By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS -- A former Venezuelan defense and foreign minister warned Thursday that his country could face defeat in a war with neighboring Colombia, and he claimed the reason for this was that Washington would actively back Bogota in an armed clash with Caracas because of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's policy of declared hostility towards the United States.

In a lengthy interview with the conservative national broadsheet newspaper, El Universal, Fernando Ochoa Antich said Venezuela would "lack the military capacity" in an armed conflict with Colombia. For that reason, he was reported to have added, Venezuela had to avoid a confrontation and pursue "prudent policies" to lessen tension and resolve disputes by "peaceful means, negotiations and agreement."

The latest in an ever longer series of spats between Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was sparked by the Colombian leader's agreement allowing the United States to use 7 military bases in his country. Ochoa Antich cautioned that the "alliance" between Colombia and the United States could mean that Washington might take Bogota's side in a conflict with Caracas.

Chavez has condemned the agreement on the bases as a threat by the "Empire" -- his preferred epithet for the United States -- to the region as a whole and Venezuela in particular. For years, the populist nationalist leader has insisted that senior United States officials -- whom he has never named -- were plotting to asassinate him, invade Venezuela and seize its oil wealth. Washington denies any such idea is or ever was afoot.

Ochoa Antich implicitly endorsed Washington's repeated denials, but did so on the grounds that the military bases agreement with Colombia was aimed at strengthening the battle against drugs barons rather than putting a brake on "Chavista expansionism." As to that last factor, he went on, "the United States still hasn't given it the importance that it has in reality."

According to this thesis, Chavez wasn't actually the target of the agreement on United States use of the bases. "The massive presence of the North American military at the bases doesn't represent a threat against Venezuela, unless there's a conflict between Venezuela and Colombia," Ochoa Antich argued.

"To suppose that this military presence is going to put in peril the Bolivarian Revolution is an exagerration of President Chavez that has no substance in reality," he continued. "The Fourth Fleet and bases in the Caribbean are enough to intervene against Venezuela if that's the case. The objective of the bases is the struggle against drugs trafficking."

Ochoa Antich said that Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe had used the media to offend each other during the last two or three years, although he felt this was true "perhaps more of Chavez than Uribe."

In his view, Colombia had come to be seen in Caracas as an obstacle to consolidating the "expansionist" foreign policy of a Venezuelan government that wanted to promote "revolutionary action" in the neighboring country.

As a result, he continued, the normal mechanisms for resolving differences no longer functioned. There was a "mutual isolation" between the two leaders and he doubted that the will to end the crisis existed.
The former minister warned that the disuse into which peaceful means of resolving disputes had fallen carried the risk that the latest spat could get out of hand. This, he said, was something that the Venezuelan High Command had to take into consideration and "evaluate the problem in an objective manner."

The two countries' military capabilities used to be similar to each other and they counted on the neutrality of the United States between the two, and in turn this had made for the avoidance of conflict, Ochoa Antich argued. But that had now changed because of "Chavez's wrong foreign policy and his exagerrated confrontation with the United States," he added.

Venezuela had always been an ally and oil supplier of the United States "but at this moment is considered an enemy of United States interests," he said. In contrast, Colombia had strengthened its "political and military alliance" with the United States. For Ochoa Antich, the upshot of that was a confrontation between Venezuela and Colombia was not only between the two countries but one in which Venezuela was against Colombia and the United States.

In the past, economic limitations had constricted the ability to wage war for any length of time in the cases of both Colombia and Venezuela, he argued. But in the event of war now, he claimed, Colombia would be able to sustain a war effort "indefinitely" given that its military capacity would be "multiplied by North American support."

Amid all his dire tidings about where a war could lead, Ochoa Antich suggested that tension between the two South American nations had eased with the prospect of a possible mediation by President Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil. However, Chavez is deemed to have subsequently closed the door on any such option.

Similarly, speculation that he might be softening his approach as tension mounts drew a strong rebuff from Chavez.

On Wednesday night, Chavez insisted he hadn't changed his position. Chavez insisted that he'd always sought peace with Colombia and blamed "media intrigue" for the reaction to his call on the people last Sunday to prepare for war.

"We, the Venezuelan military, are pacificists and we prepare ourselves for war precisely to assure the peace," he declared. "That's what I said." His words had been misconstrued as a call to war with Colombia, and that was not what he had meant.

Chavez, for once, was clearly not going to be persuaded by Ochoa Antich's rationalization of the agreement on the bases. He abruptly dismissed the idea that these were to be used by the United States to combat drugs trafficking as "false" and "a lie." The accord, he claimed, was intended to "put a spoke in the wheel" of South American integration.

Another former defense minister, Retired General Raùl Salazar, evidently hadn't thought about the possibility of the United States backing Bogota. He predicted that any armed exchange between Venezuela and Colombia would be short-lived, and wouldn't last five days because the two countries couldn't afford to finance it for any longer.