The US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela

by JAMES PETRAS Thursday, Jan. 27, 2005 at 10:16 AM

A major diplomatic and political conflict has exploded between Colombia and Venezuela after the revelation of a Colombian overnment covert operation in Venezuela, involving the recruitment of Venezuelan military and security officers in the kidnapping of a Colombian leftist leader.

~~~~~ At the end of this article is an announcement of
a city-wide planning meeting to mobilize to defend
Venezuela. U.S. intervention against Venezuela is
escalating. Please see the announcement at the end of
the Petras article and please attend the planning
meeting... don white CISPES-LA~~~~~~


January 25, 2005

The Granda Kidnapping Explodes
The US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
By JAMES PETRAS

A major diplomatic and political conflict has exploded
between Colombia and Venezuela after the revelation of
a Colombian government covert operation in Venezuela,
involving the recruitment of Venezuelan military and
security officers in the kidnapping of a Colombian
leftist leader. Following an investigation by the
Venezuelan Ministry of Interior and reports and
testimony from journalists and other knowledgeable
political observers it was determined that the highest
echelons of the Colombian government, including
President Uribe, planned and executed this onslaught
on Venezuelan sovereignty.

Once direct Colombian involvement was established, the
Venezuelan government demanded a public apology from
the Colombian government while seeking a diplomatic
solution by blaming Colombian Presidential advisers.
The Colombian regime took the offensive, launching an
aggressive defense of its involvement in the violation
of Venezuelan sovereignty and, beyond that, seeking to
establish in advance, under the rationale of "national
security" the legitimacy of future acts of aggression.
As a result President Chavez has recalled the
Venezuelan Ambassador from Bogota, suspended all
state-to-state commercial and political agreements
pending an official state apology. In response the US
Government gave unconditional support to Colombian
violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and urged the
Uribe regime to push the conflict further. What began
as a diplomatic conflict over a specific incident has
turned into a major, defining crises in US and Latin
American political relations with potentially
explosive military, economic and political
consequences for the entire region.

In justifying the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda, the
Colombian leftist leader, the Uribe regime has
promulgated a new foreign policy doctrine which echoes
that of the Bush Administration: the right of
unilateral intervention in any country in which the
Colombian government perceives or claims is harboring
or providing refuge to political adversaries (which
the regime labels as "terrorists") which might
threaten the security of the state. The Uribe doctrine
of unilateral intervention echoes the preventive war
speech, enunciated in late 2001 by President Bush.
Clearly Uribe's action and pronouncement is profoundly
influenced by the dominance that Washington exercises
over the Uribe regime's policies through its extended
$3 billion dollar military aid program and deep
penetration of the entire political-defense apparatus.
Uribe's offensive military doctrine involves several
major policy propositions:

1.) The right to violate any country's sovereignty,
including the use of force and violence, directly or
in cooperation with local mercenaries.

2.) The right to recruit and subvert military and
security officials to serve the interests of the
Colombian state.

3.) The right to allocate funds to bounty hunters or
"third parties" to engage in illegal violent acts
within a target country.

4.) The assertion of the supremacy of Colombian laws,
decrees and policies over and against the sovereign
laws of the intervened country.

The Uribe doctrine clearly echoes Washington's global
pronouncements. While the immediate point of
aggression involves Colombia's relations to Venezuela,
the Uribe doctrine lays the basis for unilateral
military intervention anywhere in the hemisphere.
Uribe's doctrine is a threat to sovereignty of any
country in the hemisphere: its intervention in
Venezuela and the justification provides a precedent
for future aggression.

Colombia's adoption and implementation of the
extraterritorial policy as part of its strategy of
unilateral intervention is not coincidental, as the
Colombian security forces have been trained and
advised by US and Israeli secret agencies. More
directly, through its $3 billion dollar military aid
program Washington is in a command-and-control
position within all sectors of the Colombian state and
thus able to determine the security doctrine of the
Uribe regime. More important Uribe has been a
long-time, large-scale practitioner of death squad
politics prior to his ascendancy to the Presidency and
prior to receiving large scale US aid. By borrowing
the Bush Doctrine from his patron-state, Uribe has
internationalized the terror practices which he has
pursued for the past 20 years within Colombia.

Prior to the recent spate of high profile trans-border
kidnapping (Trinidad in Ecuador, Granda in Venezuela),
the Uribe regime has engaged in frequent
interventions, kidnapping and assassinating popular
leaders and soldiers from bordering countries, and
providing material and political support to would-be
'golpistas', especially in Venezuela. Dozens of
Colombian refugees fleeing marauding death squads have
been pursued into Venezuela and killed or kidnapped
over the past three years by Colombian paramilitary
and security forces. Six Venezuelan soldiers were
killed by Colombian security forces in an
"unexplained" incident. More recently, in 2004, over
130 Colombian paramilitary forces and other irregulars
were infiltrated into Venezuela to engage in terrorist
violence ­ to trigger action by Venezuelan-US
coup-makers. Shortly thereafter Colombian security
forces and the US CIA intervened in Ecuador to kidnap
a former peace negotiator of the FARC, Colombia's
major guerrilla group.

What is new and more ominous is that the Uribe
regime's de facto policy of extra-territoriality has
been converted into a de jure strategic doctrine of
unilateral military intervention. Colombia no longer
pretends to be engaged in a "covert" selective policy
of violating other countries sovereignty but has
publicly declared the supremacy of its laws and the
right to apply them anywhere in the world where it
unilaterally declares its case for national security.
Colombia's gross violations of Venezuelan and
Ecuadorian sovereignty is a policy clearly endorsed
and dictated at the highest levels of the Colombian
state ­ exclusively the prerogative of President Uribe
­ and endorsed at the highest level of the US
government by its principal diplomatic spokesperson in
Colombia, Ambassador Woods ("We endorse Uribe's action
100%"). The 'Granda incident' is not simply an
isolated diplomatic incident which can be resolved
through good faith bilateral negotiations. The
kidnapping is part of a larger strategy involving
preparations ­ ideological, political and military ­
for a large-scale, political-military confrontation
with Venezuela.

The enunciation and practice of the Uribe Doctrine has
several purposes. One is in line with US and Colombian
elite policy: To overthrow the Chavez regime. Chavez
opposes the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as
its plans to invade Iran. In Latin America, Chavez
opposes the US-dominated Free Trade of the Americas
Pact. Secondly the Uribe doctrine seeks to destroy
Cuban-Venezuelan trade ties, in order to undermine the
Cuban revolutionary government. Thirdly the Uribe
doctrine is aimed at maintaining Venezuela as an
exclusive oil exporter to the US ­ at a time when the
Chavez government has signed trade agreements to
diversify its oil markets to China and elsewhere.
Fourthly, and most probably most important from the
strict perspective of the Uribe regime's survival, the
Colombian government is profoundly disturbed by the
positive social impact which the Chavez welfare
policies have on the majority of Colombians living in
poverty, especially his newly announced agrarian
reform, and his defense of national public enterprises
(especially the state petroleum company) within the
framework of free and democratic institutions. Uribe's
austerity policies, his military and paramilitary
forces displacement of three million peasants, his
promotion of greater and greater concentration of
wealth and the slashing of social services, and worse,
the systematic long-term large-scale violations of
human and democratic rights stand in polar opposition
to Venezuela under President Chavez which provides a
viable, accessible and visible alternative easily
understood by vast numbers of Colombians who migrate
to Venezuela. By intervening in Venezuela, by
supporting US and its local coup-makers, Uribe hopes
to undercut the political appeal of revolutionary
politics, whether it takes the form of electoral,
guerrilla and /or social movements.

The most immediate purpose of the Uribe doctrine is to
defeat the 20,000 person guerrilla armies which
control or influence half of Colombia's territory. The
purpose of the recent interventions is to pressure
neighboring governments to ally themselves with the
Colombian death-squads in a regional campaign to
resolve the Colombian elites internal problems ­ i.e.
the decimation of the opposition to US regional
domination. The bombastic "anti-terror" international
propaganda campaign of the Uribe regime is an
admission of the failure of its internal
counter-insurgency campaign. Uribe's accusations that
the Venezuelan State is "protecting" or "providing
sanctuary to terrorists" is patently false. Uribe
provides no systematic evidence. The real purpose is
to blackmail the Venezuelan state ­ or its most
malleable sectors ­ into abdicating their role as a
neutral peace mediators and submitting to the dictates
of the Colombian-US security apparatus.

The Uribe regime has been widely recognized as one of
the worst practitioners of state terrorism in the
world.

Tens of thousands of peasants, social and human rights
activists, trade unionists and journalists have been
murdered by the security forces ­ the military
directly, or via the state financed paramilitary
groups. Every day of every year, scores of peasants
and critics of the regime are slaughtered. State
terror is the defining characteristic of the Uribe
regime and its US military advisory and military
mission.

Uribe who sends 130 paramilitary forces to terrorize
Venezuela, supports a failed violent coup and then
provides asylum and material support to the exiled
senior members of the coup and who blatantly bribes
Venezuelan soldiers to betray their country to
perpetuate a kidnapping, accuses Chavez of harboring
terrorists and calls for an "international conference"
on "terrorism". Uribe's purpose in calling for a
regional conference is not to discuss the state
terrorism which is endemic to and embedded in his
regime (with US backing), but to justify the Uribe
doctrine of unilateral intervention and to mobilize
other regional US clients in support of its internal
war and to pressure the Chavez regime to subordinate
itself to Colombia's security doctrine.

Chavez has recognized the growing security threat
posed by the kidnapping and has terminated
state-to-state economic and military projects and
recalled his ambassador from Bogotá. He has proposed
to Uribe a bi-lateral meeting of heads of state to
resolve differences with regard to the kidnapping and
related incidents. But no amount of diplomatic
maneuvering on the part of Venezuela's foreign
ministry nor aggressive propaganda campaign by the
Colombian security state can obviate the fact that the
Colombian state is bent on a course of direct military
confrontation with Venezuela.
Implication of Uribe Doctrine

The political and military implications of the Uribe
Doctrine are an extreme departure from the recognized
norms of international law and closely approximate the
belligerent practices of imperial satraps. If all
countries were the apply the Uribe Doctrine we would
face a world of constant wars, conquests and prolonged
liberation struggles throughout Latin America.

Explicit in the Uribe Doctrine's claim to militarily
intervene across national borders is a state of
permanent belligerency. This policy means that every
Latin American country must limit its sovereignty
according to the Colombian definitions of "national
security". This is clearly unacceptable to any
independent country, like Venezuela, though the
Gutierrez regime in Ecuador has accepted the role of a
"second level client" , of the Uribe regime which in
turn is a client of the US.

Equally serious, the Uribe Doctrine rejects recognized
frontiers, meaning that it arrogates to itself the
right to cross national boundaries at will without
consulting the countries whose borders it violates. It
is a short step from not recognizing borders and
national boundaries to annexing adjacent regions for
"security" or economic reasons. Colombia has in the
recent past (1992) nearly provoked a major war by
sending its warships into Venezuelan waters. Uribe's
notion of an international ideological war without
frontiers is an exact replica of the Bush imperial
project, translated into the Andean region. Clearly
Uribe aspires to play a sub-imperial role in the
Northern region of South America under US tutelage.

The Uribe Doctrine stands as a stark rejection of all
United Nation's principles and in violation of
international law-which, however, has already been
weakened by the acquiescence of most of the major
Latin American countries in the US-led invasion of
Haiti, the kidnapping of its elected leader (President
Bertrand Aristide) and the presence of Latin American
colonial occupation forces on the island.

The Colombian threat to Venezuela's sovereignty has
been taken by Venezuela's rightwing opposition as a
welcome intervention. This was manifest in the
Congressional debates following the kidnapping of
Granda when opposition members of congress condemned
the Venezuelan government's defense of national
sovereignty and justified Uribe's intervention in
Venezuela.

Washington has provided more military aid to Colombia
than all the rest of Latin America combined, and only
second to Israel in the world. The US strategy
revolves around defeating the guerrilla movement as a
first step toward consolidating power in the Andean
region and the upper Amazon basin. Once secured this
region would become a springboard toward invading and
taking over Venezuela and its oil fields. The US,
through Uribe, has tripled the size of the Colombian
armed forces over the past few years to over 267,000
troops. It has vastly increased its aerial firepower
(combat helicopters and fighter planes) and provided
the most advanced technological weaponry to detect and
track guerrilla movements. Yet the strategy, while
massacring thousands of peasant sympathizers and
displacing millions of others, has failed to gain any
strategic military advantage over the guerrillas. As
long as the Colombian regime is tied down by the
guerrilla resistance, it can only play a limited role
in any military invasion of Venezuela. For Uribe to
engage in a US-sponsored invasion of Venezuela is a
very risky proposition, opening a large swathe of
territory for a guerrilla offensive

The kidnapping of Granda is only the "dress rehearsal"
of a larger project of escalating provocations to test
the loyalty, discipline and effectiveness of the
Venezuelan security system. Washington is probing to
see how far it can push Venezuela in surrendering its
sovereignty and control over its borders.

Uribe and Washington's effort to drive a wedge between
the popular resistance in Colombia and the Chavez
government by using the "terrorist issue" as a
political club has, in part, backfired , arousing a
potent undercurrent of nationalist sentiment in
Venezuela, while seriously jeopardizing important
sectors of the Colombian economy, including elite
classes which normally back Uribe.

Washington and Uribe's proposal for an international
conference to discuss the issue of terror is based on
their knowledge that most of the Latin American
regimes today are eager to serve US interests. During
the previous period of sustained economic and
political warfare against the elected Chavez
government by the authoritarian right, Brazil's Celso
Amorin organized a group of countries calling
themselves "The Friends of Venezuela" made up of
hostile neo-liberal Ibero-Americans leaders, including
ex-Presidents Aznar of Spain and Bush of the US (who
both supported the failed military coup), Fox of
Mexico and Lagos of Chile (notorious free marketers)
and, of course, Brazil which gave equal political
standing to the Venezuelan rightwing opposition as to
the elected government. Chavez rightly rejected the
mediation of such "friends".

Today Lula offers his services once again to "mediate"
between an international aggressor and a sovereign
country. Except for Cuba, not a single Latin American
client regime has condemned Uribe's aggression or,
worse, spoken out clearly in opposition to his
doctrine of extra-territoriality. President Chavez is
clearly aware of the pitfalls of meeting in an
"international summit" dominated by hostile
neo-liberal, pro-empire regimes that have already
accepted and submitted to the Bush-Uribe
anti-terrorist doctrine.

Chavez is absolutely correct to counterpoise the
notion of a bilateral forum in which the focus is on
Colombia's intervention, where the issues of Uribe's
policy of state terrorism could become part of the
public debate on "terrorism". Of course, Washington
will "advise" Uribe to refuse. Chavez could then
advise his foreign minister to take the matter to the
UN General Assembly as a matter of urgent importance
of peace, security and national sovereignty. Chavez
has already retaliated to continued US overt
aggression by signing oil export and investment
agreements with China, Russia, Latin America and
Europe. Shutting off imports of Colombian agricultural
imports could stimulate a more intensified effort to
promote local agricultural production, push for a more
expeditious agrarian reform and greater public
investment in local food production.

The kidnapping of Granda and the subverting of a few
Venezuelan officials can serve as a wake-up call for
the Venezuelan leadership to the real threats to
national sovereignty which emanate from the US-backed
Uribe doctrine. The threat is real, it is systemic and
it is immediate. President Uribe has the backing of an
imperial power but Chavez has the backing of the
overwhelming majority of Venezuelans and the fact that
they will be willing to fight to defend their land,
their government and their right to live as a
sovereign people. The question of Venezuelan
sovereignty is now not simply a question of diplomatic
maneuvers but of organizing the mass of the
Venezuelans into becoming a military deterrent to any
armed aggression.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at
Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year
membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the
landless and jobless in brazil and argentina and is
co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). He can be
reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu



> ====DEFEND HUGO CHAVEZ!===DEFEND VENEZUELA!====
> =====DEFEND THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUATION OF
> VENEZUELA!=
>
> A city-wide planning meeting will be held to
> organize a mass mobilization to support the people
> and
> the government of Venezuela. All are welcome! This
> is a critical moment in the history of the
> Bolivarian
> Revolution of Venezuela!
>
> When? Thursday, February 3, 2005 --- 7:00 p.m.
> Where? Echo Park United Methodist Church
> 1226 North Alvarado at the corner of Alvarado
> and Resevoir.... one long block north of the corner
> of
> Alvarado and Sunset on Alvarado.
> ~~~~ Please recruit trusted individuals and groups
> to
> be a part of this planning~~~~~~~~ Venezuela is
> under
> attack and U.S. intervention is escalating.~~~~~


=====
CISPES
Committee In Solidarity With The People of El Salvador
8124 West 3rd Street L.A. Ca. 90048
323-852-0721
Founded: 1980 - 23 Years of Solidarity