The Latin American Arms Race

Rummy is suspicious. The Venezuelan Army has 32,000 troops and it is buying 100,000 new AK-47s. Rummy says that he "can't imagine" what is going to happen to those arms, but I'm pretty sure that he is fudging. We can all imagine that a number of those weapons or those that they are replacing will mysteriously turn up in the hands of the FARC or even in the clutches of Evo Morales' merry band of revolutionaries. This is just one aspect of a new arms race in Latin America. Not mentioned in the aforementioned link or even in Jorge Castaneda's piece is the problem with Nicaragua neglecting destroy weapons as previously agreed.

What Castaneda, the former Mexican Foreign Minister and academic, does mention is his hope that the situation is addressed regionally. Specifically he hopes that the OAS takes the lead in the issue and follows Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias' idea of Latin American disarmament to turn "spending on swords into investments in ploughshares."

The eclectic Castaneda is running a quixotic campaign for the President of Mexico. Castaneda has a more than colorful past. His father was a well connected politico and as a youth he idealized Castro's Cuba. Eventually he would abandon his support for Castro, but would remain firmly entrenched in the left. Nonetheless he managed to hook up with the conservative President Fox eventually serving in his administration. Like most academics Castaneda has a political tin ear leading to his exit from the Fox team. Now he is remaking himself as a rational populist alternative in the Mexican race. The only problem is that you need to have a political party in order to run for president. No worries Convergencia and Castaneda have been engaged in an elaborate dance for a while now. Unfortunately the way things stand right now I don't see anyone beating the lefty AMLO and the PRD. That is if Fox fails to derail AMLO's aspirations with a legal technicality.