The Wrong Stuff: Hugo Chavez and the Grounding of the Venzuelan Air
Force
by Thomas Macias
Journal Article | January 11, 2012 - 12:33am
In the late twentieth century, communism, discredited as a political
ideology and as a means for economic and societal sustainment,
collapsed with great notoriety in Eastern Europe thus ending a half
century-old Cold War. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela didn’t get that memo.
In the early twenty first century, the notion of an authoritarian
government with unchecked control over the mechanisms and treasury of
the state, pre-occupation with the curtailment of individual freedoms
& the formulation a cult of personality, meets with global rejection.
This is perhaps most vividly demonstrated by “Arab Spring.” Hugo
Chavez didn’t catch that footage. Current day Venezuela is a case
study, a reverse one, on how not to manage governmental and societal
affairs. This assumes of course that the desired outcome is not the
evisceration of a country’s economy, democratic institutions, and
future prospects for generations-- all to ensure the political
longevity of a single individual and the financial aggrandizement of a
corrupt clique. As has been amply documented, the craters of twelve
years of Chavista economic mismanagement, most negatively impacted on
the poor, are strewn across the entire Venezuelan societal landscape.
Venezuela’s long-term prospects have been equally damaged by a gradual
process in which Chavistas assumed control, re-staffed, and redirected
previously independent institutional mechanisms to serve the ends of a
failed agenda. These now-conformist governmental bodies, led by
Chavez-appointed political hacks, serve to outwardly maintain a
democratic façade. Government organizations, where political orthodoxy
is prized over technical competence, have predictably become monuments
to Chavista dysfunctionality. A look at the demise of one such
institution, the Venezuelan Air Force, offers insights on the
mechanisms and gradual processes by which an authoritarian government
debilitated, usurped, and reconfigured a long-serving pillar of its
former democracy.
They were proud once, the Venezuelan Air Force. In the 1980s and
1990s the Fuerza Aerea Venezolana, or FAV, was arguably the best in
South America. In terms of hardware and professional development, the
FAV was a regional leader. Venezuela was one of the first countries of
the world to designate its Air Force as an independent service
and
established its Air Force Academy more than 30 years before the United
States did likewise.[ii] The FAV was the first Latin American Air
Force to be equipped with the F-16 [iii] and its inventory also
included such stalwart aircraft such as the C-130 Hercules, the CF-5,
OV-10, and Mirage 50. Military exchanges between the FAV and the US
Air Force, and indeed all branches of the Department of Defense, were
robust with both nations beneficiating from the interaction.
Venezuelan Air Force officers participated in exchange tours with U.S.
Navy units and members conducted Professional Military Education (PME)
at US War Colleges and service academies. Colonel Kristian Skinner,
USAF, was stationed as a Captain in Venezuela from 1995-1998. Colonel
Skinner first graduated from the FAV War College and then subsequently
served as an exchange line pilot with the Venezuelan Fighter Group 16
(F-16’s) in Maracay. Colonel Skinner recalls the emphasis the FAV
placed in showcasing the operational abilities of its aircraft and
personnel during its annual Air Force Day celebrations. This event
previously commemorated the establishment of the Venezuelan Air Force
Academy on 10 December 1920, and also served as the generally
recognized date of the founding of the FAV as a military service.
During the annual airshow, the FAV would open the gates of El
Libertador Air Base in Maracay, about 30 miles to the south of
Caracas. The FAV would then in spectacular fashion demonstrate its
full range of capabilities. As an aerial participant in two such
venues, Colonel Skinner remembers the airshows as being particularly
raucous affairs that were very popular with the Venezuelan populace.
The FAV would put aloft every flyable airframe in its inventory,
literally in excess of 200 aircraft. Featured displays would include
16-ship formations of F-16s, two-on-two mock dogfights, bomb-dropping
and strafing demonstrations. Air Refueling tankers, transport
aircraft, and simulated helicopter assaults would round out the
performance. Colonel Skinner believes that the December airshows were
was done with such realism that the Venezuelan populace had a
sophisticated appreciation of the nature of tactical air power. In
addition to the annual Air Force Day airshows, the apogee of the FAV
was most notably marked by two separate deployments of its F-16
aircrews to the US Air Force’s pre-eminent combat training exercise,
RED FLAG, held at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. The FAV was the
first Western Hemisphere Air Force to be invited to this event.[iv]
The legacy of the FAV during this period was such that even current
day Venezuelan Air Force members will privately acknowledge that its
service was a more capable and professional service during this
timeframe.
1992 was a seismic year for both Venezuela and the FAV. Similar in
method to Adolf Hitler’s 1933 “Beer Hall Putsch,” a violent and
premature attempt at seizing control of the elected German government
by lethal force, Army Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez was a key
instigator in an April 1992 coup d’état attempt by rogue Venezuelan
Army units.[v] Like Hitler, Chavez’s effort was short lived after
failing to gain traction with a non-participating military and
civilian populace. Both individuals were incarcerated following their
attempts where they continued to plan the advancement of their
political movements. On 27 November 1992, almost nine months after
Chavez’s failed coup, a second violent attempt was made to usurp
power. This action is generally characterized as an Air Force-led
event. With Air Force aircraft massed at El Libertador Air Base in
preparation for the annual Air Force Day celebrations, rebel pilots
whose co-conspirators were in communication with and encouraged by
Chavez in prison, bombed and strafed not only Miraflores Places (the
Venezuelan White House), but also two Air Force bases.[vi] Rebel Army
units again participated in the coup attempt. Like the April action,
the November 1992 insurrection never mobilized the civilian populace.
Importantly, institutionalist Air Force units remained loyal to
Venezuela’s elected government. Upon commencement of the rebel air
attacks two loyalist F-16 pilots hurried to El Libertador Air Base,
absconded with two alert aircraft, and took to the skies against rebel
OV-10s, Mirages, and Tucanos. The F-16s would ultimately shoot down
two of the coup pilots. Upon the realization that their assault on the
government was again failing, Air Force coup members, including its
acknowledged ringleader Gen Francisco Visconti, would attempt to
escape justice by scurrying from Venezuela to Peru in a C-130.[vii] In
their wake however lay 171 mortalities,[viii] the vast majority of
them civilian. Ultimately 27 November 1992 would mark the beginning of
the Venezuelan Air Force’s descent into its current, dishonorable
state as a broken ornament of an authoritarian government. Chavez’s
nine political lives would see him through his incarceration until
1994 when he secured an early release from prison. Again mirroring
Hitler’s ascension to power, Chavez rode a wave of popular discontent
fueled by dismal economic conditions in being elected Venezuela’s head
of state in 1999. Upon obtaining the Venezuelan presidency Chavez
would undertake a campaign to implant a socialist agenda on all of
Venezuelan society and to induce the Venezuelan military, including
the FAV, as vehicles to implement this vision.
The FAV’s previously close alignment with the US Air Force and its
traditional ethos as an independently-minded force have long been a
source of concern for Chavez, one that he has gone to great lengths to
address. Not being able to outright disband the Venezuelan Air Force,
the Chavista government has pursued a strategy to completely remake it
into a subservient organization. A major component in this planned,
methodical process has involved inducing or removing institutionalist-
minded officers from the service and replacing them with co-opted
loyalists. This method is most vividly exemplified by the current
practice of mass-promoting non-commissioned officers and junior
enlisted members directly to officer ranks[ix]. While many militaries,
including those of the U.S., have processes for identifying,
developing, and elevating exemplary enlisted members as commissioned
officers, Venezuela differs in that it extends this practice to
essentially its entire enlisted force. The current Venezuelan method
is to send a preponderance of its enlisted to a short-duration
political indoctrination course where they emerge holding officer rank
and the promise of higher pay. Such members are commissioned as
“Technical Officers.” The Air Force is rife with stories of formerly-
enlisted crew chiefs and maintainers who in short order achieved
greater rank than the pilots they previously served under. The
Technical Officer practice is understandably divisive as its intent is
to induce outrage among disaffected professional officers, those who
had to compete for Academy selection and then for career promotion.
These members then witness Technical Officers as they essentially are
handed the same ranks. In describing these Technical Officer
promotions as “acts of social justice,” Chavez has publically
encouraged military members with objections to the practice to leave
the armed forces.[x] Their positions are of course readily
replenished by non-qualified personnel. Another tactic is for military
members deemed ideologically questionable to be removed from their
positions and not given new assignments. These persons are essentially
relegated to indefinite home administrative leave (“en casa”) until
they are forcibly retired from the military. An apparent non-
consideration is that such members depart along with their
professional and technical experience.
It has been noted that half of the Venezuelan population is under 25
years old[xi] and thus most have little personal recollection of life
before Chavez. The government seizes on this in reissuing self-serving
versions of Venezuelan history. An oft-used tool in the remaking of
the Venezuelan military has been an Orwellian-like re-writing of
historical events to indoctrinate its newest military members.[xii] In
undermining the traditional FAV, the government has made great use of
the November 1992 ‘Air Force’ coup. For institutionalist officers the
participation by handful of rebel FAV members was a shameful and
painful event.[xiii] This is primarily because the rebels took up
arms, employed lethal force, and killed their brother servicemen.
Chavista propaganda has reshaped the telling of the coup such that it
is now portrayed as a civilian-military uprising inspired by social
justice and the need to liberate Venezuela from an entrenched
oligarchy[xiv]. The old FAV is no more. In its place as Venezuela’s
erstwhile Air Force is an entity Chavez renamed in 2006 as the
Bolivarian Military Aviation (Aviacion Militar Bolivariana or the
AMB). In 2009 Chavez officially changed the traditional celebration
date for the AMB from 10 December to 27 November in official deference
to the November 1992 coup[xv]. Appearing next to Chavez as he signed
the degree mandating the date change was Francisco Visconti. The AMB
experience epitomizes life in current day Venezuela where political
loyalty trumps all other professional attributes.
A study of current Venezuelan military doctrine demonstrates how the
AMB, and indeed the entire Venezuelan armed forces, have been used as
a mechanism for the indoctrination of Venezuelan society writ large.
Prior to the advent of Chavez, Venezuela’s Air Force doctrine was
modeled after that of the United States.[xvi] Again, because of
Chavez’s paranoia and desire to disconnect the Venezuelan military
from any U.S. influences, US military doctrine is now a forbidden
subject. In filling the doctrinal void the Venezuelan armed forces
now operate under what is purported to be a new Grand Strategy. This
‘strategy’ is more accurately described as a political indoctrination
effort to inculcate Venezuelan society with the government agenda.
Venezuelan’s new doctrine is organized around the tenets of ‘War of
Resistance,’ but the term itself is used interchangeably with other
monikers such as “Asymmetric Warfare”, “Fourth Generation Warfare”, or
“Civic-Military Insurgency.” This doctrine premises that the United
States acts out a desire to plunder Venezuela of its petroleum riches
and conducts an invasion of the country. In this scenario,
Venezuela’s Air Force and other conventional armed services confront
U.S. invading forces but ultimately succumb to U.S. numerical
superiority. Venezuelan Militia Forces take over the struggle and
along with the remnants of the conventional forces, meld with a united
civilian population in conducting asymmetrical, guerrilla, or
insurgency warfare against occupying forces. The Militia insurgents,
strengthened by the popular will of the Venezuelan populace,
eventually wear down the will of the U.S. forces in inducing their
withdrawal.[xvii] References to “War of Resistance” are everywhere in
evidence in any National or Government event involving Venezuelan
military personnel, such as in parades or air shows. The very overt
and constant references to War of Resistance are used to saturate and
immerse the Venezuelan populace with the message that every person, be
them a farmer, a student, or a truck driver, is a combatant in arms
against the imperial intentions of the United States.
More ominous than mere political indoctrination, War of Resistance
Doctrine also provides to Chavez the pretext or justification for
measures he has enacted to perpetuate himself in power. As the
Militia has been designated with a preeminent role in conducting
insurgency warfare against the U.S., War of Resistance Doctrine
legitimizes the government’s expansion of the Militia Forces and its
elevation as a military service on equal status to the other
Venezuelan armed forces. The Militia Forces offer Chavez a force that
operates apart from the conventional armed forces that he evidently
does not entirely trust. Although ostensibly to be used against U.S.
invaders, Militia forces are readily employable against a Venezuelan
civilian populace of the type that in 2011 tumbled Arab autocrats,
most recently Chavez’s Libyan ally Colonel Moammar Gaddafi. Seemingly
counterintuitive to the needs of insurgency warfare are Chavez’s
recent expenditure of billions of dollars for conventional Russian and
Chinese military hardware. As a flexible catch-all, War of Resistance
Doctrine magnanimously offers a role for Venezuela’s conventional
forces and its new hardware in being offered up as fodder to US forces
in the opening stages of a conflict.[xviii] The new armament more
importantly serves a practical and visceral purpose: they make for a
better parade. These new weapons systems displayed in public venues
and on government-mandated television broadcasts serve to enthrall and
rally supporters and to evoke emotional, nationalistic pride. These
military displays are also meant to convey an image of strength and
menace to oppositionists. As Venezuela’s supreme authority, Chavez
has a monopoly on expropriating military assets for his personal
political advantage, as he does with all government resources. These
are, needless to say, unavailable options to the Venezuelans who
oppose him. War of Resistance Doctrine provides one last,
indispensible tool. As all authoritarian mass movements need an epic
enemy, real or imagined, to rally itself around, War of Resistance
Doctrine is used to fan a sense of impending threat and urgency
originating from a self-selected, readily identifiably, enemy-by-
choice, the United States of America. To a U.S. or foreign observer
not predisposed by a prevailing political mindset to unquestionably
accept government rhetoric at face value, these efforts are comical.
It fundamental to understand however that, like all of Chavez’s public
displays or histrionics that appear nonsensical or buffoonish to
foreign observers, government messages are intended foremost for an
internal Venezuelan audience. This is the only group that really
matters to Chavez because it is these people that will ultimately
determine his length of stay in Miraflores Palace.
As an institution previously beholden to its Constitution and not to
an individual, the policies pursued during the twelve years of the
current regime and its co-opted leadership have proven disastrous for
the Venezuelan Air Force. Despite government bombast proclaiming
Venezuela as having the best pilots flying the best aircraft in the
world, the results of a deliberate government program to politicize
and neutralize the Air Force as a potential source of opposition are
plainly evident. By all accounts the AMB is a completely broken
force. Legacy aircraft are derelict. In 2006 the Venezuelan
government’s refusal to cooperate with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts
rendered the Air Force ineligible to purchase replacement parts for
its aircraft. [xix] The AMB has been reduced to attempting to procure
aircraft parts through illicit circumvention schemes.[xx] Despite the
advent and billions of dollars of investment in Russian and Chinese
aircraft, the only AMB aircraft which publically appear in any numbers
are recently acquired Chinese-made K-8 trainers. The condition of its
once-proud fleet of F-16s, formerly a source of national pride, is
heart-breaking to its current and former pilots. AMB F-16’s had been
previous participants at South America’s pre-eminent air exercise
CRUZEX held bi-annually in Brazil (the 2010 CRUZEX V iteration drew
fighter units from France, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, as well as USAF
F-16’s).[xxi] Although invited and its participation had been planned
on, in 2010 the AMB F-16’s were a last-minute no-show. [xxii] Mirage
50 aircraft which Venezuela unloaded on Ecuador in 2009 were decried
by Ecuadorian media accounts as “chatarra“ or junk.”[xxiii] 2010 was
noteworthy year in Venezuelan history in which the country celebrated
both its Bicentennial and the Air Force its 90th anniversary as a
service. [xxiv] In comparison to its former command presence at such
events, the AMB aerial display at both events was lamentable,
particularly in the Air Force Day ceremony held on 27 November which
for the first time reflected its new day on the government calendar.
Air Force Day now serves primarily as a pulpit for Venezuelan military
and civilian politicians to serve up recycled political rhetoric.
Since government policies have deteriorated its conventional military
utility, the Venezuelan armed forces are now essentially a manpower
pool spending much of their time relegated to working public works
projects. Government media typically characterizes such non-
traditional military missions with glowing, altruistic jargon with
military personnel described as being enthusiastic contributors to
social justice projects.[xxv] Despite these governmental attempts at
describing the Venezuelan military as staunch, patriotic, supporters
of the Chavista vision, this portrayal is self-delusional at best. The
reality is that the majority of Venezuelan military members that
choose to toe the party line do so because their career progression
depends on it, financial inducement, or because of fear of government
retribution. The divergent fates of two Venezuelan General Officers
best illustrate these points. The first example belongs to retired
General and former Minister of Defense Raul Baduel. General Baduel
ironically led a group of forces which freed Chavez from military
arrest in 2002. By 2007 Baduel had become disillusioned with Chavez
and had become a very prominent oppositionist in decrying Venezuela’s
path to authoritarian rule. [xxvi] Beginning in 2008 the government
ratcheted persecution of Baduel culminating with his politically-
motivated arrest in 2009. The Venezuelan government alleged corruption
which ostensibly occurred during Baduel’s tenure as Defense Minister.
He has been incarcerated since that time. [xxvii] A reverse example
belongs to Venezuela’s current Minister of Defense and Chavez
favorite, General Henry Rangel Silva. In 2008 Rangel was identified
by the U.S. Treasury Department as having materially aided the
Colombian terrorist group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) in assisting with narcotics trafficking.[xxviii] In 2010
Rangel ‘s ascended to the head of Venezuela’s military shortly after
publically declaring the Venezuelan military was “wedded” to the
Chavista agenda and also in implying the armed forces would not
tolerate an opposition Presidential victory.[xxix] The opposite
trajectories of its former and current Ministers of Defense
individuals drive home the point to common Venezuelan military members
of what personal outcomes they can expect in relation to their support
of the government.
The Chavista agenda forcibly implanted on the FAV is like an
artificial graft incompatible with its host or the wrong blood type
infused in a patient. It is ultimately doomed to rejection. The
physical state of the Venezuela is a testament to this. Beyond
Venezuela, the negative experience wreaked on the FAV and the decrepit
state of its leadership should serve as a warning notice to military
members to build their immunities to the cancers of politicization and
self-aggrandizement. Although certain economic realities may (or
perhaps may not) compel the U.S. to purchase and refine Venezuelan
petroleum, there is not a constitutional requirement that the United
States be delusional about the nature of the person it is doing
business with. Chavista policy toward the United States, and the
manner by which Chavez mobilizes his supporters, is driven by his
irretrievable need for the U.S. to serve as Venezuela’s recognizable
enemy, and also for Venezuela to be rewritten as the U.S’s historic
victim. This of course is an exhausted tactic of failed and displaced
dictators of the last century. It is also with this nationalistic
shtick that Chavez justifies colossal governmental failures and the
squandering of billions of Venezuela’s petrodollars. Although Chavez
is a home-grown problem for Venezuelans to solve, the U.S. should
never expect that its relations with Chavista Venezuela can ever
approach long-term normalcy. Conciliatory attempts to “reset
relations“ with Chavez should be acknowledged for exactly what they
will lead ultimately lead to: a time-out agreed to by Chavez only
because some transitory need compels him for the time-being (“por
ahora”) to tone down his act.
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