Under the heavy hand of Chavez, Venezuela has become an economic basket case rivaling Iran. High unemployment, the edge of hyperinflation, a fleeing middle class, declining oil production, and plummeting oil revenues have placed Chavez very much on the defensive at home.
His own political base among the poorest of the citizenry are disenchanted to say the least. They are fed up with Caracas being the most murderous city in the world. They have revolted against Chavez' plan to nationalize country clubs, golf courses, hotels--measures which cost his constituency their jobs.
When all else fails, when oratory and slogans lose their appeal, when bluster rings ever more hollow, what is a good strongman supposed to do? That's right, bucko, crank up an external threat, the shadow of war, the spectre of the Yanquis landing the Marines and paratroops on the sacred soil of the motherland.
Chavez and his very loud noise machine have boomed the message of "Uncle Sam is coming!" with ever increasing frequency and exaggeration ever since Columbia and the US signed a basing agreement allowing US personnel (less than a thousand) to be based at Columbian air force installations for counter-drug and counter-insurgent surveillance missions. The call to form "peoples' militias" rings throughout the land.
Now the ever vigilant Chavez has ordered troops, some fifteen thousand of them, to the Columbian border. Purportedly the move is defensive, to counter drug smuggling and protect recent mineral discoveries.
The pretext is shallow. The real reason is to further pump loyalty to regime by a good, down home war scare. As usual, Chavez told the nation that the US was getting ready to invade along with the "puppets" of Columbia. The very absurdity of the claim would excite gales of derisive laughter were the situation not inherently volatile.
Columbia has stated it will appeal to the UN Security Council and the Organization of American States for assistance in the face of the Chavez threat. Bogata is right to be worried. Chavez' regime has supported the long running and hard pressed FARC. FARC is a hybrid of collapsing insurgency and narcotrafficker. Without Venezuelan assistance it would be on the ropes--terminally. Beyond that, Chavez has waged economic warfare on Columbia, sought to undercut the country's currency, and generally acted in the most boorish way possible.
Ecuador, which shares a border with Columbia, is a partner of Chavez' "Bolivarian Revolution" and is dependent to a great extent on Venezuela for support and assistance as is its duly elected (once more let's hear it for democracy in action) strongman, Ewo Morales. Morales can be depended upon to follow Chavez' lead as it has with respect to providing sanctuary of a precarious sort to FARC elements.
The Columbian military due to its long experience bashing the bush after both drug rings and FARC (as well as other pseudo-insurgent groups) is superior in all real world respects to the forces of Venezuela. No influx of Russian arms or Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisors will change the basic calculus of military power in the short run.
Nonetheless, the Bolivarian jefe grande is playing a dangerous game. A very dangerous game. It is very easy for an unintended war to be started by a single action of ill-considered bravado. The probability of such an unintended act occurring is directly proportional to the level of incendiary rhetoric pouring from Chavez.
A war once started will not be so easy to stop. While the US, the UN, and the OAS might all want to stop any Columbian-Venezuelan conflict ASAP, it may not be so easy to do in practice. The Columbian government might want to abate the Chavez nuisance for once and all. The Uribe government might not be alone in the desire. Brazil has not been comfortable with either Chavez' rhetoric or his arms build up.
There are deep fissures not only in Venezuela but also in Ecuador and Bolivia--the entire Bolivarian Revolution. The start of an interstate war might also see the commencement of internal fighting in all three nations.
Even a rapidly imposed end to any war between Venezuela and Columbia would not bring an automatic end to the (virtually inevitable) internal fighting in each and every one of the Bolivarian threesome. This condition might spread to adjacent countries and would, at the very least, promote regional instability.
The context for assessing the impact of any (so far) hypothetical Venezuelan-Columbian war is the social fabric of the South American nations generally. Many, perhaps most, of these have experienced profound social and economic stresses from the rush to globalization and privatization forced upon them by the neo-liberals of the IMF and World Bank (to say nothing of the US during both the Clinton and W. Bush administrations.)
The net effect of these unwanted and primarily negative changes has been the growth of political disaffiliation. Political disaffiliation is the necessary (and often the sufficient) condition for insurgency.
The Obama administration had best work fast and hard to prevent war. As we have zero leverage on Chavez, this means putting the cautionary pressure on Uribe in Columbia. He and his government do not want war any more than the US. He can be relied upon to exercise the maximum of restraint.
If, however, the Chavez forces fire the first few shots, there will be little if anything Uribe can do and survive politically except order his army into full and hopefully effective combat. This would include operations against Venezuela directly. The war will escalate--fast.
The ball is completely in Chavez' court. All us outsiders can do is hope that for once in the man's life, rationality will prevail. Or, if not rationality, a sense of self-preservation.
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