer of power between U.S. President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama as a key transition period,” say Stratfor analysts, Russian President Medvedev’s “intent is to remind the incoming U.S. president that [Medvedev] too can play in another power’s near abroad.”

The same thinking motivates Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez as well – they need to “lay out the chessboard for the incoming U.S. President.”

Throughout both terms of the Bush administration, the three nations have positioned themselves as leaders of what they call a “pluri-polar”, or “post-American”, world. Yet the election of Barack Obama helped alter international perceptions about the United States virtually over night. The hoary old cartoonish image of America as the world’s self-appointed “cowboy cop” suddenly seems comical. Can even the most hostile America bashers easily conjure up a mental image of this particular president elect wearing a big Stetson hat and firing six-shooters?

Pulitzer Prize winning Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer recently offered some advice of his own for the president elect, based upon what he’s learned over many decades of covering the local “beat.” He wrote:

“Obama will not want to squander his party's growing inroads into the Cuban-American community, and the state's non-Cuban Latinos, by coming across as too close to Chávez, or the Castro brothers.”

Oppenheimer predicts that Barack Obama will lift restrictions on travel to Cuba, as he promised during his campaign.

“He may even shake hands with Chávez at the Summit of the Americas next April in Trinidad and Tobago. But that's as far as he's likely to go.”

It isn’t in the interest of these anti-American leaders to make concessions to the United States, adds Oppenheimer. “They need to keep their conflicts with the United States alive to maintain a climate of imminent danger that justifies their authoritarian rule. (...) Don't expect big changes on that front.”

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