PEACE PRIZE WINNING OBAMA BACKS MILITARY GROWTH IN COLOMBIA

Hours after this year's Nobel Peace Prize was announced, New Mexico
Gov. Bill Richardson spoke to a college audience and gently
admonished "our new Nobel Peace Prize-winning president."

Richardson, the ex-presidential candidate, diplomat and a past Nobel
nominee, relayed a simple message to President Barack Obama: "Pay
more attention to Latin America."

But in an ironic twist shaken out from last month's Nobel surprise,
Obama beat out the odds-on Nobel favorite, Piedad Cordoba, a Colombian
senator and successful hostage negotiator who for years has promoted
negotiations to end the four-decades-long civil war in Colombia. Oddly
enough, Obama has embraced the opposite solution to the tragic
conflict in South America - a military expansion.

In July, the Obama administration announced a deal with Colombian
President Alvaro Uribe - Cordoba's nemesis, America's ally - that will
send at least hundreds of U.S. troops to seven Colombian military
bases. The idea behind the expansion, U.S. officials said, is to track
cocaine traffickers and the insurgent forces they fund.

But Obama's first major policy decision on inequality-stricken Latin
America also reinforces a regional arms race, an unsettling trend that
diverts more and more resources to building up armies instead of
bolstering social development.

At a talk to students at UCLA last month, Venezuela's ambassador to
the United States, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, addressed the deal, "You
cannot be talking about peace and at the same time increasing the
presence of the military in Colombia."

The comment was made the day before Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was
announced.

The deepening U.S.-Colombia military partnership has been roundly
criticized, but the story suffers from Latin America's second-thought
status among many in the U.S. The criticism comes not just from
Venezuela, but even moderate governments in Brazil and Chile.

"It was kind of sprung on people. Nobody saw it coming," said Michael
LaRosa, a Rhodes College professor, of the decision to send troops to
Colombia. "To some degree, it goes against everything that President
Obama has been trying to do in Latin America, which is openness,
transparency, reaching out."

John Lindsay-Poland, a California-based Latin America researcher, also
has suggested that the expanded military partnership isn't in tune
with Obama's latest accolade.

"This is a time when Washington should invest in peace talks, not
institutionalizing its relationship with the military," Lindsay-Poland
wrote on his blog.

LaRosa noted that three of the Colombian military installations where
U.S. forces will be renting space are on the country's tense eastern
border with Venezuela. "So it looks like we're trying to get close to
Venezuela - and not because we want to get to know the Venezuelan
people better," he said, "but because of the oil reserves there."

Weeks after news of the U.S.-Colombia deal broke, Venezuela's oil-rich
leader, Hugo Chavez, promptly announced another major arms purchase
with Russia - $2 billion worth of surface-to-air missiles, battle
tanks and anti-aircraft missile launching systems. Chavez specifically
invoked the U.S.-Colombia pact as a justification.

Meanwhile, Brazil, the regional heavyweight, spent a record $24.6
billion bulking up its military last year.

But Venezuela and Brazil aren't the only nations in the region
devoting large sums to military spending. In 2008, so did Colombia
($12.3 billion), Chile ($4.9 billion), Ecuador ($1.3 billion) - even
Bolivia ($1 billion), home to Latin America's most extreme poverty.
Nor is the trend a one-year phenomenon. According to the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies, overall military
spending in Latin America and the Caribbean spiked by 91 percent over
the past five years, to $47.2 billion in 2008.

Even a respected analyst who favors U.S. assistance in combating
Colombia's leftist guerillas cautions against the trend.

"We do have an arms buildup, which I think is worrying because Latin
America, in relative terms, has been pretty peaceful," said Michael
Shifter, director of the Andean program at the Inter-American
Dialogue. "But the risks are increasing. There's very little
transparency about the arms purchase and what their purposes are."

A decade ago, Plan Colombia was launched with the aim of interdicting
drugs and supporting the Colombian government, not going after the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

"But after 9/11, quietly, Plan Colombia funds began to go after three
terrorist organizations as the United States names them in Colombia -
the FARC, the paramilitary groups and the ELN [National Liberation
Army]," LaRosa said. "So there was mission creep and mission change."

It's a mission creep our newly minted Nobel laureate
endorses.

Nowadays, Cordoba, the Colombian politician and peace activist Obama
beat for the Peace Prize, is still pressing the Uribe government for a
prisoner swap with the FARC as a way to stimulate a different approach.

But unlike Obama, she'll have to press forward on that thankless task
without the prestige of a Noble Prize to back her up.