Moscow On The Main

IBD Editorials ^ | September 26, 2008

[Kaslin]

Geopolitics: With America hit by a financial crisis, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez now sees a weak U.S. and is pushing to accelerate Russia's foothold in the Caribbean. Russia's with him. Will the next U.S. president be ready?

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For Chavez, America's meltdown is a golden opportunity to strike at the U.S. by introducing Russian power into the hemisphere. Wasting no time, he barreled over to Russia in a hasty trip last week, saying bilateral cooperation on weapons sales would speed forward. He made no secret of exploiting U.S. difficulties.

"We are facing a new geopolitical dynamic and for that reason we are moving faster," Chavez told a Miami-based press agency.

On his seventh trip to Russia, Chavez's interests converged perfectly with the Kremlin's. This time he hit the jackpot.

Russia is obsessed with ending U.S. influence in its "near abroad" where tiny freedom-loving democracies such as Georgia provoke its imperial ire. That's why the boyars of the Kremlin offered the tropical dictator weapons and technology he's never merited on earlier trips — nuclear technology, advanced military communications systems and air defense missiles. They also offered Chavez $1.1 billion to pay for it, a loan they are unlikely to try to collect on.

There's a much bigger plan here than succoring Chavez. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia now makes relations with Latin America a top foreign policy priority. Moscow's loans and weaponry won't just go to Venezuela, but to Chavez's anti-American allies in the Caribbean, too.