In Latin America's Arms Race, Chávez Leads the Way
By Douglas Farah
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has added another $2.2 billion to his shopping spree of Russian weapons, buying 92 new tanks and sophisticated anti-aircraft systems.
Chávez's buying spree (he is up to some $6 billion in the past three years) has helped fuel a destructive arms race in the region. While Colombia has spent more, and received more from the United States, it is fighting not only a narco-Marxist insurgency (the FARC) but a host of other armed criminal drug trafficking, narco-paramilitary gangs that threaten the state.
No other country is facing anything similar, yet as Andres Oppenheimer notes in the Miami Herald,the region is now engaged in an arms race that is wasting precious resources as the continent gets poorer.
What is particularly interesting about Chávez's purchases is that they focus on anti-aircraft capabilities, the very think the FARC has asked Venezuela to provide, and a capability the rebels are desperately seeking. As multiple reports show, (and the Reyes computer documents clearly outline) the FARC has grown desperate for surface-to-air capacity because the military helicopters have been so lethally effective in the government's counter-insurgency campaigns. My full blog is here.