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NATIONAL SECURITY
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OBAMA'S BUDGET
How the Deficit Threatens U.S. Power
Drawing the line on Hugo Chávez
Posted By José R. Cárdenas
Sunday, November 29, 2009 - 10:58 PM
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By José R. Cárdenas
Ordinarily, it’s easy to dismiss the rhetoric of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as just so much bombast meant to sate the appetites of his most radical followers. Witness, for example, his recently expressed admiration for Carlos the Jackal, Robert Mugabe, and, yes, Idi Amin.
Other times, however, Chávez wanders into territory of strategic interest to the United States, and his rhetoric, not to mention his actions, cannot be ignored.
Chávez’s latest saber-rattling vis-à-vis neighboring Colombia is just such an occasion.
What has set off the Venezuelan strongman this time is an October 30th Defense Cooperation Agreement between Colombia and the United States that allows U.S. counternarcotics air patrols to move from a base in Ecuador to bases in Colombia. (The U.S. presence at a base in Manta, Ecuador, was terminated by leftist President Rafael Correa.)
Since then, Chávez has been waving the bloody shirt, calling the agreement part of a plot to destabilize his regime and bellowing on Venezuelan TV, "Let's not waste a day on our main aim: to prepare for war…." He then ordered 15,000 troops to the Venezuelan-Colombian border.
Most sober analysts downplay the risk of an imminent outbreak of hostilities between the two countries, attributing Chávez’s latest hysterics to an attempt to divert domestic attention away from deteriorating economic conditions in Venezuela, including electricity and water shortages, and his own declining poll numbers. And they are probably right -- this time.
The problem going forward is this: The Venezuelan economy has just begun to free-fall, as outlays of petro-dollars are no longer able to paper over Venezuela’s systemic economic deficiencies under Chávez’s mismanagement. Private sector investment and output is declining, infrastructure is breaking down, and an overreliance on government spending is choking off growth. The result, to be played out over the next few months, is likely to be increasing discontent among a populace already fed up with shortages, unemployment, and skyrocketing street crime.
Combine this with the lawless situation on the Venezuelan-Colombian border, where Colombian and Venezuelan troops mix with murderous guerrillas, drug traffickers, and paramilitaries that have set up shop to take advantage of Chávez’s lax attitude towards cocaine trafficking through Venezuelan territory, and you have a tinderbox that could combust on the slightest miscalculation, or irresponsible action.
It is incumbent on the Obama administration to prevent that by dispelling any ambiguity about where U.S. interests lie if this cold war were to go suddenly hot. It is a perfect opportunity for newly installed Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Arturo Valenzuela, a serious and well-respected scholar of the region, to junk the administration’s campaign talking points on “improving relations with Venezuela” -- which sends the absolutely wrong signal to Chávez -- stop being so defensive about the Colombia agreement (whose badly managed rollout helped to spur the crisis), and deliver a private and direct message to Chávez that the administration would consider any military confrontation with Colombia a direct threat to the strategic interests of the United States.
This is not about our own saber-rattling or mimicking Chávez’s microphone diplomacy that only inflames tensions, but engaging in forceful but quiet diplomacy to prevent any outbreak of hostilities on the border.
Indeed, successive U.S. administrations have invested too much into our strategic partnership with Colombia to tolerate the likes of Hugo Chávez attempting to roll back its multiple successes. (Ample evidence already exists of Chávez providing safe haven and arms to Colombian narcoterrorists.) Since 2000, the U.S. has spent some $6 billion on Plan Colombia, a counternarcotics and counterinsurgency plan that has rescued the country from the grip of the narcoterrorists and paramilitaries. Today, Colombia is a safer and more prosperous country under the leadership of President Álvaro Uribe, with crucial support from the United States. (Incidentally, the capstone of this successful partnership was to be congressional approval of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, but that deal was shelved by Democratic leaders in Congress last year and Obama has shown no inclination to revive it.)
But the peace has yet to be won in Colombia. The narcoterrorists have been seriously degraded by President Uribe’s aggressive prosecution of the war against them, but they have not been eliminated.
Whether we like it or not, the politics (and economics) of oil means we are probably stuck with Chávez for some time to come. But for Hugo Chávez the oil card must not be a license to threaten neighbors with war and destabilizing the region. The Obama administration needs to remind him of that fact.
JUANN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images
You must remember that
a) Like his mentor Fidel Castro, Chavez is a coward.
b) He is surrounded by cowards. None of his military staff has ever fired a shot in any sort of armed conflict. They will probably put a bullet into Chavez's brain before heading into any military conflict that will certainly have most of them killed.
c) An armed conflict with Colombia will certainly mean the end of Hugo Chavez's regime because of a and b above. Also, operationally the Venezuelan army is far inferior than the Colombian army which has been seasoned by decades of conflict.
d) A few well placed bombs will bring Venezuela into a stand still.
Chavez is aware of all of the above. So relax, there will be no war. I do, however, think it is time for the United States to take a stronger stance against Chavez. No more oil purchases and strong sanctions against all his corrupt government officials. I assure you that will have an effect.
So his regime wanted to invade the people and put them into a terrible country. Well, I don't care about his way of government but I care about how will Obama change the system of government. The internet has increased communication in a way previously impossible. The internet has exploded, and opened doors to almost anything and everything, including finance and employment opportunities.
Venezuela-Columbia conflict unlikely
To begin with, any Venezuelan troop deployment against U.S. soldiers stationed in Columbia would not only be politically and militarily irrational…it would have suicidal consequences for Mr. Chavez’s socialist outlook throughout Central and South America. Nobody in the world can dispute the pervasive ineptitude that has taken root within Venezuela’s military establishment over the past decade. Ever since Mr. Chavez’s triumphant rise to power in 1998, the country’s armed-forces have been frequently categorized as ill-equipped and technologically-inferior in relation to its “arch enemies” in Latin America (Columbia, Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay).
Such conclusions do not even take into account the fact that Venezuela’s army…the same portion of the political hierarchy that gives Chavez most of his support…is comprised of poorly-trained and amateur soldiers who have yet to be tested in any external conflict (some of whom simply join the ranks for economic reasons as opposed to an ideological belief in the Socialist Dream). For this reason, more tanks, jets, and helicopters in Caracas should not be of concern to the White House. As FP's Joshua Keating FP says, “bringing a bigger knife to a gun fight doesn’t really shift the odds in your favor.” With Venezuelan troops already suffering from a lack of morale, destroying Venezuelan resistance will continue to be a relatively easy task for both the U.S. Military and the U.S-trained Columbian Security Forces.
http://depetris.wordpress.com
His statements about Idi Amin are the most confusing and indefensible things he has ever said. However, he's still a democratically elected leader, and I don't think he's looking for war. I do wonder why we're supporting the Colombian government considering its human rights abuses, however. Its human rights situation in many regards seems far worse than Venezuela's, despite Mr Chavez's frequent inelegant and indefensible gaffes. And Uribe is committing himself to caudilloship much as Mr Chavez. Neither seem willing to bequeath their movement to anyone else, and that's a bad sign for both nations equally. I think supporting Colombia would be a bad move, and that we try to diffuse the situation easily. Hugo Chavez will calm down when oil prices are up again.
Re: His statements about Idi Amin
Your comment has no logic whatsoever and demostrates a lack of knowledge of the situation of the region as well as how it has been evolving in the last years.
The Human Rights situation in Venezuela is incredibly worse than the one in Colombia. Closing of TV channels, closing of Radio stations (32 in a single hit), prisoners of the mind (a lot of people put behind bars simply because they think differently and say it aloud), firing government workers if they don´t support the caudillo´s policies, and a lot more examples.
Uribe´s bid for a second reelection is somehow worrisome, but I can bet that, if not approved by congress, he will abide by that rule. Chavez, on the other hand had a referendum for unlimited reelection beaten in the polls of December 2008 together with a lot of socialists reforms giving the state (himself) uncontested and absolute power over nearly all aspects of citizen´s life. Despite this, Chavez has introduced the same rejected reforms, by decrees approved by a congress that is full of his lackeys and slaves.
Your affirmation that Chavez will calm down when oil prices soar rests in two wrong assumptions. The first, that oil will reach the same prices that it had before the current economic crisis, which most economists find unlikely. But furthermore, the moment that huge amount of petrodollars start entering the venezuelan economy again, you can bet they will be put to use in destabilizing more and more governments of the region.
So, if supporting Colombia seems to you like a bad idea, supporting Chavez, or at least accomodating him, is a far worse scenario in terms of the consequences for the rest of the region.
Please, think a little before making writing... :-D
Thanks
BTW, I´m not colombian.
Oil is around $80 again. It does not need to be at its peak, its oil boom was big before 2008.
Anyways, Honduras recently closed radio stations. Getting radio stations closed is small stuff next to violence from all three active groups-the military, the paramilitaries (and their private financiers, both drug-related and otherwise), and the guerillas. And worse, Colombia has been permissive towards the rightwing paramilitaries (oddly connected to Uribe), which has allowed them to regroup. America has other allies and trading partners that do even worse things to the press and minorities than either nation.
Some stuff on colombia
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7010-paramilitary-violence-weakening-democratic-stability-study-finds.html
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20091119/lutheran-world-relief-alarmed-by-violence-in-northern-colombia/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8084735.stm
All of the problems reported about Chavez's state exist in neighboring Colombia. Both are corrupt states led by corrupt caudillos that have mismanaged or ignored most of the structural problems in their countries, while solving enough problems to get a portion of the populace to adore them. For some reason, however, Chavez is lumped with every single problem his state has, while Uribe has some sort of teflon coating. I know it seems so simple and manichean to idolize one and exaggerate the evil of the other, but the world is more complex than that.
Hold on one minute. Realistically speaking, why would Chavez calm down with higher oil prices? Common sense dictates that more petrodollars in the Venezuelan coffer would give him more leverage over the international community. With oil prices rising, Chavez has every incentive to enact whatever policies he wants on the domestic scene, for aggravating him would have a collateral impact on the global economy as a whole. History proves that when the value of oil substantially increases, autocratic regimes ratchet up their rhetoric. Take a look at Ahmadinejad when oil prices were $150 dollars a barrel, or Vladimir Putin for that matter. It is hard to believe that Chavez would dispense from this precedent.
Lower oil prices is what we need. Only then will he be coerced into cooperating with other Latin American countries. The more pressure he feels domestically and economically, the more likely his ego will be kept in check.
http://depetris.wordpress.com
...he's a populist, and he's popular for building clinics not bombing Colombians. He knows he'd lose power if he invaded Colombia without a credible reason, or if he blows oil profits on tanks and guns for FARC. Most of his budget goes to flashy projects that get him the votes of the poor, and much of his trade is with America. I think this conflict is a bit manufactured to help with current economic difficulties; these difficulties could go away soon.
Also, I'd like to add that he was nearly toppled in a coup. If Obama is gone in 4-8 years, and a more assertive rightwing executive comes into office, they might try something similar. At the very least it makes his argument sound credible to a lot of venezuelans it seems!
Just because he is a populist does not mean he will spend his oil revenue wisely. Ahmadinejad is also a populist, so by your definition he should not be expanding Iran's armed-forces; or allowing the IRGC to take over key sectors of the Iranian economy. Populism nowadays is nothing but a name.
As far as Chavez, he HAS been spending his oil profits on bombs, guns, and tanks. He recently signed a deal with the Russians- worth at least one billion dollars- in order to acquire Russian manufactured anti-aircraft defenses. In fact, Russian tanks are streaming to Venezuela as we speak.
And what "flashy" domestic projects has he completed in the last year, because according to news reports and official government documents, Venezuela's infrastructure is a figment of what it once was.
P.S. While he is not "bombing Colombians," he is funding Colombian adversaries like the revolutionary FARC in the countryside. He is also deliberately easing up on drug-trafficking enforcement, making it harder for Columbia to successfully implement its counternarcotics campaign.
http://depetris.wordpress.com
PDVSA, even with its financial woes, makes tens of billions of dollars. The investment in relative terms is still fairly small. Colombia has a military budget several times Venezuela's. People at once complain about how Venezuela is committing itself to a dangerous arms buildup, while simultaneously suggesting Colombia would mop the floor with Venezuela, a seemingly contradictory argument. And Colombia's military is just as much connected to rightwing paramilitaries it seems as Venezuela is with leftwing guerillas!
Anyhow, from my understanding, Venezuela never really had very good infrastructure period.
Is there any evidence out there supporting your claim that Colombia is actively trying to overthrow the Chavez regime? Because in my own personal view, I do not really see stats and figures pointing to this conclusion. Venezuela, on the other hand, has been providing FARC guerrillas in Colombia with monetary and tactical support for one specific reason; overthrowing Uribe in order to establish a regime sympathetic to his Bolivarian Revolution. Consider the "smoking gun:" a raid against FARC headquarters detailing Venezuela's monetary contribution to the movement.
And yes, Colombia does spend more on the military. But yet again, they have an insurgency and a drug trafficking network within their own borders, requiring them to constantly improve their armed-forces. Venezuelan's drug problem is nothing close to Colombia's. In fact, they are using the conflict as a foreign-policy tool.
And let's remember that Colombia is not exactly trying to spread a revolution within Latin America. There policy is, and will always be, the status-quo as long as the United States is providing funding.
http://depetris.wordpress.com
Both leaders seem to be trying to destabilize one another, and there have been rightwing Colombian paramilitaries flowing across the border just like FARC and ELN groups. I don't doubt for a minute that Correa and Chavez support FARC and the ELN. But i don't doubt for a minute too that rightwing paramilitaries are increasing their attention on Venezuela. Venezuelan businesspeople are using them to drive people off their land.
Also, it is paradoxical; at once, people say military groups are using Venezuela as a staging ground and a trafficking ground, and at the next, think they have no prextext to militarize. If they go after the paramilitaries, FARC and ELN, they will need sufficient forces (I do agree with you however; I do not think he would go after FARC or ELN because they are "ideological allies". However, again, Uribe has been ignoring the activities of rightwing paramilitaries since he came to office, giving them pardons for their crimes if they "disarm" ... wink wink)
Anyways, this source isn't too credible (Xinhua !), but it's the first thing that came on the search, i dont bookmark all the stories I read :D
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/6803056.html
Oil is around $80 again. It does not need to be at its peak, its oil boom was big before 2008.
Anyways, Honduras recently closed radio stations. Getting radio stations closed is small stuff next to violence from all three active groups-the military, the paramilitaries (and their private financiers, both drug-related and otherwise), and the guerillas. And worse, Colombia has been permissive towards the rightwing paramilitaries (oddly connected to Uribe), which has allowed them to regroup. America has other allies and trading partners that do even worse things to the press and minorities than either nation.
Some stuff on colombia
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7010-paramilitary-violence-weakening-democratic-stability-study-finds.html
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20091119/lutheran-world-relief-alarmed-by-violence-in-northern-colombia/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8084735.stm
All of the problems reported about Chavez's state exist in neighboring Colombia. Both are corrupt states led by corrupt caudillos that have mismanaged or ignored most of the structural problems in their countries, while solving enough problems to get a portion of the populace to adore them. For some reason, however, Chavez is lumped with every single problem his state has, while Uribe has some sort of teflon coating. I know it seems so simple and manichean to idolize one and exaggerate the evil of the other, but the world is more complex than that.
triple post
"Since 2000, the U.S. has spent some $6 billion on Plan Colombia, a counternarcotics and counterinsurgency plan that has rescued the country from the grip of the narcoterrorists and paramilitaries."
Are you serious? "Rescued the country"? Our own Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Plan Colombia last year that concluded - rather decidedly - that Plan Colombia was a failure. And they put the cost at closer to $9 Billion.
Colombia is still the epicenter of drug trafficking in the Americas; US drug-war support has only weakened the FARC and bought out some right-wing groups. It hasn't solved the systemic issue of violence in Colombia. The country remains the most dangerous places for journalists and human rights workers in the hemisphere, and has an internally-displaced population second only to Sudan.
Beyond the bogus claims about Plan Colombia, I think this article is framing the issue unfairly. Chavez is not alone in his discomfort about US military bases in Colombia - in fact, almost all of UNASUR has expressed distaste for the plan. Why? Because they almost all agree that the "War on Drugs" is a FAILED APPROACH that actually makes things worse for the region. Why should they tolerate the presence of hundreds of elite soldiers from a nation that has HABITUALLY invaded Latin American countries - when that nation is justifying its presence in terms of a FAILED APPROACH?
Of course this is irrelevant for Cardenas, who disingenuously glides past the issue with the assumption that re-militarizing the War on Drugs is somehow an efficient and virtuous endeavor that should be welcomed with open arms by the region. The brazen disregard for actually analyzing this crucial assumption makes it hard to take the article seriously.
Also, I wish more of the coverage of Latin America's power dynamics wasn't just reduced to Chavez being an asshole. We all know he's an asshole. It's only part of the equation, and more often than not, it's not a terribly important part.
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