Operation Balboa

Hugo Chavez, the leftist strongman President of Venezuela, has declared that the United States is planning to attack his country. He made the charge during in interview with Ted Koppel on the September 16th segment of the ABC news program, “Nightline.”

President Chavez’s declaration comes less than a month after televangelist Pat Robertson said on the August 22 broadcast of his nationally syndicated politico-religious program, “The 700 Club,” that Chavez should be assassinated.

When Chavez hinted that the U.S. plans to invade his country, “Nightline” host and interviewer Koppel asked whether he has any evidence of such plans. Chavez replied, “I'm telling you that I have evidence that there are plans…we have documentation: how many bombers to overfly Venezuela on the day of the invasion, how many trans-Atlantic carriers, how many aircraft carriers need to be sent…

“Recently, an aircraft carrier went to Curacao,” he continued. “They were doing maneuvers. The plan is called ‘Balboa.’”

“Recently” might be a slight exaggeration. Chavez is referring to Operation Balboa, a NATO war game which took place on the island of Curacao, just off the Venezuelan coast, in May, 2001. The main participants in the simulation were 36 Spanish Air Force lieutenant colonels from NATO’s General Air Command in Moncloa,, along with participants from other unknown NATO countries.

The game simulated the invasion of a “black zone” in Venezuela in which a “people’s movement” had endangered the legally constituted government as well as U.S.-owned property. The mock invasion, mounted after gaining hypothetical U.N. approval, was carried out paper and computer terminals by U.S. and allied NATO forces who were granted permission to use Colombian and Panamanian territory by the governments of those countries.

Despite NATO’s use of a projected “people’s movement” as cover, there can be little doubt that the true purpose of the exercise was to rehearse a scenario in which Chavez’s government is taken out by military intervention, and Venezuela’s oil extraction and refining infrastructure is appropriated, in the same manner as the oil fields of Tampico, Mexico were seized by U.S. Marines in 1916.

Chavez is certainly aware, however, that a U.S. invasion of Venezuela at this time is highly unlikely. With U.S. ground forces spread extremely thin in Iraq, the likelihood of American ground encroachment on the territory of any of this country’s real or purported enemies – Iran, North Korea, or Venezuela – would be nearly impossible. In addition, air strikes by themselves, if directed against Venezuela’s productive capacity, would defeat the entire purpose of any U.S. intervention in that country, which would be to gain possession of its petroleum resources.

This does not rule out the possibility of the U.S. attempting to foment an anti-Chavez coup inside the Venezuelan government, however, a possibility of which Chavez is most acutely aware, and it is indeed from that source that he faces the greatest danger, as has already been shown.