Earlier today, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered thousands of troops to the country’s border with Colombia. The reason? Colombia’s military killed “a top rebel leader.” The rebels in this case are, of course, the FARC; an incredibly ruthless organization. Aside from that, he also “ordered the Venezuelan Embassy in Colombia closed and said all embassy personnel would be withdrawn.”

Because the Colombian military kills a terrorist? A rebel? A traitor? What does that have to do with Venezuela, one wonders?

Well, one gets the impression that Chavez has just admitted that he “has allied himself with FARC.”

So Chavez and the FARC are allies. What does this mean? It means, as Ed points out: “The move threatens to bring the US into open conflict with Chavez for the first time. We have allied ourselves with the Colombian government to eradicate narco-traffickers as well as to help them eliminate the threat from FARC. The terrorist group still holds Americans, having kidnapped them years ago after a plane crash in territory under their control.”

What makes this even worse is that Colombia has a democratically elected government. Chavez, therefore, is threatening a very legitimate government with war.

I’m with Ed when he writes that “[i]f those battalions move across the border, Chavez had better expect a volley of cruise missiles at his command and control centers. The US will not allow Chavez to topple the elected government in Colombia. It would probably provide the only possible reason Washington would use military force against Chavez, and even this skeptical Congress would have little choice but to support the defense of an American ally under attack from a hostile nation.”

For now, Chavez doesn’t seem to be willing to back down. He called Colombia’s democratically elected and US backed government “a terrorist state” and he called the Democratically elected Colombian President Alvaro Uribe a “criminal.”

That’s the language of war.

Does Chavez want to expand his power in the region, if necessary by war?

For his people I hope he doesn’t. The West, and especially the US, won’t sit by idle if he invades Colombia.

Some commenters at Hot Air point out that Chavez may very well have decided to create this crisis due to domestic problems. They refer to the referendum he lost a while ago and to economic problems. I think that this is indeed very likely: as such, it would be wise for the West / the US not to exaggerate the response. Don’t let him divert attention away from his country’s democratic woes (which he caused). It would be wise for the West to exercise restraint. Only act if Chavez truly invades, and even then act forcefully, but don’t exaggerate the response.