First, Hugo's bully pulpit and blustering has more to do with the price of oil than almost anything else. Remember, spot oil jumped from right at $100 a Bbl. to right around $106.

The smart money in the oil markets are still saying that Venezuela's oil productions keeps decreasing (slight drops almost monthly), so Hugo's got to keep his cash inflows steady. He's doing what he's got to do to get the cash.

Problem is, it's a short term fix. But as to following through and taking on Columbia, not likely.

To show you how stupid it's gotten, Venezuela has just decreed that all Columbia-Venezuela order trade be curtailed (about $6 bil, give or take). Most of that $6 billion that Venezuela imports from Columbia is FOOD

Guy's a genius. He's going to starve his own people to get back at Columbia.

Second point, there's another player in all of this that few see. Just last month, Columbia & Israel signed a deal to (1) to update the 11 Kfir C7s to the C10 version and (2) acquire another 13 former Israeli Air Force Kfir C10s.

Link

Now, President Hugo has already allied himself with some fairly unsavory characters (from Israel's POV), and hey, guy gets stupid & comes across the Columbian border, who's to say that Hugo's pilots couldn't end up facing some pretty tough, first rate competition in the air (and I'm not talking from the US).

Just a few thoughts....