U.S. Explanation for Violating Venezuela Airspace Unconvincing

US Explanation for Violating Venezuela Airspace Not Convincing

It is somewhat difficult to buy the Pentagon’s version of the story that the S-3 Viking had “intermittent navigation problems”, got lost and then entered Venezuelan airspace. Any reasonably equipped single-engine plane contains navigation equipment that projects the point at which the airplane flies over colored points on a map indicating not only roads, rivers, lakes, cities and airports, but also restricted and provisional areas (as well as the official identification of the aircraft in question). It is a basic amenity for any novice pilot at the start of a career.

So, imagine an S-3 Viking. It is a jet used by Americans for more than 30 years (launching even from Aircraft carriers) for electronic surveillance of airspace, anti-submarine warfare, “electronic jamming” (disrupting the enemy’s electronic signals, as in radio transmissions and radar frequencies). It is endowed with inertial navigation, which does not depend on outside sources to guide its path (with radio support on the ground and satellites essential for GPS).

In the case of the plane lost over northern Venezuela, its mission, according to the Pentagon, was to assist in anti-narcotic combat. It is rather obvious that it is a spy plane and is not used for attacks. It is also obvious that the plane was flying very far from the area which, for decades, has been the vicinity of most concern to agencies battling drug-trafficking: the mouth of the Orinoco River. The S-3 Viking was operating out of the Dutch Antilles, about 250 kilometers northeast of central Venezuela surveying the area of Maiquetia – equipped, incidentally, with Raytheon radar.

It is yet unclear from news sources whether the plane was taking off or landing, whether it was following the Venezuelan coast and at what altitude it was flying (what is essential information is the type of mission or the type of deception). Venezuelan air-traffic control had a brief conversation with the American pilots, who claim to have been guided by tuning into Maquetia by air-control in the Dutch Antilles.

What is of interest here is not to determine whether or not the plane was spying on Venezuela (in the sense of testing its air-defenses) or whether an incompetent crew of American pilots (who, according to the Pentagon, were still in training) did not know where they were flying. What is of interest is that an incident such as this poses a serious threat these days, given the rearmament of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez’ ties to FARC guerillas.

However, we can certainly ask ourselves (and with good reason) just what

Americans are doing there. It is obvious that they are tending to an area they consider strategic, and this has been the case since the Cold War. Some will see the American presence as an imperial occupation, or as a threat to Chavez’ plans for Bolivarian socialism. I find the facts to be more prosaic: Venezuela was never of serious military concern to the “empire”, as Chavez is fond of referring to the US. And it probably still is not a threat – it seems that the Venezuelans were only aware that the plane was American when they heard someone speaking English over air-control frequencies.

Chavez is looking to play the role of the victim. A country is plunging and causing a great disturbance in South American. It seems incompetent and sufficient from the point of view of political economy to leave Venezuela with high inflation, shortage and outright lack of investment sitting on fabulous energy reserves. Venezuela will have to account for its bravado.

And afterward someone will see to it that another myth is created about yet another victim of the empire.