Early in March 2008 the Government of Venezuela announced that it would begin to block imports from Colombia in response to a Colombian military incursion into Ecuador in pursuit of anti-Colombia FARC guerrillas allegedly hiding in Ecuador. At the same time, both Venezuela and Ecuador sent soldiers to the borders of Colombia, while the United States, through its then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, issued a statement supporting Colombia, insisting that every state, “needs to be vigilant about the use of border areas by  terrorist organizations. At that time, the OAS while not openly condemning Colombia, did describe the incident as a violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty.

Since then relations between Colombia, Ecuador, and in particular Venezuela have meandered between bad and worse. Suggestions of a slight improvement with the election of a new President in Colombia had recently surfaced. But any such prospect has been set back by the decision of the Government of Colombia, in the dying days of the Alvaro Uribe government, to call a special session of the OAS Permanent Council and launch, through a dramatic display of photographs, an accusation against Venezuela of permitting the continuation of operations by FARC guerrillas against Colombia from Venezuelan territory. In response President Hugo Chávez has broken off diplomatic relations with Venezuela, a decision described by a US State Department spokesman as “petulant,” asserting that “Venezuela has clear responsibilities” since “Colombia has put forward serious charges” which “deserve to be investigated.”

The whole incident seems however, to have been regretted by many members of the OAS Permanent Council, and they, including Brazil, Mexico and Chile, and St Kitts & Nevis representing Caricom, issued a statement asking for a resumption of dialogue and cooperation between Colombia and Venezuela while insisting, according to an OAS press release, on “the urgent necessity to combat drug trafficking and terrorism on a united front, so that America can continue to be a continent of peace.”

There has been much speculation on the reasons for this flare-up between Colombia and Venezuela. While President Uribe has gained much credit at home for pursuing and routing a substantial element of the FARC, it is claimed that a consequence of his domestic success has been a fleeing of FARC forces over the borders to Venezuela and Ecuador, thus creating a crisis of Andean-wide dimensions. The United States has been instrumental in supporting Colombia in its efforts, leading President Chávez and President Correa of Ecuador to accuse the US of intervention in their, and other countries’ affairs, while supporting the Colombians diplomatically. And in recent years, including in the present dispute, President Chávez has accused the US of using Colombia to portray Venezuela as a harbourer of anti-Colombian terrorist groupings. The Venezuelans see this as the Americans’ way of justifying a future intervention against Venezuela, aimed at stopping Chávez’ Bolivarian socialist revolution.

But there is also an interpretation making the rounds that President Uribe, in passing on the presidential baton to his former Defence Minister, Mr Manuel Santos, has felt that Santos was already going too far in recent remarks suggesting that there exists a basis for some kind of Colombia-Venezuelan rapprochement in the near future. For coupled with this, before the accusations by Uribe of Venezuela permitting new harassments by FARC elements on the Venezuelan side of the border, President Chávez had announced his intention to attend the inauguration of Santos, and the London Economist quoted him as saying that he “had a lot of faith” that Venezuela’s “relations with Colombia…would begin to change” after Santos’ assumption of office. This interpretation suggests that President Uribe has deliberately put a spoke in his successor’s wheel, possibly feeling that continued support from the United States depends, in part, on keeping the fires of the dispute burning.

It is also suggested, however, that Chávez’ continuing mixture of accusations of intended American intervention, with charges of American complicity with other Latin American and European nations as a base for destroying the Bolivarian Revolution, has become more intense in recent years, as President Chávez has had to face substantial opposition from private sector and middle-class interests against his socialist programme.

In this view, Chávez is content to use alleged external threats to maximize the cohesion of his support at home. Recently, the President has accused the Government of the Netherlands of supporting US interference and intended intervention (whether direct or by proxy), by permitting the installation of an American facility in nearby Curaçao and allowing surveillance flights from it over the Caribbean area, on the pretext of inhibiting the movement of narcotics from the Andean region, since Venezuela has now become major location for the transmission of narcotics northwards through the sub-region. Chavez’ allegation has, of course, a hint of a wider NATO complicity, a charge which he might well feel would have greater positive salience for himself, within Venezuela. Caricom officials will be aware that Chávez, in a speech made in Copenhagen, Denmark in December last year, asserted that both Curaçao and Aruba lie within the territorial water limits of Venezuela.

It is probably the case that while some larger countries like Brazil, Mexico and Peru would not at this point wish to be seen as siding with the US, or even the outgoing Uribe, in this present contretemps, their wish would be for a persistent resort to continuing diplomacy in this Venezuela-Colombia affair, with as little opportunity given to Chávez to engage in sabre-rattling across the hemisphere. Eyes are now fixed on a deteriorating economic situation in Venezuela itself, attributed not simply to the recent recession, but to what are perceived as intemperate economic decisions by the President in pursuit of his Bolivarian socialism. For whereas Brazil, Mexico and Peru have experienced quite substantial economic growth between 2009 and 2010, Venezuela’s economy has continued to lag seriously with a decline in gross domestic product of 5.9% into the first quarter of this year.

While Chávez has made substantial efforts to protect the lower economic sectors with highly subsided food supplies, it would appear that a continuing situation of stagflation (price inflation combined with production stagnation) is likely to lead to an increasingly tense political situation in the country, and increasing opposition to the President from the middle and upper classes. And according to some analysts, such a situation is likely to induce him to intensify disputes with neighbours, in order to maintain some modicum of support at home.

Much responsibility lies in the present situation among the Andean nations, and the periodic collision that it brings with the United States, whether feigned or real, on the diplomacy of the larger Latin American countries within the framework of the OAS, and of the newer institutions like the Union of South American States (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CALC). As these states give increasing priority to consolidating new economic gains deriving, in part, from a change in circumstances of the global economic environment, it surely suits none of them, nor our Caricom countries, to have present political contentions, spurred essentially by the narcotics trade and the war on it, spill into the wider hemisphere, and certainly not into Caribbean waters.