So one of Hugo Chavez's allies is Iran, and one of Venezuela's arms suppliers is Russia. At the mention of the two countries, the right-thinking American is supposed to quiver, quail, and vote Republican. Or Democrat--what's the difference, again? The Venezuelan elite, once again showcasing a cognitive/ideological frame of reference that's pretty much identical to that prevalent in the metropolitan centers, is really annoyed at Hugo. Miguel Octavio irately points out that
He never explained why he needs luxurious accommodations, 50 bodyguards or three jet planes to follow him. He also used the reverse logic that he had hoped he did not have to buy weapons, but the US Empire forces him to, as if the weapons he acquired were comparable to what the US has or as if they were designed to defend Venezuela from the US.
A couple points. One, he has bodyguards because the opposition wants to kill him, as a moment browsing their commentary would reveal. External security is harder than internal security, where the Venezuelan population is his bodyguard. Hence, the need for 50 of them. Two, the US forcing Chavez to buy weapons does not imply that the weapons thus acquired "were comparable to what the US has." Boring my readers with this point may be belaboring the obvious, but the US doesn't always use its military power in direct, frontal assaults. Word is the US is building 7 military bases in Colombia. If one troubles to look at a map, it looks like Colombia borders Venezuela. So three, the weapons are "designed to defend Venezuela from the US," acting through its regional proxy: Colombia.
Francisco Toro sagely points out that
One of the big, underlying questions in the Chávez era has always been whether Chávez will maintain his status as low-level annoyance to the US or graduate up to the next level: actual geostrategic threat. The reality is that, geostrategically, Chávez will always remain a third-tier concern for the US, unless ... he attaches himself to a pre-existing top-tier threat.
There are, as far as I can tell, only three geostrategic challenges that count as top-tier concerns for the US right now: Al Qaeda, North Korea and Iran. This piece makes it amply clear which of those Chávez is placing his chips on.
I've heard that Pakistan and Afghanistan are pretty serious "geostrategic challenges," as is China, while the term is a total misnomer to use to describe Al Qaeda, which isn't geographically fixed, hence by definition not a geostrategic challenge. North Korea and Iran aren't "geostrategic" challenges either, except in the sense that G.W. Bush said so--how exactly are they "threats" to the US? Once again, the Venezuelan opposition serves itself up for self-diagnosis: its most articulate [sic?] English-language members echo the rhetoric coming out of Washington circa 2003 and pass it off as analysis. Revealing, sure, but more of their bizarre view of the world than of the world itself.
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Missing from the US-Venezuela geopolitical equasion as defined above are Venezuela’s rich oil reserves and the recent discovery of natural gas. Need one say more?
Yes. And as Octavio–Quico as you’ve noted is too dumb to know this–knows, Venezuelan heavy crude requires special processing, and China is only slowly re-tooling to be able to process it [slower than expected; the figure of 380,000 bpd I think is an over-estimate, although whether or not that’s due to Venezuela exporting less or China not having the technological capabilities to accommodate it isn’t clear]. Meanwhile of course China is re-jiggering its energy system to renewables, while we deepen petroleum dependency, depriving Venezuela of the option of switching export markets, which makes is even less of a “geostrategic challenge” [has he been reading RAND reports or something?].
If the U.S. really wanted to get rid of Hugo Chávez, which I doubt regardless of the continued displays of paranoia, none of those weapons would properly defend him.
Nadia,
The US won’t–perhaps because it can’t, perhaps for other reasons–launch a frontal assault on Venezuela. It may use proxy forces. The incursion into Ecuador by Colombia was plausibly a test-run for how far Colombia could go. turns out, not too far, not without causing rumbles throughout Latin America.
When the internal documentation comes out I’m betting on either tacit or explicit US approval for the attack. The US hates Chavez as its hates all manifestations of independent nationalism–this is boilerplate, and banal.
The issue isn’t how badly the US wants to get rid of Chavez but what price it is willing to pay and how obviously it can do so. In this case it can’t do so obviously, I don’t think, and so as I reiterate has to resort to proxy. Against either a low-intensity incursion or proxy warfare those weapons would “properly defend him.”