Take Chavez seriously

A news story published in the British newspaper The Guardian posed this question: Which celebrity is "insecure, malignantly narcissistic and driven by a need for adulation," while behind "public displays of arrogance and petulance lurks a fear of not being liked? Barbra Streisand? Paris Hilton?"

Neither, according to The Guardian, "Step forward Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, as depicted in a psychological profile commissioned by the U.S. Air Force."

The angle taken by the news story demonstrates how difficult it is to take President Chavez seriously. Yet, at an army base in Venezuela Sunday he called on troops to prepare for guerrilla war against the United States and ranted against "American imperialism." He told them, "We must continue developing the resistance war, that's the anti-imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war every day. It's not just armed warfare. I'm also referring to psychological warfare, media warfare, political warfare, economic warfare."

The rhetoric may not sound serious, but it is backed by Venezuela's vast oil wealth, reputedly the largest untapped reserves in the world, and that wealth is being used for a massive military build-up. The Chavez regime has already purchased $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets — just a few of the items on an incomplete "to buy" list.

Earlier this week President Chavez was back in Moscow for another shopping spree. He wants to buy submarines, conventional not nuclear, although they will be equipped with missiles. He also is in the market for helicopters.

Russia is no longer the Soviet Union and Hugo Chavez is not Fidel Castro, although he says that the Cuban dictator is his mentor and that the Castro-Communist regime is the model of government he would like for Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. He poses no military threat to the United States, and, of course, he says that he is buying weapons and missile systems for defense. Nevertheless, he is making his Latin neighbors nervous and will set off an arms race in the hemisphere if he goes on buying military hardware instead of using Venezuela's black gold to cut the country's appalling poverty rate.

President Putin is not Nikita Khrushchev. He will not send nuclear missiles to Venezuela, but will sell Hugo Chavez enough arms to cause a lot of mischief in Latin America.

That's a matter that President Bush should bring up when he hosts Mr. Putin at Kennebunkport Sunday and Monday.