Analyse The Relations Between The Us, Colombia And Venezuela In The 21St Century.

Analyse the relations between the US, Colombia and Venezuela in the 21st century.

International relations have always been characterized by violent emotions, passions, speech, or actions in the entire world. Among those stormy relationships following countries cannot be skipped: The United States, Colombia and Venezuela. Since many years those countries keep very close political and economicalrelations. Trying to make sense of the relations between those three countries during just XXI century is not an easy task.

Relations between Colombia and Venezuela have always been very close; however they are not easy relations. Both countries for many years were part of The Andean Community, and since 1994 they were in free trade zone together with Mexico, which is known as G-3. Recently,however, Venezuela took steps to disengage relations with Colombia and in 2006 retired from The Andean Community and also from G-3 which according to Venezuela promotes harmful, neo-liberal economic regime. Despite those facts those countries are still leading trade partners of each other, particularly important are the links in the energy sphere. 12th of October 2007 presidents of Colombia,Venezuela and Ecuador inaugurated in Colombian Ballenas a gas pipeline supplying the Venezuelan raw material for Colombia. Therefore, Bogota proposed accession to the Bank of the South, development initiative proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Could be said that Colombia would became an important transit country if Chavez will send Venezuelan petroleum to China by pipeline running to thePacific coast, at the same time reducing dependence on exports of raw material to the U.S.

Currently, political relations of Colombia and Venezuela are even more complex and full of various intrigues. Ex-president of Colombia – Alvaro Uribe, the current president - Juan Manuel Santos and president of Venezuela – Hugo Chavez represent very different economic, social, and political views: Uribe andSantos are Conservatives, who promote free-market economy, close ties with the U.S. and they agree with the U.S. about the state of democracy in Venezuela, while Chavez stands in opposition to Washington and declares the construction of the "Bolivarian socialism". Many argue that Chavez's government is dictatorship and in April 2004 it came to a diplomatic dispute when Colombian senate consideredChavez’s government as a dictatorship and called the Organization of American States to impose sanctions on Venezuela under the Democratic Charter of the OAS. The Government of Venezuela took this as an unacceptable interference in its own affairs and called Colombian senators marionettes of Washington. One month later Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, announced the arrest of a group of Colombiansallegedly preparing to overthrow Chavez. It could be argued that relations between Venezuela and Colombia got worse since Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela.

The key problem in bilateral relations, however, is the presence of guerrillas from Colombia's largest rebel groups - Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and Army of NationalLiberation (ELN – Ejercito de Liberación Nacional) in the region bordering with Venezuela and also in its territory. In January 2005, was the first major dispute, when Colombian secret agents captured in Caracas, member of the FARC – Rodrigo Granda, who was traveling around the world looking for sponsors for FARC and spreading their ‘ideologies’ (www.semana.com). At the time Venezuela threatenedto break diplomatic relations because of invading on their territory and Uribe went to Venezuela to make a conciliatory visit.

The Colombian government says it has clear evidences that rebel leaders are sheltering in Venezuela, not only members of FARC, but also members of ELN, while Chavez argues that the FARC and ELN problem is an internal Colombian problem and for that reason his government...