Plan Colombia and Beyond

So there you have it: the same day that the chief of Southern Command says he wants to “keep that relationship going” with Venezuela, his boss – the defense secretary – compares Venezuela’s president to Hitler. (Talk about “old Europe.”) The day after the President calls Evo Morales to congratulate him on his election, the defense secretary calls that election “worrisome.”

This is a clear example of what happens when the White House (which heads the executive branch) fails to set out a clear policy about something: the policy ends up being up for grabs. We can conclude a few other things:

- Donald Rumsfeld just did a grave disservice to Venezuela’s opposition. Hugo Chávez has said publicly several times that the United States is either planning an invasion or seeks to assassinate him. These claims sound ridiculous to us, but no doubt help Chávez to rally his base, keep the opposition off balance, and justify policies like the formation of citizen militias. Every so often, some U.S. wingnut like Pat Robertson opens his mouth and makes Chávez sound credible before his domestic audience. Rumsfeld just did it again.

We can insist all day long that the United States has neither the will nor the resources to invade Venezuela. But a hard-core Chavista can reply that if the head of the Pentagon thinks Venezuela in the 00s looks like Germany in the 30s, then a U.S. invasion could be in the offing. Why not stop him now before he invades Paris?

- Officials are much more alarmed about Venezuela than about Bolivia, where most are trying not to give Morales a hard time, yet. The Bush administration is almost uniformly alarmed about Chávez, as Negroponte’s testimony indicates, though there doesn’t seem to be much consensus about what to do about him. (Other than to cut back on oil imports by 2025.)

- The State Department isn’t controlling the policy. Notice that none of last week’s public statements came from a State Department official. Since the mid-2005 departure of hard-line Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, the State Department has sought to avoid inflammatory public statements about Chávez or other Latin American leftists, instead expressing concerns off the record or multilaterally. This policy would do much to defuse tensions and silence Chávez’s invasion and assassination talk – if other parts of the executive branch would follow suit.

The State Department is in charge of implementing foreign policy, but it is the very top level – the White House – that must set that policy. That hasn’t happened; the policy toward Venezuela, Bolivia, and Latin America’s rising left remains unclear. The result is a confusing welter of mixed messages from loose cannons throughout the executive branch.

In the absence of a clear policy, Gen. Craddock’s words probably make the most sense. Let’s hope there are enough “chill pills” to go around.

P.S.: The State Department posted the overview of its foreign aid budget request for 2007 a few hours ago. A first glance at the summary tables indicates that the amount of aid requested for Colombia will remain about the same, but that Colombia’s Andean neighbors may be facing deep cuts in both military and economic aid.