Hugo Chavez has found another excuse to rattle his sabers against the United States:

President Hugo Chavez ordered tanks and thousands of troops on Sunday to the border with Colombia, accusing it of pushing South America to the brink of war by killing a top rebel leader on Ecuadorean soil.

Denouncing Colombia’s slaying of the rebel commander in a cross-border raid into Ecuador, Chavez said Venezuela will respond militarily if Colombia violates its border. He ordered Venezuela’s embassy in Bogota closed.

“Mr. Defense Minister, move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately — tank battalions. Deploy the air force,” Chavez said during his weekly TV and radio program. “We don’t want war, but we aren’t going to permit the U.S. empire, which is the master (of Colombia) … to come divide us.”

Chavez called Colombian President Alvaro Uribe “a criminal” and branded his government a “terrorist state,” likening it to Israel for its U.S.-backed attacks on militants.

In protest, Ecuador withdrew its ambassador from Bogota, ordered Colombia’s top diplomat expelled and ordered the mobilization of troops to the border with Colombia.

Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, said Colombia deliberately carried out the strike beyond its borders. “There is no justification,” Correa said Sunday night, snubbing an earlier announcement from Colombia that it would apologize for the incursion. [AP]

“No justification?” Columbia had plenty of justification considering a international terrorist group was using Ecuador’s territory to hide on and then infiltrate into Columbia to kill and kidnap civilians from. Chavez’s antics are not surprising, but what I do find interesting about this is how desperate the FARC is getting. The FARC used to control large swathes of territory in Columbia and now have to hide in Venezuela and Ecuador to conduct operations in Columbia. Plus the FARC is now trying to start negotiations with the Columbian government and using Chavez as a proxy in the negotiations. As we have seen plenty of times in the past that when the enemy asks for negotiations it is a sign of weakness. The FARC is weak now and fighting to stay alive and relevant which is proof that the Columbian military’s counter-insurgency strategy is working quite well under the guidance of US Special Operations Forces.

For those that haven’t already, I highly recommend reading Imperial Grunts by Robert Kaplan which goes into great detail the work being quietly done in Columbia with the US Special Forces. The success of the US Special Forces is a threat to Chavez because he wants to keep the unrest in Columbia going because a democratic and successful Columbia is a threat to the legitimacy of his own rule.

Expect plenty of more saber rattling from Chavez, but that is all it will be is empty threats because I fully believe and he probably knows this that an attack on Columbia from Venezuela would be something that would totally unite the country and would lead to disastrous consequences for Chavez.