Colombian conflict poses growing threat to U.S.

Robert Windrem Senior investigative producer • E-mail

While there is "a great deal of posturing," as one senior U.S. intelligence official puts it, going on along the Andean Ridge, analysts inside and outside the U.S. government warn that the potential for war between Colombia and both Venezuela and Ecuador is very real.

The crisis began in earnest last weekend when Colombia carried out an air and land raid just over the border into Ecuador. The strike killed Raul Reyes, reputed to be the second-ranking commander of FARC, the Colombian rebel group designated a terrorist organization by the State Department, as well as 20 others, angering Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, and his ally, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former head of the U.S. Southern Command and former federal drug czar, says he has "serious, serious concerns" after hearing Chavez's anti-Colombian rhetoric and watching his troop deployments. 

McCaffrey pointed specifically to Chavez's use of political invective and insults against national symbols, which, he says, are "something South Americans don't do, at least not in public."

"I was personally shocked at the language," he said, noting that Chavez was threatening to use his new Russian-made fighter bombers against Colombia. "We are one stop short of miscalculation."

Additionally, high-ranking Pentagon officials have privately told friends that they believe the media has not paid enough attention to the crisis and have tended to portray it as typical Latin American bluster. As one high-ranking Pentagon official put it, while the Defense Department is not preparing for a war involving the three countries, he is "not unconcerned."

"We're not burning documents at the embassies yet," said a senior U.S. intelligence official who follows Latin America, "but that doesn't mean something can’t go wrong … this isn’t August 1914, but there is a potential for stupidity. When you have troop movements and an overlay of rhetoric, something could go amiss."

Julia Sweig, a respected Latin American expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, says that she, too, is taking the situation very seriously, especially since Chavez has made it clear that "commercial relationships are not holding him back." 

While last week’s raid obviously ignited the current crisis, Sweig believes that Chavez "crossed a red line" in mid-January when he called for the U.S. and Europe to remove FARC from their list of terrorist organizations and said Venezuela might recognize FARC as "an army of national liberation" — a direct affront to the Colombian government.

"Until then, I thought this was posturing, but now I have to say I am taking it seriously," said Sweig.  "I was in Colombia recently, and I hadn’t felt that degree of anxiety before. I have misjudged (Chavez’s) taste for doing provocative things, not just to the U.S., but to Brazil and Spain … simply put, maybe it isn’t posturing."

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