Jesse L. Anderson
The Organization of American States took a new step late last month that it hopes could lead to an end to the ongoing crisis in Venezuela—but that others fear may spark an armed conflict between Venezuela and its neighbor, Colombia. On Sept. 23, the OAS voted to take punitive actions against as-yet-unspecified members of President Nicolas Maduro’s government through a somewhat obscure mechanism: the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, also known as the Rio Treaty, or the TIAR by its Spanish acronym.
The TIAR is a mutual defense treaty among 19 states in the Western Hemisphere. Signed in 1947, it has a driving principle similar to NATO: an attack on one member country is an attack on all of them. The possibility of using the treaty against Maduro—so its members could cooperate on sanctions as well as on law enforcement against drug trafficking and other criminal activity tied to Caracas—had percolated throughout the summer. The first meaningful step toward the treaty’s activation came on Sept. 11, when 12 of its members voted in favor of invoking it. They decided to delay further discussion on the matter, however, until they came together in New York last week for the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.
The treaty has been activated on several major occasions in the past, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Falklands War. But this was the first time its members had turned to it since 2001, when the United States invoked it after 9/11.
The TIAR’s members cited four reasons for the treaty’s invocation against Venezuela. The first is the destabilizing effects that the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and the wave of refugees have had on surrounding countries, as some 4 million Venezuelans have fled the country. The second is the Maduro government’s connections to international criminal organizations, particularly narcotraffickers. Third is Maduro’s support for Colombian guerrilla groups based in Venezuela, which has not only created problems between Colombia and Venezuela but also goes against United Nations and OAS resolutions. And, finally, treaty members cited the sum total of human rights violations committed under Maduro.
But what specific measures would actually be taken against Venezuela remained to be seen. Among other possibilities, the treaty allows for a breaking of diplomatic ties, sanctions and even armed intervention. A first set of answers came on Sept. 23, with an OAS resolution that aims to “identify or designate persons and entities associated with the Nicolas Maduro regime involved in illegal activities of money laundering, illegal drug trafficking, terrorism and its financing, and linked to transnational organized crime networks, in order to use all available means to investigate, prosecute, capture, extradite, and punish the responsible parties and freeze their assets located in the territories of the TIAR States Parties.”
The resolution also states it will take the same series of actions against “persons who serve or have served as senior officials of the Nicolas Maduro regime and who have participated in acts of corruption or serious human rights violations.” The remainder of the resolution deals with how to go about identifying the actors who fall within these parameters and how to proceed with the resolution’s implementation. The resolution, which needed 13 votes in its favor to pass, was backed by 16 OAS members, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the United States, Peru and a Venezuelan delegation represented by opposition leader Juan Guaido. Only one member state, Uruguay, voted against it, while Trinidad and Tobago abstained and Cuba didn’t attend the meeting.
Among other possibilities, the invocation of the Rio Treaty allows for a breaking of diplomatic ties, sanctions and even armed intervention.The resolution is a clear victory for Guaido. Venezuela left the TIAR in 2012, around the same time that other leftist governments in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador also exited the treaty over criticisms that the it has become a tool for U.S. domination in the region. Guaido maneuvered to get Venezuela readmitted in July but was cautious about the implications. “The TIAR is not magic,” he told a rally of supporters in Caracas at the time. “It is not a button that we press and then tomorrow everything is resolved.” The treaty’s invocation, which he pushed for, gave further international legitimization to Guaido, who has been recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate interim president by dozens of countries in Latin America and Europe.
As for Maduro, he called the treaty’s invocation “despicable” and “aligned with the interests of the supremacist U.S. government.” At a press conference, Maduro’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, declared that, “We are ready to protect ourselves, we are ready to react. We will let no one trample sacred Venezuelan soil.”
Arreaza’s language reflects a concern, not only in Caracas but in many parts of Latin America, that the treaty’s invocation could precipitate a potential armed conflict between Venezuela and Colombia. Relations between the two neighbors have been strained for years now due to Maduro’s sheltering of Colombian guerilla groups, an issue that has become even more heated in the past month. In late August, dissidents of the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, released a video, widely suspected to have been filmed in Venezuela, in which they announced a return to arms three years after the signing of a landmark peace deal with the Colombian government. Their leader, the FARC’s former second-in-command, Ivan Marquez, was one of the chief negotiators in the Havana-based peace talks that led to the agreement, and his disavowal of it has sparked fears of a return to violence in Colombia.
Venezuela hosting dissident FARC rebels has not, for obvious reasons, sat well with Colombia. Less than two weeks after the video appeared, SEMANA, a prominent and widely respected Colombian current affairs magazine, published an article detailing secret documents that have apparently circulated within the Maduro government. The documents not only instruct Venezuelan armed forces to tolerate the presence of the approximately 2,000 Colombian guerillas in the country, but to actively assist them by “guaranteeing human rights and supplying basic hygienic and food-related necessities.” Perhaps more alarming, the documents also revealed that Venezuela has collected detailed information on targets within Colombia that would be of strategic interest during a military confrontation.
All this has added to the current atmosphere of tension verging on hostility. In the wake of the TIAR’s invocation, the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo published an editorial stating that while neither Venezuela nor Colombia “wants or is prepared for a conflict… any error or blunder can ignite a powder keg of unpredictable consequences.” It came after the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, warned that Colombia would “have full American support” in case of an attack from Venezuela. Given Maduro’s rhetoric, Abrams’ statement only served to heighten the suspicions of critics of the TIAR’s invocation who have deemed it an act of American-led interventionism.
But many others have downplayed the possibility that invoking the treaty could lead to a military conflict, including Colombian Foreign Secretary Carlos Holmes Trujillo. The overriding concern, then, is how Maduro reacts. Will he take it in stride? Or will some misstep indeed ignite a powder keg?