Much Ado About Nothing...

26. 7. 2010 / Fabiano Golgo

I follow on a daily basis the American media - I watch the network newscasts from CBS, NBC and ABC, the MSNBC daily political shows with Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Olbermann, Andrea Mitchell, Morning Joe, plus the Sunday roundtables Meet the Press on NBC, Face the Nation on CBS and This Week on ABC -- and there are no smoke signs coming out from any of them. The news about Chavez are generally taken with humor, addressing him as a South American lunatic, a Banana Republic silly man in power. Only FOX News, the Republican party television arm, makes a fuss out of Chavez. That same channel attacks Obama everyday with accusations like that he is was not born in American soil and that he is bringing socialism to America. So they certainly don't influence people beyond their ultraconservative cult following.

So, any conspiracy theory trying to say that the United States would have an interest in starting a war through Colombia with Venezuela is illogical. Obama wouldn't have the political power to gather the needed public support, he is currently less popular than Hillary Clinton, according to a recent poll. And Americans are not focused on Latin America for years, since the first Bush switched their attentions to the oil rich Middle East.

Plus, why would the United States feel the need to take Hugo Chavez from power when his mandate is coming to an end? When the upcoming municipal September elections in Venezuela will bring a big dent in Chavez` power? If there would be a right time at all to incense American hearts against the flamboyant Venezuelan president, then it would be once he refuses to leave power, using some traditional "caudillo" trick, like... creating a war with Colombia. Just lilke General Galtieri, of Argentina, in 1982, when the military dictatorship was unable to curb the stratospheric inflation: he invaded the Falkland/Malvinas islands.

War drums always amalgams citizens, because the instinct of self-protection is very strong. By singing war songs, Chavez and Colombia's Uribe try to overshadow the appalling economic and social situation of their countries.

To live in Colombia is not that different than living in Iraq. There are more deaths per capita by violence and weapons in Colombia than in Iraq and Afghanistan together.

The Spanish-descendants concentrate most of the wealth, while the indigenous people live miserably and are discriminated against the same way Gypsies are in Czech Republic: the urbanized Spanish descendants also see the indigenous people as lazy, corrupted, lacking the basics of personal hygiene, with kids that don't go to school and don't respect "white people's" rules of behaviour. Years of discrimination led to the creation of the FARC, which is called a terrorist group by the Colombian elites and by the United States, but is considered a civil revolutionary movement by most South Americans, for the history of military regimes in the continent led to the emergence of lots of such guerrilla groups, who in the past helped in the fight against the dictatorships. So they count with an aura of heroism.

Venezuela, on the other hand, also has a serious ethnic division between the descendants of Europeans and the local indigenous peoples. Hugo Chavez came with the promise of changing that, but after more than a decade in power, the Venezuelan society has not curbed poverty. The numbers of people living in poverty stayed the same, while the situation of the middle classes and the top elite went down.

Only Haiti and Venezuela will have negative growth numbers in the whole continent, this year. Caracas has to endure three to five daily electricity cuts (once even the president's TV broadcast was interrupted because the energy went down), there is a serious lack of essentials like toilette paper and rice, food prices are almost three times higher than before Chavez took the presidency, drugs are sold openly in the streets, prostitution is galore and civil servant corruption is not a secret. None of that is strange to any South American country. All of them suffer from the same social diseases. The difference is that Chavez falsely claims and propagates that he is there to change that state of affairs. How many decades does he need?

So a "100-year war" with Colombia, as he called it Friday, would be welcome. It is the type of conflict that seldom could be won by either side, not even the United States would have interest in destroying the oil infrastructure from which they depend as well. To take over it? It is not realistic at all that the regional powers would allow the United States to do with Venezuela what they have done to Iraq or Afghanistan. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru would strongly react. The United States is very dependent on many products from South America and it could not allow its population to wake up one day without their traditional orange juice or cooking flour, all of which have been used as threats, successfully, every time the U.S. tries to push the region. With only 17percent of its exports going to the United States, Brazil is economically independent from Uncle Sam, something Lula boasts publicly as one of his top achievements. It is not realistic at all that the United States would want a war with Venezuela and much less realistic that the Colombian forces would be able to go ahead when most Venezuelan neighbors would be on Chavez side, including militarily. Even with all the American troops and weaponry of Colombia, still the Brazilian military alone is better equipped and five times bigger. And Venezuela has the support of Russia and China. In the balance of international powers, Colombia would have no chance.

But, the most important in this whole tension crisis between those two governments is that it is clear to all analysts in the region how Colombian president Alvaro Uribe just misused the existence of photos showing something that even the Venezuelan minister of defense confirmed Friday -- that there are FARC members using the Venezuelan jungle to hide and tacticize. He added that there is no proof that the Venezuelan government helps them financially or otherwise, but their presence is well known and acknowledged by all sides.

So why Uribe decided to make a fuss right now? Because he is leaving the presidency in the next few days, so, instead of hours of television programs talking about his failures in the economy, his lack of success in solving the social inequalities and in winning against the FARC, he got the media and the public to talk about Venezuela. Uribe applied the old trick of bringing a foreign enemy to the table, obscuring everything else. And Chavez saw the ball coming on his direction and kicked it as well. Both scored goals.

But one thing seems to be sure, according to a former Brazilian ambassador to Colombia, whose name is known to the Editor-in-Chief, and is well acquainted with the region: the newly elected Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, has informed the Brazilian diplomatic institution, Itamaraty, that he will not pursue Uribe's fight with Chavez. And that there is zero chance for an armed conflict with Venezuela. So all we are watching right now is yet another propaganda battle, nothing else.

At the same time, though, can we ever predict a responsible behaviour from "caudillos"?

Vytisknout