This adds to previous purchases of nearly U$ 4.4 Billion in weapons, so it will be nearly U$ 10 Billion in weapons purchase.
The funny thing: Chavez strengthen his ties with the socialist Cuba and based in just personal believes start a frontal confrontation with the U.S. a former long time ally of Venezuela, claiming that the practices of imperialism harm the country… (to be honest many times this is true!), but I certainly don’t think this is the way to attack some of the harmless practices the developed countries perform against the underdeveloped countries.
And furthermore it seems a very poor strategy, why? Ask Saddam Hussein, oh wait you can´t, because he is dead! But let’s see the similarities, both countries with a lot of oil, and Iraq Was and currently is a problem to the U.S.) And Venezuela is a problem in the rise.
Now recently Venezuela prove to have more oil than Saudi Arabia (wow, and this according to de USGS: United States Geological Survey), but is not the best oil so right now only the U.S. refineries can refine the Venezuelan oil, so?, He is trying to develop joint ventures with Chinese and Russian companies, ok china needs oil, but Russia is a net producer of oil (The first net exporter outside the OPEC) and the second overall oil exporter, they don’t really need that, but still will be a good business and if this business work maybe they can sell to Venezuela more war junk.
Saddam also bought huge quantities of Russian weapons but U$10 Billion seems just a drop in the sea if you compare the expenditure of U.S. If U.S. decide to strike (and maybe in the future they will have to) Venezuela might put a Little fight but not so much, and regarding the kind of people that the Venezuelans are (mostly pacific, and above all, very lazy intellectually, also very argumentative, everything but disciplined people, culturally speaking) the Venezuelan army is not a disciplined army at all, and recently has come to know there are not merit promotions in the army, that will lead the army with the blind followers of Chavez who are not the best soldiers and/or commanders.
So Chavez is building himself a defensive fortress and if with all the faux pas against everyone who challenges his opinion about how this world should be, Even Zapatero avoid to defy him after one of the judges in Spain accuse him to help ETA; The main point here: “the big budget in weapons shopping, and Spain wants his piece of the cake, then they receive all the anger of the colonel.
Now, he is building a fortress, because he expects be attacked by the U.S., but that have not happen yet, even when he was “provocative” for not said rude in every way when he mistreat the former president of the U.S. George W Bush. Then why?, it would not be because he is Aligned with Russia or China, that might cause some annoyance in the U.S. Government but they have to live with that.
Right now this fortress that he is building seems useless, Why? PDVSA (The state owned petrol company whose revenues downturned severely from U$ 125 billion in 2008 to U$ 75 Billion, and the profits fell from around U$8 billion to U$ 4 billion and the country did not have enough dollars to purchase food from other countries.
But why they would need purchase food from other countries?, because in his crazy thirst for demonstrate power he expropriates companies and farms who produce food in Venezuela, the result, this guy makes Venezuela depends on foreign imports of food to supply his needs, he make them lose his food security.
The crime is rising recently he forbids to the newspapers to publish pictures of violence, and since a lot of time there are no official data about the dead rate in Caracas (Possibly the most violent city in this hemisphere), they have problems with liquidity (they need to pay for those weapons and because the decline in revenues of PDVSA did not let spend more money in food, also because He puts dumb followers to run and the gigantic company and they are failing to do it properly; Also recently they discover a lot of food (130.000 Tons) wasted and ruined because at the central planning system of the economy "forgot" to distribute this; Chavez is in a uncomfortable position, that might ends in a riot or something with awful consecuences
