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Peace Bases built by Chávez - the great geopolitical desires
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‘Peace bases’ were Venezuelan President Chávez’s response to the Colombia-U.S. military bases deal. Adding to his cult of personality, Chávez is now trying to shift the balance of powers and work off of attitudes toward war and peace when it comes to Colombia and more generally resolving conflicts, and, predictably as his rhetoric up until now has indicated. He is attempting to distort the geopolitical map of the Western Hemisphere in order to increase the number of strategies involved in the conflict resolutions for Colombia and, possibly, suggest instead that a united Latin America may, in the end, result in cohesion that would help solve the problem. Although, the problem that he is addressing is the one that he sees: regional integrity that only includes the Western hemisphere countries that he seeks unity with. Meanwhile, Colombia and the U.S. are focusing on the issue that Colombia faces. Using a reactionary foreign policy mentality, based on a balance of power of his own liking as the means of security rather than a system of collective security, Chávez is conveniently altering the situation to be about war and peace in the grand scheme of things. He opened a 'peace base' in Havana, Cuba and in Costa Rica. Apparently, there are 'peace bases' in Nicaragua and Mexico and he hopes to open more all over Latin America.
According to Costa Rica’s Tico Times, the decision to open a 'peace base' in Costa Rica perplexed the Costa Rican government, given the amount of money that Venezuela spends on military spending and also given that Costa Rica, which has no army, hasn’t had an army for 60 years. The article claims that Costa Rica officials have said that it’s distorting a message about peace.
Francisco Cordero, a board member of San Jose’s Center for Peace, said, “Costa Rica has a legacy of peace that didn’t just begin at the time we eliminated our army, but it extends back to the (Spanish settlement)” which has set Costa Rica apart as a unique country.
Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias had this to say about the ‘peace base’ in Costa Rica, “I have asked the Foreign Ministry to look into it. The name – Costa Rican Base of Peace – is comical. It’s comical or cynical. There’s no country in the world more peaceful than Costa Rica.”
Nestor Pineda opened the Venezuelan Ambassador to Costa Rica in its embassy in Rohrmoser and apparently, it is a meeting room, and, according to Pineda “an open forum for dialogue, for conversation, for an interchange of ideas, all with the motive of creating a new world. America needs a profound period of reflection to allow us to envision new societies in the context of the America we are and of the America we want to be.”
To complicate the picture of what America wants to be, the Colombian paper, Colombia Reports, reveals that Chávez constructed a fence across the ‘peace base’ near the Colombian border and draped it with an anti-American banner, in protest of the U.S. military bases pact with Colombia. “If the US (Yankee) empire roots desecrate the sacred soil of the land of Bolivar. Gringos: we are waiting for them.” The banner has gun-waiving people carrying an unknown flag.
According to the article, Colombian president of the Assembly of Arauca, Juan Carlos Santamaria, doesn’t see the ‘peace bases’ as the locations for reflection that Chávez intended, rather, he considers them to be warmongering bases that threaten the Colombian people. The bannered 'peace base' is one kilometer from the Colombian border at Arauca.
The Journal of Turkish Weekly, reveals that Venezuela’s 'peace base' in Havana is there with only one purpose: to promote the idea of peace in all possible formats: meetings, conferences, video demonstrations, discussions. This is according to Venezuela’s ambassador to Cuba, Ronald Blanco de la Cruz. They have been established specifically in response to the deal between the U.S. and Colombia where seven bases have been made available to the U.S. for counter narcotics operations.
The U.S. deal with Colombia was signed on Friday and is reportedly not a deal to combine military operations in Colombia, but rather to boost cooperation in fighting guerrillas and strengthen anti-drug trafficking efforts.
Chávez has been vocal about his opposition to the deal and has in effect stated that Venezuela was prepared to rupture relations with Colombia as a result of the U.S.-Colombia cooperative agreement. He has threatened to shift many of the purchases that Venezuela makes in Colombia (Venezuela and Colombia share a $7 billion a year trade relationship) to Argentina.
Chávez, one of the former mediators in Colombia trying to resolve the conflict between the FARC and the Colombian government may very well be suggesting through the creation of his 'peace bases' that taking Chávez’s route of 'peace bases' versus the U.S.-Colombia military bases counter narcotics cooperation approach, would have been much more successful. He is putting forward a ‘dwelling in what could have been’ approach that suggests that if the governments of Colombia and the U.S. understood what the people want they would not be making such a mistake. It falls in line with the idea that a mistake was made when Chávez was asked to not participate in helping Colombia in its efforts previously.
Just getting down to the principle of things, I should say the peace principle of things, one peace principle is that people should deal with a minor disagreement before it grows into a major dispute. Military base or 'peace base'? Another peace principle is to not go into a discussion by blaming, accusing, denying, interrogating, moralizing, lecturing, threatening or shaming. On Monday, Chávez said, “Everything’s going to get more tense,” and according to the Latin American Herald Tribune, he is placing the blame and defining the basic problem as having two antecedents: the treaty being negotiated by Colombian President Uribe for U.S. troops to use up to seven bases there and the “gigantic lie,” as he calls the complaint that his government has links with leftist rebels in Colombia.
“The matter of the bases “aggravates everything. The demon of war is appearing on the horizon. The United States wants to avoid any unifying process between us,” he said.
Bolivarianismo
As the banner declares as it waves on the ‘peace base’ demarking the sacred soil of Bolivar, Chávez’s bolivarianismo takes priority in a message of peace, creating a peace that relies on the land of Bolivar remaining untouched by gringos, not a peace that addresses the common problem in the region: insurgencies and guerrilla groups that subvert governments and are a pestilent destabilizing force that leads to widespread immigration. Chávez’s decision to promote 'peace bases' in response to the military cooperation between the U.S. and Colombia is not a decision based on searching for a shared interest in solving a major crisis. His political aims are exigent and show his loyalty first to the ideals of Simon Bolivar than to those who depend on improved regional relations, or more suitably, they reflect Chávez’s interest in donning the specter of Bolivar, even while it served a different time and a different world, both domestically and globally, within which Simon Bolivar built his ideological platform. Several biographers of Bolivar depict a leader who wanted to fight colonialism that was based on favoring hereditary privilege over ability, as well as the brutality, corruption and nepotism. It’s hard to say whether Bolivar ever imagined that guerrilla groups made up from the same cultural fabric of the warring lands that they attack would create other social reasoning for the creation of instability among their own and how that might fit into his thinking today, or his priorities.
It is critical however to explain that Chávez has embraced his people war, where he, similarly to Bolivar, uses the disparities between the people and the elites, and imperial powers to create a power shift – which has also increased a perpetual class struggle. The irony in some way is that in creating a demand for a reshaping of the world that gives the underprivileged people the hope that political power is the people’s to have, he doesn’t ask the people to reshape it themselves simultaneously, but instead relies on the conventional appearance of a hegemonic power that will take away what is theirs, even if it is in dangerous conflict with factional guerrilla groups who disregard the political system that is being preserved for those who struggle the most. His focus on social inequality and class consciousness has been known to create greater friction among Venezuelans rather than lead to a united country willing to tackle national and international concerns. Chávez’s tactical scapegoating has helped him gain popularity among the lower class, but among the upper and middle class elites, who have been associated with the cause of poverty, he has had a rocky relationship. In the region, what is the greater conflict seems to have different answers depending on whether you talk to Chávez or Uribe.
While Chávez chooses reactionary foreign policy by installing ‘peace bases’ in various cities in Latin America, his priority on geopolitical political integration within the region is still creating an elephant in the room, for the sake of changing the geopolitical map of the Western hemisphere.
Venezuela’s dependence on foreign trade also seems to make Chávez more contradictory in his reactionary foreign policy stance and his brand of Bolivarianismo. Venezuela is the 3rd largest exporter of oil to the U.S., according to the Department of Energy, and the 5th largest oil exporter in the world. This while Chávez philosophically opposes free trade, globalization and neoliberal economic policies. Between 2005 and 2009, Chávez’s government has awarded contracts in the areas of infrastructure, energy and transportation in excess of $100 billion to foreign governments and enterprises. According to a study by Centro de Investigaciones Economicas (CIECA), domestic development projects in the areas of housing, highways and public roads, power and oil plants, as well as industries and infrastructure, have been awarded to large companies from Russia, Brazil, France, Cuba, Iran and China. Few have gone to Venezuelan enterprises.
Uribe however has sought to question Chávez’s almost exclusive appropriation of Bolívar as a political icon.
‘The truth, President Chávez, is that if you are pursuing an expansionist project in this continent, Colombia has no place for that project,’ Uribe remarked. ‘One cannot set fire to the continent, as you are doing, speaking one day against Spain, the next against the United States; abusing Mexico one day and Peru the next, and the day after that, Bolivia,’ Uribe continued. ‘One cannot abuse a whole continent, or set it on fire as you do, by speaking of imperialism, when you, based on your own ambitions, are looking to set up an empire.’
Seeking to rip down Chávez’s historical narrative, Uribe said,
‘we cannot abuse history, we cannot stain the memory of our heroes, by disfiguring them in popular demagoguery, in misleading the people. We cannot mislead the people by misinterpreting the legacy of the Liberator Bolívar. Bolívar was an integrationist, but not an expansionist.’
According to Uribe, Bolívar brought independence to South American nations, ‘but he did not bring them [newly independent countries] a new era of subjection. Bolívar did not spend his time trying to remove European domination from the Americans, only to impose his own terms with the power at his disposal—as you wish to do—on the people of Venezuela and on the people of Colombia.’
Chávez and military spending
Waiting to defend Venezuela, sits Chávez, as promised by the billboard planted on the side of the 'peace base' just outside of Colombia. While in 2007, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reports that Venezuela spends only 1.3% of its GDP on military expenditures, 1.6% less than Ecuador spent of its 2007 GDP, and 2.7% less than Colombia spent of its 2007 GDP, Venezuela has recently increased its own investment in military spending. A recent loan that Venezuela took from Russia demonstrates this. Defense News reported in September that Russia has issued “the biggest post-Soviet loan to Venezuela to buy Russian arms as Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez meanwhile recognized two rebel Georgian regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as independent states.” Chávez has been offered a $2.2 billion loan to buy tanks and advanced anti-aircraft missiles. According to the article, Chávez says he will buy 92 T-72 tanks and several T-90s from Russia, as well as S-300, Bulk-M2 and Pechora anti-aircraft missile systems, and the Smerch multiple-launch rocket systems. The S-300 system is a tracking system that has the capability of tracking up to 100 targets.
Last year, Medvedev and Chávez agreed to a $1 billion loan to Venezuela for Russian arms.
While countries in the region legitimize Venezuela’s defense spending, they themselves have begun to increase their military spending in response to the U.S.-Colombia military base deal. The international media as well as Latin American media have begun postulating an arms race is in the works in Latin America.
In 2006, Venezuela pursued large-scale modernization of its military capabilities in response to perceived military threats. In 2006, arms spending went up 13% according to Armed Forces Journal.
According to UPI, the Venezuelan Defense Ministry’s modernization plans call for $30 billion spending between 2007 and 2017 to acquire advanced weapons systems and other military equipment.
Additionally, according to Jane’s Defense Weekly, Venezuela’s Defense Ministry increased its defense spending by 25% for the 2009 budget.
Chávez and Funding Peace Efforts
While there are various sources that show Venezuela’s increased military spending, how much is it spending on peace, aside from opening new 'peace bases'? 'Peace bases' do not do anything to alleviate poverty or improve socio-economic development, reduce social barriers within the country that create stronger divisions heightening class struggles, or promote the positive elements of globalization or anything that counters the Bolivarianismo that Chávez celebrates and implants as central to global geopolitical and regional foreign policies. There is considerable investment in fighting the root causes that lead to social conflicts.
According to Venezuela’s Minister for Finances and the Economy, Ali Rodriguez Araque, who presented the national budget proposal for the year 2010 a couple of weeks ago, presented a $73.9 billion total budget for 2010. Of that, 45.73% would be directed toward social spending aimed at poverty reduction and improving the quality of life for Venezuelans, according to Araque. Venezuelan Analysis reports that according to figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE) 12% of this will go towards social development and participation, 18% will go to the education sector, 8.7% will go to the health sector, with a $5 billion fund for social missions that will benefit over 60% of the Venezuelan population. Tax revenues and oil revenues will largely finance the budget. Social spending per person more than tripled from 1998-2006, according to the 2009 Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)’s “The Chávez Administration at 10 years: The Economy and Social Indicators” report.
Chávez and Colombia
Chávez has employed explosive rhetoric calling for the liberation of the Colombian people from the hand of the U.S. empire.
Chávez’s interest in Colombia is one marked with personal ambition rather than regional or political stability. In August 2007, he became the mediator between the FARC and the Colombian government on a hostages-for-prisoners swap. In 2007, President Uribe terminated his role as a mediator, because he did not appear impartial.
Relations ever since have been abrasive. At times, Chávez has warned that Colombian actions against the FARC, specifically in its killing of Raul Reyes, a top rebel leader of the FARC, and the ensuing attacks on guerrilla groups at a camp in Ecuador, could lead to war.
In July, relations between the two countries were frozen by Chávez due to the discussions about the agreement between the U.S. and Colombia. Roya Daza, the President of the Committee of Foreign Policy, in an interview yesterday with El Universal, confirmed that relations would continue to be frozen.
Shared Interests between U.S. and Venezuela in Colombia
The U.S. in its efforts to work toward improving relations with Venezuela and in the region, might consider focusing more on efforts that show a shared interest in counter narcotics effectiveness that has taken into account criticism and evidence that simply attacking the supply side of the problem has not worked. Although many experts have pointed this out, one that is worth mentioning is a report by Lt. Col. Kenneth W. Bishop who received project advise from Dr. Max Manwaring that he did for the US Army War College entitled “The National Drug Control Strategy: Effectiveness of Eradication in Colombia” from 2003. In his report he states, “For decades, the United States has used eradication in source countries to disrupt the market. However, evidence suggests that the current drug eradication policy is ineffective. Eradication is designed to reduce supply. Ironically, reduction of supply increased demand by making drugs scarcer on the street – and more expensive!” His strategy research project found that drug eradication alone failed to support the strategy.
Efforts to counter scapegoating of the U.S. in its relations with Colombia could include more emphasis on alternatives to the military cooperation that has recently received the most focus in U.S.-Colombian relations. Reducing the reliance on the patron-client mentality in discussions about the Colombia conflict would also increase the likelihood of regional cooperation among those who may be trapped in the rhetorical quagmire that pits regional country solutions against those of others in the Western hemisphere, such as the U.S., solely based on regional identity.
A shared interest possibly between Chávez and the U.S. might lie in the social impact of not assisting Colombia in its counter narcotics efforts. Since the Venezuelan government spends so much on peace efforts in fighting poverty and social-economic conditions that lead to societal ills and inequalities, then assessments should be done on how much regional drug trafficking into Venezuela is countering government efforts to improve the quality of life of the Venezuelan people and the region as a whole.
Until every effort is made to depoliticize regional relations and move beyond the political differences on how to eradicate inequality and poverty, Venezuela and the U.S. will have a tense time finding a shared interest in Colombia’s stability.
Is stability in Colombia in the interest of Venezuela? The common strategic objective could be achieved if there was more of a reformist foreign policy in place when it comes to Chavez’s foreign policy toward the US and toward Colombia. Unwilling to discard this reactionary policy mindset, Chávez ignores the advantages a reformist mindset could do regionally. A reformist policy mindset would give Venezuela a valuable shared interest with the United States, outside of the oil trade, when it comes to foreign policy toward Colombia. As has been mentioned by South American expert Nikolas Kozloff, Colombian elites fear Chavez’s Bolivaran Revolution since it threatens the privileges that they enjoy. If a unified Colombia became the priority shared interest in foreign policy goals of the U.S. and Venezuela, the geopolitical aims of Chávez to be seen as a reliable dominant country in the region, could also be achieved while respect for Colombia foreign relations decision preserved. A more successful outcome might come if the US was able to: debunk the fears that the US does not want to press toward solutions that attack persistent poverty and inequality; avoid fueling what Chávez has in mind for the U.S. – as the destroyer of the political dream of Bolivar; eventually negotiate with Venezuela to include them; and, just as critically, include the Latin American viewpoints into its foreign policy in addressing economic and development policies that can have shared prosperity and a reduction of violence due to political discord as their goal.
While Colombia has emerged as the geopolitical pivot in the region, as it has been called by Juan Carlos Eastman, deputy head of the Institute of Geostrategic Studies at the Nueva Granada University, the U.S. must continue to check Chávez’s geopolitical ambitions and to also call into question the illusion that he is creating of Venezuelan preeminence as a peaceful nation which is being challenged by countries in the region who are finding his ‘peace bases’ troublesome and a geopolitical distortion. If there is not a shared interest between the U.S. and Venezuela in a united Colombia, then it’s possible that the regional preeminence that Chávez is fighting for will be unsustainable, even while Chávez competes for regional primacy, rather pluralistically, but isolates Colombia for not prioritizing collective regional identity over the Western hemispheric more moderate, less polarizing foreign relations that see the benefits of collectively addressing ongoing conflicts. If the U.S. avoids politicizing all areas of cooperation, like Chávez has done, it’s possible that alongside of the lack of regional disintegration that Venezuela continues to say is part of U.S. policy toward Latin America, the shared interest might become regional stability, which includes preventing the rise of insurgencies that operate transnationally.
Still, while countries that are now beneficiaries of 'peace bases' like Costa Rica are now vocally opposing Venezuelan presence and influence, it remains to be seen what they will do to stop it in its tracks.
Eventually, a shared interest might become deemphasizing the use of force in both U.S. and Venezuelan foreign policies, given that currently the Western Hemisphere’s realist doctrine is being invoked by both Chávez and the U.S., rather than internationalist foreign policies. The efforts toward conflict resolution may do well to rely less on essentially condemning to failure the efforts of the U.S. and Colombia, as the alliance-builder Chávez is doing. If Chávez and the U.S. decide that they have a shared interest in seeing a united Colombia then the shifting sense of geopolitics will once again be restored, instead of the fixed map that Chávez employs in his transfixed look at the balance of powers relationship between Chávez, the U.S. and the region. Once again, Chávez is masquerading in 'dwelling in what could have been' rather than moving beyond assumptions based on a past that is not in line with his current application of the historic figure Simon Bolivar, the liberator.
“We’re talking about the empire, and the empire, once it is installed, does what’s in its best interest. Not even Uribe is going to have control over the actions undertaken by the troops of the empire, even of Colombian troops,”
Chávez emphasized on Monday. He continued:
“Tomorrow, from those bases in Colombia, any type of action will be able to be planned, including against Colombia itself,” he said.
“The fault is that of the United States,” because President Barack Obama “is deforming and pulverizing his speech” at the Summit of the Americas held in April in Trinidad and Tobago, “in which he said that things were going to change.”
If the goal is peace, Chávez might try not looking for it in balance of power political plays by trying to gain more power by actively engaging in challenging its use in the region by Colombia and the U.S., all for the sake of swinging the balance further in Chávez’s favor.
Only a shared interest between Venezuela and the U.S. in seeing Colombia become a unified united country free of intense internal conflict will come closer to showing that the evaluation of welfare above power is a priority.
While Chávez’s dissatisfaction and power are being made clear through his recent statements in regards to the U.S.-Colombia deal, he is missing an opportunity to clarify whose satisfaction he is seeking. Satisfying a need to boil it down to a view of the Colombia deal as based on ‘my way or the highway’ suggests that currently Venezuela’s view has very little invested in terms of a shared interest in seeing a stable unified Colombia and more invested in achieving its desired balance of powers regionally and internationally.
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