Chavez runs out of cash, borrows money from Russia for weapons

NY Times:

Russia will loan Venezuela $1 billion for arms purchases and military development, a Kremlin spokesman said Friday, the second day of a visit here by resident Hugo Chávez aimed at tightening a relationship that has caused increasing discomfort in the West.

Mr. Chávez , who is on his second visit to Russia in two months, met with Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday, and on Friday traveled to the southern city of Orenburg near the border with Kazakhstan to meet with President Dmitri A. Medvedev.

A Kremlin statement released Thursday night said Mr. Putin and Mr. Chávez had spoken on enhancing economic cooperation and trade in commercial goods as well as military technologies.

The $1 billion loan will help finance programs related to military-technical cooperation, the statement said. The Kremlin spokesman, who spoke anonymously under normal diplomatic ground rules, would not elaborate on the details of the deal.

Between 2005 and 2007 Venezuela has signed 12 contracts for weapons purchases from Russia for a total of more than $4.4 billion, the Kremlin statement said.

The move is the latest gesture of military friendship between Russia and Venezuela, two counties that have increasingly positioned themselves as mavericks vis-à-vis the West. The Kremlin says its economic and political stability have allowed it to broaden the scope of its military and economic cooperation beyond what it calls its traditional sphere of influence.

Moscow is also frustrated with what it considers aggressive military posturing from the West, particularly the United States. Washington’s plans to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as its support of NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, have set Russia on edge.

...

It appears that Chavez has squandered his oil windfall and is borrowing to buy more weapons he does not need. He is also allowing the Russians to use him in their gamesmanship against the US and the west. Turning into a pompous Russian lackey is fitting for someone of Chavez temperament. They both suffer from a shared paranoia about the US. The problem with paranoia taken to extremes is that it can create real enemies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more