Russians treat Chávez like a rich fool

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin traveled to Venezuela a week ago today to sign a series of multibillion-dollar agreements with President-for-life Hugo Chávez. These agreements are purportedly aimed not only at helping Chávez build a space industry and develop a nuclear program but also at deepening military, energy and financial ties between their two countries.

Of course, all of this would evoke unbridled laughter if it did not portend such unconscionable privations for the Venezuelan people. Nonetheless, the Obama administration could not resist this tongue-in-cheek take on Chávez’s foolhardy ambitions:

We would note that the government of Venezuela was largely closed this week due to energy shortages. To the extent that Venezuela is going to expend resources on behalf of its people, perhaps the focus should be more terrestrial than extraterrestrial. (State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, nytimes.com, April 2, 2010)

And here we all thought Chávez wanted to emulate former Cuban President Fidel Castro – by lording over a “socialist paradise” with enough petrodollars to fund cradle-to-grave welfare programs. Instead, it appears he wants to emulate North Korean President Kim Jung Il – by lording over a country with nothing to offer its people except military hardware and nuclear waste.

This is why all of the talk about Chávez igniting an arms race in Latin America is patent nonsense; after all, that would require the leaders of countries like Columbia and Brazil to be foolish enough to begin spending more on their military than their economy too. And only that poor fool in Bolivia, President Evo Morales, seems inclined to follow Chávez over this cliff….

Not to mention that the US will be all too prepared to supply any country in the region with enough conventional weapons (at cut-rate prices) to deter any threat posed by Venezuela’s stockpile of Russian-bought weapons. Indeed, this would present a strategic opportunity for the US to recycle the unprecedented inventory of excess weaponry that will undoubtedly pile up as it downsizes military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, given ongoing international efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, does anyone think Venezuela stands a snowball’s chance in hell of even building a nuclear plant?!  Chávez may have no regard for the precedent set by the Cuban missile crisis but, trust me, the Russians do.

Yet who can blame them for treating Chávez like a rich fool to be parted with his money (by selling him snowballs to take to hell … to complete the metaphor)? As for his space program, well, maybe he’s planning to finally develop that vacant space between his ears….

More to the point, with all due respect to the Obama administration, here was my tongue-in-cheek take on Chávez’s delusions of military grandeur after Russian President Medvedev played him for a sucker two years ago, just like Putin played him again last week:

[F]lush with cash from oil revenues, Chávez presented himself as just another fool looking to be parted with his money. In fact, as he was talking folly about forging a military alliance to take on the United States, the Russians were busy executing deals to supply Chávez with $5 billion worth of military hardware that they know will do nothing but grow moss in the Venezuelan jungle.

[Chávez tries to resuscitate Cold War tensions between Russia and the US, TIJ, July 25, 2008]

Ka-ching, ka-ching….

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