What is the impact of Russia and China's growing influence in Latin America?

[Astronuc]

Russia is resurging after two decades. It is driven by their oil and gas industry.

Russia test-fires ballistic missile to mid-Pacific
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081011/wl_nm/us_russia_missile

MURMANSK, Russia (Reuters) - Russia test-launched a strategic missile to the equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean for the first time on Saturday, at a time when Moscow's growing assertiveness is fuelling tension with the West.

President Dmitry Medvedev, who watched the launch from aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, has said problems caused by global financial turmoil would not hurt Russian plans to revive its armed forces, a symbol for Moscow's resurgence.

Russia's newest missile, the Sineva, was launched by the nuclear-powered submarine Tula from an underwater position in the Arctic Barents Sea, and hit an unspecified area near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, a navy spokesman said.

"For the first time in the history of the Russian Navy the target of the missile was in an equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean rather than the Kura testing ground on the Kamchatka Peninsula," he said.
. . . .
Russia's strategic bombers have restarted regular patrols over the Atlantic Ocean, irking NATO, and a group of the Northern Fleet ships is on its way to the Carribean to take part in joint exercises with U.S. foe Venezuela.
. . . .

Move over Uncle Sam, here comes Uncle Vladimir.

Meanwhile - Under Bush, US influence in Latin America wanes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_losing_latin_america

QUITO, Ecuador - In a matter of weeks, a Russian naval squadron will arrive in the waters off Latin America for the first time since the Cold War. It is already getting a warm welcome from some in a region where the influence of the United States is in decline.

"The U.S. Fourth Fleet can come to Latin America but a Russian fleet can't?" said Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa. "If you ask me, any country and any fleet that wants can visit us. We're a country of open doors."

The United States remains the strongest outside power in Latin America by most measures, including trade, military cooperation and the sheer size of its embassies. Yet U.S. clout in what it once considered its backyard has sunk to perhaps the lowest point in decades. As Washington turned its attention to the Middle East, Latin America swung to the left and other powers moved in.

The United States' financial crisis is not helping. Latin American countries forced by Washington to swallow painful austerity measures in the 1980s and 1990s are aghast at the U.S. failure to police its own markets.

"We did our homework — and they didn't, they who've been telling us for three decades what to do," the man who presides over Latin America's largest economy, President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva of Brazil, complained bitterly.

Latin America's more than 550 million people now "have every reason to view the U.S. as a banana republic," says analyst Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. "U.S. lectures to Latin Americans about excess greed and lack of accountability have long rung hollow, but today they sound even more ridiculous."

From 2002 through 2007, the U.S. image eroded in all six Latin American countries polled by the Pew organization, especially in Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia. (The others were Brazil, Peru and Mexico.) People surveyed in 18 Latin American countries rated President Bush among the least popular leaders in 2007, along with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and just ahead of basement-bound Fidel Castro of Cuba, according to the Latinobarometro group of Chile.

In three years of presidential elections ending last year, Latin Americans chose mostly leftist leaders, and only Colombia and El Salvador elected unalloyed pro-U.S. chief executives. In May, the prestigious U.S. Council on Foreign Relations declared the era of U.S. hegemony in the Americas over. And in September, Bolivia and Venezuela both expelled their U.S. ambassadors, accusing them of meddling.

Along with the loss in political standing has come a decline in economic power. U.S. direct investment in Latin America slid from 30 percent to 20 percent of the total from 1998 to 2007, according to the U.N. Economic Commission on Latin American and the Caribbean.

The U.S. still does $560 billion in trade with Latin America, but in the meantime other countries are muscling in. China's trade with Latin America jumped from $10 billion in 2000 to $102.6 billion last year. In May, a state-owned Chinese company agreed to buy a Peruvian copper mine for $2.1 billion.

. . . .

And China is making huge investments in resource development in S. America and Africa.

 

[Oberst Villa]

Very interesting article on Russia. Unfortunately at the moment I lack the time that this topic would deserve. So for now just one recent article from the Economist that looks rather critical at Russias military capabilities:

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12262231

Note the graphic comparing Russias military budget with the US

 

[waht]

I don't blame them after putting up with this administration for so long.