Sunday, September 13, 2015

Closing the Southwest Front

Venezuela and Colombia have restored ties, lowering the possibility that Venezuela's Maduro might lash out at Colombia to distract his increasingly desperate citizens suffering under the ruin that is Venezuela today. The Netherlands should check their ammo.

This is good news:

The foreign ministers of Colombia and Venezuela agreed to renew diplomatic contacts that had been interrupted by an ongoing border crisis between the two neighbors.

Ambassadors from each country had been recalled in late August after tensions over the crisis boiled over.

However, Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin and her Venezuelan counterpart, Delcy Rodriguez, failed to agree on a meeting of their respective presidents to fully resolve the crisis, according to a joint statement.

I didn't think Colombia made sense as a foreign threat to distract Venezuelans from the chaos that a Hugo Chavez-designed economy is producing.

Of course, Maduro still has the need to distract his people with a foreign threat less capable of inflicting a defeat on Venezuela. Restoring relations with Colombia might just be a matter of securing his southwest flank.

If I was in charge of Dutch military forces, I'd check my ammo just in case.