Emergency.Blog

War Drums in Latin America

Posted 04 Mar 2008

War Drums in Latin America

Monday, Mar. 03, 2008

By TIM PADGETT

Few world leaders rattle a saber as flamboyantly as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez does. On Sunday, in a piece of vintage Chavez theater, he ordered thousands of troops and tanks to the border with Colombia after that country's military had ventured a mile into Ecuador on Saturday to kill Raul Reyes, a top commander of Colombia's FARC guerrillas. The left-wing Chavez called conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe a "criminal" and a "lapdog of the U.S. empire," warning ominously that "this could be the start of a war in South America."

Don't bet on it.

Sure, Chavez and Uribe, two of Latin America's most outsized egos, loathe each other. Each has significantly fattened his military arsenal in recent years, and tensions have rarely been this high between their countries. Nor are they alone on the Latin street when it comes to martial upgrading: Brazil's 2008 federal budget, for example, includes a 53% increase in military spending, leading many to wonder if Latin America is undergoing an arms race not seen since the heyday of military rule across the continent. But that doesn't mean that either Chavez or Uribe can afford an armed conflict.

There are at least six reasons to doubt that the bluster could morph into bullets...

-- Source/continues at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1719158,00.html

[The views expressed above are those of the author and/or publisher and do not necessarily represent those of ERRI or EmergencyNet News. They are presented to give our readers alternative viewpoints from around the world and to encourage discussion and further study of important topics.]