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The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America

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This book is so ridiculously opinionated, there is not one sentence in it that is not dripping with bias and colorful adjectives. I tried using it for a research paper on Chavez, and ended up using it as an example of how Americans hate him for no reason other than he is GASP!!! a socialist! And how America hates Venezuela because they want to GASP! nationalize just 20% more of their oil resources!

It mocks the poverty that is consistent to Venezuela, and shows pure hatred towards Islam, Cuba, and socialism.

Get out of your American bubble and write a truthful book.

The book seems to be a bit confusing. It contains a plan to get rid or reduce Hugo Chavez power, by mainly cutting his market in oil if that is all required what sort of a threat is he? I also confess, I find the part of a Hezbollah base implausible.

Still I do accept that Chavez has with his grand socialist and anti Western schemes has wrecked in Venezuela the social system, economy and political process.

Many of the threats noted in this book published in 2009, have gotten worse. 2010 figures show this society experienced a growing crime rate, increased inflation now 35%, more people leaving and real standard of living falling. This is despite an increase in oil prices in 2010.

Furthermore, it appears that Venezuela now accounts for much of the world's cocaine shipments to Europe and the US. How much of this is Chavez's directly and how much is his underlining is unclear.

The problem ultimately is oil. As long as oil prices are high, people like Chavez have power.

Michael Rowan went native and married in Venezuela well before Chavez arrived in the scene. He knows first hand.
Douglas Schoen is an expert political analyst than shoots from the left. Excellent!

Of all the dangers facing us as a nation, be it the indiscriminate murderers of radical Islam, the economic meltdown, global warming, famine, global pandemics, perhaps none are such an immediate threat to us as Hugo Chavez, the president and dictator of Venezuela. Chavez has the ways and means through the national oil company, CITCO, to inflict damage on the American economy in ways Bin Laden. Kim and Ahmadinejad can only dream about. He has challenged US interests at every step, including supporting drug cartels, narcoterrorists, and acting as a conduit for our enemies, including providing a "training base" for the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah in Venezuela. At the same time, Chavez has worked hard, using his deep pockets of petrodollars to "buy friends and influence nations" while striving to assume the mantle of his childhood hero, Fidel Castro.
Nowhere better is the story of Hugo Chavez lay bare than in "The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America" by Douglas E. Schoen and Michael Bowen. The authors, both highly versed in international intrigue, have written a finely detailed description of Chavez's childhood and rise to power through corruption, intimidation, and blind luck and know better than anyone what his intentions toward the West are. Like another dictator, Adolf Hitler, Hugo Chavez has never hidden his hatred for democracy, be it in the West or the US in particular. With his deep seated ambition to dominate the Western Hemisphere, Chavez uses CITCO as his weapon of choice rather than bombs. The chief difference between Chavez and his predecessors, as the authors point out, are vast oil reserves at his disposal and our near total dependence of foreign oil. If Hitler, Stalin, or Castro had a "CITCO" at their disposal, the world would be a very different place today.
If you want to know more about this powerful, but rarely reported on enemy of democracy, or if you simply have an interest in geopolitics, I urge to read "The Threat Closer to Home" by Douglas E. Schoen and Michael Bowen. It will be eye opening.

This is a great book describing all the truth about Chavez that he doesn't want you to know. There are quotes from his old allies who talk about how crazy the power has made him. Information regarding Chavez spending $6000 on himself everyday, to blaming the United States on "inventing" his close alliance with FARC, it's all in here.

Conflict of interest: Michael Rowan, who co-authored this book with Douglas Shoen, is a regular contributor to VenEconomy Monthly, a magazine edited and published by the author of this review.


Propaganda and ingrained stereotypes have made Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez into a modern-day icon of sorts: "a democratic reformer with the courage to take on entrenched oligarchs while improving the lot of the downtrodden poor."
Would that it were! But it ain't. Chávez is a populist dictator who is wreaking havoc with his country's economy and social structure, much as Juan Domingo Perón did to Argentina sixty years ago. (How many readers of this review know that Argentina was once a First World country on a par with France and Germany? Of those who do, how many know that it was Peron's populism and anti-business policies that drove Argentina back into the third world, from whence it has yet to recover?)
Chávez is doing much the same to Venezuela. It's once world-class oil industry is now a corrupt and inefficient shadow of its former self. Close to half the nation's industrial plants have been forced to close. The lot of the poor, measured in terms of health, homes, education and jobs is little changed, despite a $800 billion oil windfall. And so it goes...
And, unlike Perón, Chávez is also undermining U.S. interests in Latin America, financing such extreme-left, anti-Yankee characters as Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Mexico's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador among others.
All of this tragedy is nicely summarized by Mssrs. Schoen and Rowan in their easy-to-read and clearly argued "The Threat Closer to Home."
One proviso, however. While the main arguments are clear and valid, some of the historical details mentioned are just plain wrong. (For instance, Chávez graduated near the top of this class at the Military Academy, not dead last as stated in the book.)

If you see the trolling reviews made here.Claims of "right wing"smear job. Please pick up the book and read it,the fact is it is written by two Authors, one whom happens to be A Democratic Party Consultant! So if this is a right Wing book please make sure to have your facts straight. The book as it implies alone by it's title is this,that a Despot like Chavez and many of his puppets Evo Morales,Rafael Correa,Daniel Ortega and Cronies:Lula,Oliver Stone,Sean Penn,Naomi Campbell, Danny Glover,and his best friend Castro are dangerous subversives. Supporting Organizations Such as The Farc of Colombia, Undermining Elections in Neighboring Countries all of this while Ironically Accusing the United States of Intervening in Latin America,when nothing can be further from the truth.
The Sad part of all of this is that someone can fall for such a pathetic creature of a person that chavez represents. He is not Bright,he is the worst to Happen To Venezuela. This is not THE SOLUTION.The book in my opinion does have flaws such as Recommending That PDVSA and the Oil Industry did not enough for the Poor Of Venezuela, I disagree that People should have to share the wealth,Hard Work and Determination and Responsibility Eradicates the social ills of society, not Empty suits Like Chavez and others who want to "Spread the Wealth". And this is spoken by me, a Lower Middle Class person not some Elitist few like Communists.

I did not fully appreciate how much Chavez threatened to destablize South America (and to a lesser degree North America) until I read this book.

Although Douglas Schoen and Michael Rowan do not draw the comparison, the similarities between Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez and Benito Mussolini are striking: Both sons of poor teachers, both master agitators, both grandiose aspirants to penny-ante empires, both meddlers in neighbors' civil wars and both buffoons.
Chavez is a clown, say Schoen and Rowan, but an extremely dangerous one.
Schoen is a public relations man with close ties to the Democratic Party, Rowan a political consultant in the United States and publicist in Venezuela.
Oil is -- or was -- the key to Chavez's operations. "The Threat Closer to Home" lays out just how extensive these are.
In America, Chavez is probably best known for his running insults against George Bush, which were, however, mild compared to what many Americans said about him. However, Chavez worked to back up his rants. Rowan and Schoen portray a man with a visceral hatred of America and a determination to ruin us.
That would be beyond his capacity, but Chavez has done and can still do a lot of damage.
Besides drug-running and subversion of Colombia, Chavez has imported Muslim terrorists and, say the authors, sponsors at least five Hezbollah training bases. Much about Chavez is bizarre, but the conversion of an Indian tribe to Islam, with veiled Indian women and Kalashnikov-carrying Indian men occupying a lawless land on the Colombian-Venezuelan border -- for all the world like Gaza -- is beyond weird.
Although the book is current up to last fall, things have happened since then. Chavez won (perhaps not honestly) his bid to become tinpot dictator for life, but the rest of the news has been all bad for him.
Schoen and Rowan credit Venezuela with oil output of 3 million barrels per day -- nearly half a billion dollars when oil is at $150, which it isn't. Bloomberg News, which surveys buyers, thinks it is only 2.15 million barrels, of which 800,000 are consumed at home.
Since oil receipts pay for everything in Venezuela, a crash cannot be far off. Its bonds are even less salable that Argentina's.
Presumably, Chavez's bought friends, ranging from Jimmy Carter to Sean Penn to Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, are looking for the exit.
Sooner or later, the United States will have to deal with this, as well as other gangster states. Modern weaponry makes them too dangerous to let live.
Rowan and Schoen have an attractive -- though dubiously practical -- program that they suggest the United States could follow that would not only defang Chavez and his goons but improve the lives of 550 million impoverished Latin Americans.
The reason their program sounds doubtful is that, certainly for Venezuela and probably for most of the other Latin governmental disasters, there is no liberal, democratic, sensible leadership class available to replace him. (Sound like Iraq? It is.)
As Schoen and Rowan acknowledge (although you have to read closely or you' ll miss it), Venezuela's non-communist ruling class was no better than Chavez, except that they were not anti-American. Venezuela has oil, and the only national political doctrine has been, loot the oil.
The notion that Latins in Latin America could raise their output to the levels of the Latins who have emigrated to the United States is alluring, but it would mean that Latin America would have to adopt a liberal political culture. It seems a stretch.

Somewhat sensationalist, but very entertaining read. Chavez is not the cuddly clown that he often pretends to be. He is a throwback caudillo who seeks absolute control of all aspects of life in Venezuela and next Latin America. Rowan and Schoen show that time and time again, Chavez has undermined democratic reform in Venezuela. It is impossible to imagine Chavez leaving office anytime in the near future, despite a large sector of the population being against his "revoltion." It is impossible to quantify how popular or unpopular Chavez is, because Venezuela is no longer a "free" society. Those who oppenly oppose Chavez are repeatedly persecuted and many have had to flee the country for their safety. With each passing month, Chavez seems to become more and more unhinged and less rational. There is no longer a question as to whether he will come into direct conflict with the US, but as to when this will occur.