New world disorder: who's next after Saddam? in the U.S. administration's view, just about everybody.

Saddam today, Fidel tomorrow.

Sound far-fetched? I wish it were. In a policy document produced in September 2000 by conservatives close to U.S. President George Bush, called the "Project for the New American Century," the United States is urged to increase its permanent military presence beyond the 130 countries where Washington already has troops. It argues that the state of the world demands "American political leadership" rather than that of the United Nations. The paper's authors--who include Paul Wolfowitz, No. 2 at the Peatagon, and John Bolton, the U.S. undersecretary of state--suggest that the United States "utilize airfields ranging from Puerto Rico to Ecuador" for these ends.

The United States will likely cite the war on terrorism as justification for increasing its forces in Latin America. Washington has already shifted its focus away from the drug war in Colombia by sending more soldiers to help the government in its four-decade-old civil war with leftist guerrillas, primarily the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

U.S. troops could also be sent to the tri-border frontiers of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, where some 20,000 Arabs have settled. In January, Gen. James T. Hill, commander of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami and charged with military relations in Latin America, warned that Middle Eastern terrorist groups operate in the border area. Under "Operation New Horizons," U.S. soldiers are scheduled to train Paraguayan forces in anti-terrorism tactics.

I am worried, as are major Latin American political leaders. What, asks Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, "gives the United States the right to decide unilaterally what is good and what is bad for the world?"

Good question. Giddy over his victory in Iraq, Bush now could easily expand his "axis of evil" to include not only the hard-line ayatollahs in Iran and North Korea's Kim Jong II but also Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and the FARC, which already appears on the State Department's list of terror groups. He has baldly threatened Syria, Iraq's neighbor, although talk of war is premature. Britain says. "Tomorrow it could be Andean narco-terrorists," says Lima daily Correo.

The Castro regime, which the administration has accused--without showing any evidence--of developing biological weapons (sound familiar?), has recently heightened tensions by cracking down on democracy activists, including reported executions of three men who hijacked a ferry to reach the United States. The charge? Terrorism, said Cuban state TV (now does it sound familiar?). Caracas daily El Nuevo Pais, meanwhile, warns that "North American opinion, especially in the upper echelons in Washington, takes it for granted that Hugo Chavez will be the next objective" after Saddam Hussein.

History repeats. Latin Americans understand better than anyone that preemptive military action to force regime change isn't a Bush invention. Regional commentators recall CIA-orchestrated coups against democratically elected governments in Guatemala (1954) and Chile (1973), and the hundreds of civilians who died the last time Washington removed a brutal despot by force, Panama's Manuel Noriega, in 1989.

Yet this administration's hawks are especially dangerous. They distrust the United Nations and multilateralism. They are eager to realign the Middle East, politically. And once they turn their attention away from Iraq, there are signs that it will re-focus on Latin America.

Deploying U.S. soldiers on Latin American soil will revive anti-Americanism and undermine economic reforms associated with the United States. Public opinion is boiling over.

In Bogota's El Tiempo, columnist Luis Noe Ochoa called Bush "perhaps the most hated man in the world today." Rafael Fernandez de Castro, in Mexican daily Reforma, writes that "the United States is willing to intervene in any part of the world, at any moment, to destroy anticipated threats. We are facing the emergence of a new era of global U.S. hegemony and an unknown stage in the history of the international order."

I hope these predictions are proved wrong. I hope we aren't headed toward the Bush administration's dangerous new version of the old gunboat diplomacy: Forget talking softly, just swing a big stick.

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