Venezuela's no show, show of force

Guardian:

...

On Venezuela's frontier yesterday, a landscape of valleys and gritty towns, the issue was not trust but visibility. San Antonio, a main border crossing, had yet to see a single soldier or tank.

The Simón Bolívar bridge over the trickle that is the River Táchira was watched by the usual handful of national guardsmen in olive green uniforms. "Just us," shrugged one. A few dozen soldiers in trucks were spotted heading into northern Táchira but local reporters who staked out vantage points across Táchira, Zulia and other border states waited in vain for other signs of reinforcements. It was easy for a 1,400-mile frontier to swallow up 9,000 men but there was widespread doubt that the stated deployments were real. A show of strength traditionally requires a show.

"We are reinforcing the frontier. We are on alert," said Vicente Cañas, the Chávez-aligned mayor of San Antonio. Where were the reinforcements? "Out there, you know, in the fields."

When Venezuelan media speculated about deployment locations the military accused them of treason, hardening suspicion that apart from the occasional truck the reinforcements were bluster.

The absence of visible deployments helped explain why, in dozens of interviews on the frontier, not one person thought conflict was likely. "No, no chance," said Luz Yañez, the Colombian consul. Diplomats and analysts agreed.

...

Despite his display of diplomatic clout it is Chávez who may emerge the loser. His theatrical response has gone down badly with Ecuadoreans as well as Colombians, according to opinion polls, and most Venezuelans seem bemused and dismayed.

Why, it has been asked, pick a fight over an incident which happened on the far side of the Andes? And why hold a silent tribute for the dead Farc commander but not the plane crash which killed 46 people in Venezuela the previous week? More pressingly, why restrict Colombian food imports when Venezuela is chronically short of dairy products?

A cartoon in the opposition Tal Cual newspaper captured the mood: a mother hugs a young soldier and tells him to be careful on the border. "I'll write every day," he says. She brightens. "Could you also send me milk and eggs?"

...


There is a high probability that the mobilization was more bluster than fact. I doubt that Venezuela could organize a movement that quickly. If they some got it organized, the normal friction of military movements would have overwhelmed it before it could move that quickly into place.

Colombia is the real winner in this confrontation. It managed with a relatively small force to eliminate an enemy leadership target and get its neighbors who have been harboring the narco terrorist to expend time, money and effort on a meaningless mobilization that demonstrated their incompetence while Colombia's forces sat back and watched in amusement.

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