哥倫比亞與委內瑞拉在2008年三月爆發之外交危機並非偶然，而是一連串因素所造成的結果：國家利益之衝突、烏力貝與查維斯之間意識形態分歧所產生的互相猜疑，以及過去查維斯擅長使用的政治策略─藉由抨擊美國與哥倫比亞等外國敵人以鞏固國內政權。 In the first hour of March 1, 2008, Colombia’s armed forces bombed the FARC camp and made an incursion into the Ecuadorian territory for collecting the corpse of Raul Reyes, the Number two man in the leadership of the terrorist guerrilla. The attack sparked a serious diplomatic crisis with Ecuador and Venezuela, which denounced the incursion and threatened diplomatic and possibly military retaliation against Colombia. A week after the controversial attack, although the crisis in the Andes seemed to be resolved with handshakes and hugs between leaders of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador on the XX Summit of Rio Group, the conflict between presidents Uribe and Chavez was not finished.
The diplomatic conflict between Colombia and Venezuela in March 2008 was not a coincidence but a result of a series of incompatible interests in several issues with the intensification of the Colombia’s armed conflict, and the mutual distrust between Uribe and Chavez as a consequence of their strong ideological differences and the Chavez’s well-known political strategy of converting the United States and Colombia into external enemies to strengthen his regime.
