Washington and the Breakdown of the Colombia-Venezuela-FARC Peace Process

[Judi Lynn]

Washington and the Breakdown of the Colombia-Venezuela-FARC Peace Process

by James Petras / June 6th, 2013


Washington has devised a dual strategy toward Latin America. This involves a new set of ambitious imperial initiatives designed to undermine the principal anti-imperialist governments (Venezuela), social movements and armed insurgency (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), while dismantling Latin America-centered integration and regional alliances, such as ALBA, Petro-Caribe, UNASUR and MERCOSUR. At the same time the US seeks to establish an alternative US-centered ‘integration scheme’ through the Latin America and Asia-the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which encourages closer ties among neo-liberal states, like Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile with their energy and mining sector-dependent development strategies.

The involvement of Colombia is crucial to both of these ‘high priority’ objectives. In order to grasp the centrality of Colombia to current US strategy, it is essential to analyze the interplay of military, economic and political interests of the White House and Bogota.

US and Colombia

Washington’s interests in Colombia are largely defined by the policies it has pursued: The last three US Presidents have poured over $7 billion in military aid, building seven military bases and stationing several thousand rotating and permanent US military advisers to ‘advanced combat zones’. Colombia’s military has more than doubled in size to over 350,000 soldiers. In this context, Colombia has acted as an armed surrogate for US foreign policy, overtly intervening via cross border operations in Ecuador and Venezuela and serving as a platform for logistical and surveillance operations in the Caribbean, Andean, Amazonian and mid Pacific regions. US military interests are reinforced by economic ties, which have deepened via a bilateral free trade agreement and Bogota’s open embrace of large scale mining and energy exploitation.

Washington’s military strategists and ruling class allies in Colombia, however, face formidable opposition from three sources – two internal and one external. Internally, there is a vast alliance of social movements encompassing dispossessed peasants, farmers, and Indo and Afro-Colombian organizations, which have joined forces with trade unions, student confederations and human rights groups to oppose the civilian-military rulers who represent an elite 5% in control of over 70% of Colombia’s wealth. Over 4.5 million peasants, who have been driven from their lands by the scorched earth ‘counter-insurgency’ policies devised by US and Israeli military strategists, are clamoring for their right to return to their farmsteads. Despite decades of repression and horrific massacres committed by the military and state-sponsored paramilitary death squads (Colombia has the world’s highest ongoing homicide rate of trade unionists), the regime in Bogota faces rising social and political opposition.

More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/washington-and-the-breakdown-of-the-colombia-venezuela-farc-peace-process/

[Socialistlemur]

1. The ongoing takeover of Venezuela by Cuba and their ties with Iran etc got Obama moving

I watch the region closely and it seems to me the ongoing takeover of Venezuela by Cuba, and the Venezuelan ties to Iran, China, Russia and the dictators' club in general made President Obama turn and pay attention to what was going on. This of course provoked a reaction.

One has to be incredibly naive to expect zero response when Venezuela's autocratic regime has a leadership which spouts provocation and insults all the time, pals around with the Iranians, sends help to Assad, and backs the FaRC in Colombia. To behave as Venezuela, and by extension the hidden hand in Cuba are doing, and expect no retribution is Silly.

The Venezuelan government, probably as recommended by Raul Castro, has finally realized a rock was about to fall on its head, and asked for a meeting between Kerry and Jaua. I think the Obama administration is very measured, and the president is incredibly smart. This means they'll let Kerry talk and talk...and keep on piling up the rocks. If the Cubans and Venezuelans continue to seek confrontation there's going to be very harsh reactions. Can't poke a stick at a lion and expect not to get zapped. And I bet the lion is lining up Brazil and other backers, I expect Dilma Rouseff to visit Washington, make cooing noises and buy USA weapons. In exchange the USA will back off and let Brazil defacto control the region in the long term. The USA thinks Brazil is fine. But a Cubazuela allied with Iran and Russia isn't acceptable.

[MinM]

2. K&R

Missed this when I posted it in this thread...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1108&pid=19047

[Judi Lynn]

4. These articles bear repeating, people need to see them.

It's really good to make them available, considering how hard corporate news tries to bury the truth from the US public.

It would be stupendous if we could manage to dig up immediately all the information the moment they try to hide it.

If they commit crimes behind a wall of secrecy maybe they need to question if they really should continue committing atrocities or start living like human beings, at long last, and stop glorifying evil.

[ocpagu]

3. I believe the militarization of Colombia is currently the biggest threat to peace in South America.

Interesting to see that their manpower doubled to 350,000 soldiers. That's the same number of soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces - a country four times larger.

It would be nice to see Colombia breaking with its tradition of being a puppet for foreing powers and starting having a less submissive foreign policy and walking with its own legs. They will not meet any benefits by letting the US meddle in their domestic problems and conduct their international relations.

Thanks for the article, Judi.

[Bacchus4.0]

5. Venezuela has 155,000 active military and almost 800,000 reserves

Colombia does not have reserve units according to the site. The biggest threat to peace in the region is the overall instability of the Ven government.

http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=Venezuela

[Benton D Struckcheon]

6. Colombia's situation is dire.

However, the economic illiteracy that keeps getting piled on in these articles needs to be addressed; it's extremely irritating. I mean, if you don't know economics, you should keep to the politics. Bloggers who dive into economics and are so obviously ignorant of it don't do anything for their case. This guy saying that Colombia allies itself with the US because of its embrace of energy and mining is ignoring the equally enthusiastic pursuit of same over in Venezuela. Everyone has to have something to sell if they're going to put food in their mouths. This person needs to stick to politics, because his ignorance of economics is extremely grating.

The US's interest lies in promoting free trade, and specifically with the TPP, in circumscribing China as a bonus, not in getting its hands on energy resources, or mines. This reverses the actual relationship between commodity producers and advanced economies.
Venezuela doesn't have to sell its oil. We come and get it, and they willingly sell it to us. We don't need a free trade agreement for that.
Same with Saudi Arabia or any other place that has raw materials. They don't sell them; advanced economies come and get them because they need them for their industries.
US foreign policy is geared towards free trade because we actually have to sell our stuff to get someone to buy it. Our cars have to compete with Japan's, our tractors with China's, our lathes with Germany's.
Free trade benefits the US because we need it to sell our stuff. Venezuela wouldn't benefit from a free trade agreement because they don't need one to sell their oil, and all it would do is swamp whatever domestic producers of stuff like lathes they have, in most cases. I'm speaking here in the abstract of course; for all I know Venezuela has producers of lathes that can compete with US producers. In general, though, US products will be somewhat superior to stuff made in Venezuela, or they won't make anything that competes with the stuff the US makes.
As a bonus, if an advanced economy can get a free trade agreement with a less advanced economy, it pretty much guarantees that place will never compete with them industrially, as it would be very hard for a local producer to get a foot in the door if his country can't set a tariff on goods coming from advanced countries that could outsell him any day of the week and twice on Sunday. That's the actual economic mechanism of imperialism. It's why Boston was the heart of the American Revolution; it was the most advanced economy in the colonies at that time. British policy was geared towards enforcing free trade with the colonies, and Boston's upper classes understood that if that continued they would never be able to compete locally against British goods.
Raw materials don't figure unless some country gets it into its head to try to keep an advanced country from actually accessing them; then all bets are off, of course. But that's not the principal aim of US foreign policy.
I don't know why places like Peru sign free trade agreements with the US; it's pretty stupid as a relatively small and less advanced country doesn't have anything to gain from it. Canada and the US having a free trade agreement makes sense; Mexico and the US having one doesn't.
But these small and otherwise less advanced places do, and I'm sure a lot of it has to do with all the levers that the US can pull to pressure them into it. Once done, they condemn their equivalents of Boston to enduring second class status vs the US's cities.
Which is one reason why the US pursues them. It has nothing to do with getting energy or copper or something like that. We'd get that stuff anyway; Mexican oil isn't why NAFTA was pursued, and as I pointed out above, Venezuelan oil will flow to the US regardless of pretty much anything. The two countries barely recognize each other's existence at this point, but that isn't going to stop that oil from flowing. Nothing will short of actual war.