Will Venezuela Spark The Next Major Conflict In Latin America?
Military strikes in southwestern Venezuela and the resultant surge of refugees into neighboring Colombia have sparked renewed claims that the autocratic Maduro regime in Caracas is a major destabilizing force in South America. Those events occurred after an earlier escalation in regional tensions when Venezuela reasserted its territorial claims over Guyana to the disputed Essequibo region in the west of the former British colony. That dispute dates back to 1962 when Venezuela’s government asserted that the 1899 Paris Arbitral Award, which determined the South American country’s border, was null and void because of conflicts of interest and collusion between arbitrators. The Essequibo region, which contains around three-quarters of Guyana’s national territory, also includes the seabed where a slew of major oil discoveries was made in recent years.
Maduro’s last round of saber-rattling toward Guyana was
triggered by the International Court of Justice in December 2020 affirming its
jurisdiction to resolve the territorial dispute. In response, Maduro issued a
decree claiming Venezuela’s exclusive sovereignty to the waters of Guyana’s
west coast, which includes part of the offshore region where recent major oil
finds were made. Those significant petroleum discoveries have breathed life
into Guyana’s struggling economy which was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
They will see the impoverished former British colony become a leading regional
oil producer in six years. Caracas is clearly eyeing the vast petroleum wealth
held in Guyana’s territorial waters. Maduro is desperate to revive Venezuela’s
foundering oil industry and a shattered economy while fashioning a popular
distraction for everyday Venezuelans struggling to survive the world’s worst
peacetime economic collapse.
On 21 March 21, Venezuelan military and police units
commenced armed strikes against elements of the dissident 10th FARC Front,
which was one of the units of Colombia’s FARC guerillas who refused to
recognize the 2016 peace deal. Considerable uncertainty exists as to what has
triggered Caracas’ decision to commence military strikes against Colombian guerillas
in the border state of Apure near the municipality of La Victoria. Many
commentators, including Colombia’s defense minister, believe the conflict
relates to disputes over drug trafficking profits between the FARC dissidents
and Venezuela’s military. While there is a history of collusion between various
elements of the Venezuelan government apparatus in various illicit activities,
the ferocity and duration of fighting points to the driver being something
else. Apure is an important region for hydrocarbon exploration and production
in Venezuela containing the La Victoria and Guafita oilfields. Maduro, as part
of his strategy to rebuild Venezuela’s petroleum industry, which is the
petrostate’s economic backbone, is focused on attracting urgently needed foreign
investment to rebuild energy infrastructure and oilfields. He even went as far
as proposing private control of Venezuelan oil assets, something not considered
by Caracas since Maduro’s predecessor Chavez nationalized the oil industry as
part of his socialist Bolivarian revolution.
To attract the considerable foreign investment required,
tipped to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, Maduro needs Washington to
ease harsh U.S. sanctions, instituted under the Trump administration, that cut
Venezuela off from vital energy markets. What is undeniable is that military
actions in Apure have amplified Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis with it
estimated that around 5,000 Venezuelans fled the fighting for the relative
safety of Colombia. It is also contributing to greater instability in a region
that has long been the focal point for the illicit activities of Colombian and
Venezuelan non-state armed groups vying for control of lucrative smuggling
routes.
Those routes are not only used to traffic cocaine but also
for gasoline and petroleum stolen in Colombia, predominantly from the Andean
country’s pipelines. Colombia’s National Police estimates 35% (Spanish) of all
petroleum stolen from domestic pipelines ends up in Venezuela, underscoring the
porous nature of the border and the importance of controlling smuggling routes.
The sharp increase in illicit oil cargoes from Venezuela since strict U.S.
sanctions were enacted, combined with a lack of state control and dwindling oil
production makes the crisis-torn country the ideal location to dispose of
stolen crude oil. Colombia’s national oil company Ecopetrol claims that the
theft of crude oil from pipelines is rising, soaring 46% from a year earlier to
2,638 barrels per day. The popularity of stealing petroleum from pipelines is
easy to understand. Not only are Colombia’s pipelines very accessible, passing
through remote terrain, but oil theft is seen as a victimless crime which has
become increasingly lucrative because of higher oil prices.
There is a lengthy record of enmity between Caracas since
Chavez commenced his socialist Bolivarian revolution in 1999, and Colombia’s
national government. The autocratic socialist regime’s Maduro and his
predecessor Chavez have long been accused of harboring and aiding Colombian
socialist rebels, from the FARC and ELN, heightening tensions along the border.
A weak almost non-existent government presence along the Venezuelan and
Colombian frontier has led to a long history of lawlessness along the border,
which is illustrated by Caracas’ latest military strikes against armed
non-state groups around La Victoria. It is entirely plausible that Maduro is
attempting to build political capital with the Biden administration by removing
U.S. designated terrorists and criminals from its national territory in the
hope that sanctions are eased. The latest military actions in Apure will
strengthen Caracas’ presence in a region that possesses significant hydrocarbon
resources but has long been neglected by an overstretched state leaving it
subject to considerable lawlessness. When those developments are coupled with
Venezuela’s smoldering economic collapse and grinding humanitarian crisis, now
described as the world’s worst, it is clear the Maduro regime is a highly
destabilizing regional influence.
It is Colombia that is bearing the brunt of the turmoil
created by Venezuela’s economic crisis and the erratic actions of Maduro’s
autocratic regime. That is compounding the severe headwinds impacting Colombia,
the most perilous being a domestic security crisis and rapidly rising
coronavirus cases. Those events are weighing heavily on an already badly
damaged economy and Colombia’s vital petroleum industry, where investment, oil
production, and drilling activity is well below pre-pandemic levels. That
underscores the significant destabilizing effect the political, economic, and
humanitarian crises triggered by Venezuela’s near-collapse are having on its
immediate neighbors and northern South America as a whole. The situation is so
severe international thinktank the Council on Foreign Relations ranked
Venezuela as one of the top conflict risks to watch in 2021. Those factors
underscore the urgency with which the crisis in Venezuela needs to be resolved
to substantially reduce instability in an economically shattered and highly
unstable post-pandemic Latin America.
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