(T)Hugo Chávez’s Russian Dalliance
As two Russian Tu-160 bombers landed in Venezuela last week on a training mission, President Hugo Chvez took to his nation’s airwaves to celebrate. It was the first time since the Cold War that military jets sent from Moscow touched down in the Western Hemisphere. “Yankee hegemony is finished,” Mr. Chvez declared.
What the Venezuelan did not mention was the fact that, according to a State Department official, “the U.S. Air Force picked up the Russian aircraft just west of Norway and escorted them all the way to Venezuela.”
That American top guns could toy with Russians sent to show solidarity with Venezuela is not surprising. Vladimir Putin has been trying to rebuild his military, but it is no match for U.S. might. Nor is it believable that Russia seriously expects to challenge the U.S. in the Caribbean with the flotilla it says that it is sending next month for joint exercises with Venezuela.
Yet 17 years after we thought the Cold War had ended, Russia is evoking memories of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis by playing war games with another would-be Latin strongman. It’s Mr. Putin’s way of making a face at President Bush for his proposed missile defense in Europe, and his resistance to Russia’s latest efforts to restore its former empire by force.
Mr. Chvez is only too happy to be used. He thinks he’s getting something in return. His Bolivarian Revolution — a full-court press designed to impose communism throughout Latin America — is in trouble, and as its popularity has waned, so too have his options for restoring confidence in his leadership. Yet there is still the fail-safe practice of Yankee-baiting. In the spirit of Fidel Castro, Mr. Chvez seems to believe that if the foreign devil can be painted as an imminent threat to sovereignty, the nation might rally behind him. This idea, shared by Bolivian President Evo Morales, explains not only Russian military tourism in the Caribbean but also last week’s expulsion of the U.S. ambassadors to Caracas and La Paz.
Mr. Chvez has troubles at home, and elsewhe