Colombia is considering buying new F-16 fighter jets from the United States in response to Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s partnership with Russia, according to a top U.S. official.
“Despite the economic situation and the humanitarian situation in Venezuela, the regime just signed a contract for, if I remember right, $249 million to buy eight Sukhoi combat jets and some military helicopters. So they’re building up or trying to,” Elliott Abrams, the State Department’s special representative for the Venezuela crisis, told the Washington Examiner.
“The Colombians don’t have any such advanced aircraft. So, they want them as a matter of national defense,” he said.
And President Trump’s team wants to make the sale to a key partner in the effort to eject Maduro in favor of Juan Guaidó, the top opposition lawmaker the United States and other Western powers recognized as the country’s legitimate president in January. Colombia downplayed the prospect of such an expensive deal last year, but Abrams’ comments suggest that Venezuela is driving Russia and the United States into a mini arms race in the region.
Abrams made those remarks Wednesday at an event hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, just a few days after a Venezuelan fighter jet “aggressively shadowed” a U.S. military surveillance aircraft “at an unsafe distance in international airspace for a prolonged period of time,” according to U.S. Southern Command. Pentagon officials regard the Maduro regime’s Russian-made warplanes as “a threat to the region,” as a top Air Force general put it.
The Lockheed Martin F-16 is on the menu of options the Colombian Air Force is reviewing, alongside the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Swedish-made Saab Gripen, for a possible purchase of up to $1 billion.
“They’re a good and close ally of the United States,” Abrams said. “We want to help them.”
