>Latin America File: Russia’s plan to join ALBA socialist bloc highlights USA’s profound strategic failures; Medvedev meets Ortega, Morales in Caracas

>– Chavez: The Armies of ALBA’s “Revolutionary Governments” Will Defend the Region’s Bloc of Socialist Nations

– Ortega and Chavez Warn Obama: US President-Elect’s Domestic Opponents Will Try to Assassinate Him

– New Cold War in Central America: USA Suspends Aid to Managua, Venezuela Steps in to Fill the Gap with New Company to Supply Food to Nicaragua

In our last post we summarized Russian “President” Dmitry Medvedev’s Latin American itinerary, unaware that the region’s expanding bloc of socialist and allied nations, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), was holding a special summit in Caracas on the same day that the Russian head of state was due to arrive. In addition to their host, Venezuela’s communist dictator Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s past and present Marxist despot Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s new “communist on the bloc” President Evo Morales were in attendance. ALBA consists of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras, and tiny Dominica.

Ominously, during the meeting Ortega and Chavez hinted, without naming names, that domestic, presumably right-wing (“fascist”), opponents of President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama intend to assassinate the USA’s first non-white executive. “They will kill him if he tries to promote the change [socialism] that he has promised in the United States,” they cautioned. “He is a prisoner of the empire,” Ortega said. “I hope they don’t kill him,” Chávez offered.

Even more ominously, the Washington Post confirms our suspicions that Medvedev not only met with Chavez, but also Ortega and Morales on the sidelines of the ALBA conference (pictured above and below). The Russian president was not scheduled to visit Nicaragua and Bolivia on this trip so this rendezvous in the Venezuelan capital worked out well for the Communist Bloc leaders. In a troubling but not surprising development that exposes the profound strategic failures of US policy makers in countering neo-Soviet influence in the Western Hemisphere, the same source also reveals that Russia is contemplating joining ALBA as an associate member:

Medvedev also said Russia is ready to “think about participating” in a regional socialist trade bloc led by Chavez, likely as an associate member. Chavez launched the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, named after South American independence hero Simon Bolivar, as an alternative to U.S.-backed free-trade pacts. Cuba is the last stop on a four-nation tour, which also included visits to Peru and Brazil and talks in Caracas with Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.

Ortega is slated to visit Moscow on December 17, his first such pilgrimage since the Cold War. At that time he will formalize an agreement by which the Russians will renovate the Soviet-built, never-used, 22-year-old military runway at Punta Huete, north of Lake Managua. The Punta Huete air base can accommodate the Tu-160 “Blackjack” strategic bomber, placing the US West Coast within striking distance of these supersonic ALCM platforms, with no refueling necessary. Two Blackjacks were briefly deployed to Venezuela in September.

One of the “constructive” undertakings that emerged from yesterday’s Kremlin-sponsored ALBA summit in Caracas was the proposal to establish a new, regional currency for member states that will replace the dying US dollar. Another project, reports El Universal, was ALBA Alimentos de Nicaragua, a Venezuelan initiative that will channel food, including milk and meat, to Ortega’s impoverished country.

This is a timely economic bailout for the embattled neo-Sandinista regime since this week the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US government agency, decided to suspend a $64 million aid package to Nicaragua, expressing concerns about the “state of democracy” in the Central American country. “We had hoped, for the sake of the Nicaraguan people, that the [Sandinista] government would continue the country’s trend toward peaceful, democratic and credible elections,” lamented MCC chief executive John J. Danilovich this week, adding: “I’m afraid recent evidence shows that this is not the case.” Speaking at the ALBA summit, reports the Costa Rican media, Ortega remarked that Nicaragua was now “free” of the baleful influence of the “North American empire,” meaning the USA. Host Chávez explained that “ALBA will continue to denounce the international plans to destabilize the revolutionary governments in Latin America.” He also warned that “Member nations have soldiers to defend it.”

Meanwhile, states Cuba’s Prensa Latina, political tensions between the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front and the opposition, led by the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), fester as the PLC advanced a bill in the National Assembly to anull the results of the disputed November 9 municipal elections. “I want to state clearly that the National Assembly has no faculties to comment on electoral matters,” assembly president and Sandinista cadre Daniel Nunez protested. The PLC has paralyzed assembly business by refusing to support the 2009 national budget.