Chavez Calls Bush 'The Devil' in UN Address, Predicts Fall of 'U.S. Empire' and Calls For Major UN Reforms

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At the United Nations on Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez slammed US foreign policy and described President Bush as the 'devil.'

• President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the UN General Assembly, September 20, 2006.

Chavez was standing at the lectern where President Bush had delivered his speech the day before. The Venezuelan president went on to criticize US foreign policies and renewed his calls for major reforms at the United Nations to reduce US influence and the other permanent members of the Security Council.

At the beginning of his speech, Chavez held up a copy of the book, "Hegemony or Survival" by MIT professor Noam Chomsky and addressed the packed chamber.

• President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the UN General Assembly, September 20. 

His address was greeted with warm applause by many diplomats in the chamber. No senior members of the US delegation were in attendance. A White House spokesman later said that Chavez"s performance did not merit comment. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the address was "not becoming of a head of state."

Chavez went on to call for drastic reform of the United Nations, specifically at the Security Council. Venezuela has been pressing to a get a seat on the 15-member Council when a vote is held in October. The move is strongly opposed by the U.S., which is backing Guatemala.

• Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American history at New York University and author of "Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism."

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Grandin joins us in the studio now, professor of Latin American history at New York University, author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. Welcome to Democracy Now!

GREG GRANDIN: Thanks for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: Your assessment of President Chavez's speech at the UN and the message he was putting out?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, I think he was speaking on a number of levels. The most immediate level, he was trying to change the script that was being set up by the press as a confrontation between Iran and the United States, as exemplified by the two speeches of the respective leaders the day before. And what I think Chavez did was he diversified the struggle, and this speaks to what he is, I think, trying to do on a larger global scale. It no longer became about Iran and the U.S., but all of a sudden there was a kind of -- he provided a cover fire, I think, for Iran in some ways by breaking through the tedium of the General Assembly and giving us an image that I think will go down in the history of the UN, along with Khrushchev banging his shoe on the podium.

AMY GOODMAN: The response in the General Assembly?

GREG GRANDIN: From what I read in the New York Times is that applause -- the UN organizers of the event had to quiet the crowd down, that the applause had gone on for so long that he received the longest ovation of any other speech at the event.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Of course, what became most of the focus in the news coverage last night and today were the references to Bush and the devil and the sulfur is burning. There was almost a -- while clearly quite a few Americans, especially backers of President Bush, were outraged, there was almost a humorous or sarcastic note to the whole thing, wasn’t there?

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, I think so. I think if you actually look at the clip -- and I think it was the most downloaded clip from CNN, so I think people, American viewers, are getting a sense of it -- there was a smile on his face. He crossed himself. He did the -- you know, he looked up to God. And so, I think much of what Chavez does, he does with a glint in his eye.

AMY GOODMAN: It looks like rumors of Noam Chomsky's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

GREG GRANDIN: Yes. Yes, apparently Chavez believed that Chomsky was dead.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain. He holds up the book --

GREG GRANDIN: Well, he held up -- I think he opened his speech with Hegemony or Survival and urged everybody to read it, noted that it was translated into Arabic and German, and Russian, so there’s no excuse for people not knowing the book. And he particularly urged Americans to read it. And he repeated the thesis that the world faces -- and this has been a kind of recurrent theme in many of Chavez's speeches -- that the fight between barbarity and civilization in the past had a kind of long future ahead of it, but with nuclear arms and the potential of mass destruction, the choice that we face between those polls is much more immediate, that there is much more at stake in the attempt to kind of curb U.S. aggression.

AMY GOODMAN: And he said he wished he could have met Noam Chomsky while he was alive?

GREG GRANDIN: Yes, apparently afterwards, I believe. I know that he didn't say that in the speech, but to reporters he commented.

JUAN GONZALEZ: The other thing that struck me about the speech was the very sharp criticism of the United Nations as a failed organization, and clearly he was pointing to the reforms that many in the United Nations are asking about, the whole issue of opening up the membership of the Security Council and democratizing the Security Council as a force in the world.

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, I mean, in many ways, what Chavez represents is a return of third world nonaligned movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and reform of the UN was on the agenda, not driven by the U.S. or Europe back then, but by third world countries who felt that it was an institution which granted an inordinate amount of power to the world superpowers and that there needed to be structural reform. And Chavez referenced that at the end of his speech yesterday. At the same time, he is trying for a UN Security seat, which the vote is in October.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about how significant that is. Latin America is supposed to have that seat.

GREG GRANDIN: The way it works is that regional caucuses get an allotted number of seats. Latin America usually gets two seats. There’s ten nonpermanent members. Five rotate on every year, five rotate off. Venezuela announced its candidacy for the seat about seven or eight months ago. The United States has been backing Guatemala. And most Latin American countries are supporting Venezuela's bid, but there are a number of countries, like Peru and Mexico and a few Caribbean countries, that are supporting Guatemala and Central American countries, as well.

So what happens when there’s not a consensus -- normally there’s a consensus candidate by the regional caucuses, and then it's just a pro forma vote in the General Assembly -- it will actually be a real vote in the General Assembly. Now it's a secret vote, and the candidate has to win by a two-thirds majority. So what probably will happen is that neither Guatemala or Venezuela will receive two-thirds majority in the October vote, and there will be a series of votes subsequently.