Fearing that I have put an early emphasis on this one issue, hopefully I will write on something else soon, but I wanted to just get in this last word taken from a
comment I made over at
Latin American News Review.
The attack on FARC was for international consumption as much as it was for Colombian - Uribe's support within Colombia is (rightly or wrongly) fairly strong and killing a FARC leader was not necessary to maintain a tough on FARC image.
There are two contexts that are significantly more important: first the hostage releases and second how international law views the conflict within Colombia. Both of these issues are indeed connected back to Chavez since he has both declared the FARC to be a belligerent rather than "terrorist" group as well as being instrumental in getting hostages released most recently.
The hostage issue was a huge embarrassment for Uribe and had it continued it had the potential to undermine his strong hand tactics and present an alternative path towards peace. Internationally Colombia was facing a lot of pressure to pursue this path, one which Uribe does not want to take because of his commitment to a heavily militarized society and government (rightly or wrongly - another discussion to have).
More importantly, and where the US comes in, is how international law is interpreted. The US has a vision of the world that it can strike anywhere that it wants because it has labeled a group a "terrorist". Colombia was testing this vision of the world out, whether or not the US told or encouraged them to do it does not matter specifically to this point since if successful it would have reinforced the US version of international law. This was a huge failure for Uribe, and it turns out it doesn't matter that the FARC is a "terrorist" group, the region would not tolerate the attack on another country's sovereignty for any reason.
It made Colombia look like a militant state to other countries in the region. Since internally Uribe' popularity couldn't improve much, it may have been a neutral result. Internationally, with the potential interruption of fairly popular hostage releases and the disregard of international laws concerning sovereignty Uribe lost a lot of respect. He was smart enough to back down, and I'll give him credit there.
I do not know enough about Chavez's internal problems and have a hard enough time trying to read through the very strong anti-Chavez bias that permeates the global North's media to comment about the other points. But regionally - if any thing - Chavez's position was validated by his regional neighbours and his ally Correa earned a lot of regional prominence (and I suspect respect), hardly a loss to the "Bolivarian Alternative". And as trade resumes, Colombia realizes that it depends on Venezuela's oil money to buy its legal products, and it may not be such a bad thing that the purchasing power of the lower class Venezuelan has increased the demand for Colombian agricultural and food products. And just to put it out there, Venezuela might be providing an alternative exit to the war on drugs through increased demand for legitimate Colombian exports. A novel idea that probably is worth exploring.
It is really disappointing that the dominant international media fro the global North has not been interested in the impact this incident had on international law or even to investigate the internal civil war within Colombia. More often than not, it was a chance to write about how bad Chavez is doing recently and how Chavez was making the world a less safe place. There has been a great revision of events, issues, and problems to present a narrow vision of Latin America and its regional politics. What has been frightfully lost is any analysis in the Global North on how a peaceful resolution may be reached. If any thing, there is a hopeful sign or message in the conclusion of the conflict: Latin America has strong regional ties committed to regional stability (something we could not have said for the past decade) that transcends the political spectrum. Economic ties that have been increasing across countries in the past decade making regional peace and co-operation extremely important. And as an aside: the economic ties are based upon models of trade designed in Latin American and not by Washington (I am strongly against the FTAA model). Even between Colombia and Venezuela, the polar extremes of Latin American politics, there is a recognition of economic dependence that is breaking down the North-South trade. The increase of Venezuela's economy and purchasing power through the redistribution of oil wealth to lower classes has meant a sharp increase in demand for Colombian products, and the closing of the border while difficult for Venezuela was potentially more disastrous for Colombia. The resolution of the conflict highlighted a silver lining of greater regional integration and the necessity for co-operation. And to get my jab in against the anti-Chavistas, this has been part of the goal of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution from day one and behind the commentary about Chavez's rhetoric one, there is the reality that Venezuela has played an important role in financing (directly and through trade) and organizing (ALBA, Mercosur, etc.) this regional integration.
NACLA News has an article on the stalled peace negotiations between Colombia and ELN, check it out:
Negotiating Peace in Colombia: A Missed Opportunity?
