In late October 2009, the United States signs a deal granting its military access to seven Colombian bases for ten years, a move that goes almost unnoticed in Washington but sets off alarm across South America. Al Jazeera's Fault Lines travels to Colombia to find out why. Colombia is already the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere, and President Alvaro Uribe frames the new agreement as a continuation of the decade-old Plan Colombia counter-narcotics program, a line the Obama administration echoes. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez reads it differently, calling it a threat to regional peace and moving troops to the Colombia-Venezuela border, while Bolivia's Evo Morales accuses Washington of seeking regional dominance. The film gathers military officials, politicians, and activists on multiple sides of the dispute, weighing Washington's stated aims of training and logistics against critics who see the bases as a foothold for broader intervention. It closes without resolving the argument, leaving the standoff between sovereignty and alliance exactly where it sits on the ground.