In addition, the head of Venezuela's air force announced last week that the two nations will carry out joint air force maneuvers next year.

"Joint Russian-Venezuelan air force drills have been planned for next year. We could have participated in joint naval exercises due in November if they included a simulated air attack, but this has not been included in the plans so far," Luis Acosta announced in a statement carried on the Venezuelan Ministry of Communications and Information Web site, RIA Novosti announced Oct. 31.

The sheer scale of Russia's arms sales to Venezuela vastly eclipses the size of arms deals, trade and scientific cooperation agreements currently being negotiated with Cuba, which for the last 30 years of the Cold War was the Soviet Union's one major ally in the Western Hemisphere.

The Kremlin is trying to play down U.S. concerns over Venezuela's enormous arms buildup. RIA Novosti noted that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had insisted Venezuela's weapons buildup was purely defensive and that it was not directed against either Venezuela's neighbors or the United States.

"I do not know how such conclusions are drawn. Neither Russia nor Venezuela have any plans to attack anyone. Russia and Venezuela enjoy cooperation based on the norms of international law," Lavrov said, according to the report.

However, once the Venezuelan armed forces have fully integrated the $5.4 billion worth of weapons -- including the $1 billion missile, anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile systems that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered in September -- they will be unmatched throughout the northern tier of Latin American states -- sometimes called the "crescent of crisis" or throughout Central America.

In fact, Venezuela, with its population of 25 million people and its large -- though relatively low-grade and "sour" -- oil reserves, is a vastly more important, strategic and influential Western Hemisphere ally for Russia than the remote, small impoverished and isolated island nation of Cuba under Fidel Castro ever was.

Nor does the argument that Venezuela needs that enormous weapons arsenal to protect itself against possible U.S. invasion appear likely. During the past eight years, the Bush administration paid little attention to Chavez's largely successful efforts to maintain himself in power and build up a powerful military base.

Bush policymakers underestimated Chavez and never took him seriously. They were obsessed instead with creating democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq and supporting small, strategically unimportant nations on the edge of Europe like the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

The incoming Obama administration looks even less likely to pose any military threat to Venezuela. Obama and his Democratic Party policymakers want to improve relations with Russia and with the nations of Latin America. Their model is President Franklin Roosevelt's "good neighbor" policy with Latin America 75 years ago that dramatically reduced the number and scale of U.S. military interventions in the region.

So why is Russia doing it?
Russian leaders have approved an additional $1 billion loan to Venezuela to cover the costs of purchasing Russia's advanced, short-range TOR-M1 anti-aircraft and anti-missile system, along with Igla-S portable SAM systems, Il-78 aerial tankers and Il-76 military cargo aircraft.

From 2005 to 2007 the Kremlin also approved the sale of fighter aircraft, helicopters and Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles to the Venezuelan armed forces. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is also confident that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will green-light the export of BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles and T-72 Main Battle Tanks later this year.

However, for Russia, the arms sales policies to Venezuela now contain an element of economic risk that was not present only a few months ago.

When global oil prices peaked at an unprecedented $147 per barrel, Russia could afford to virtually give away its most expensive weapons systems for free in order to build up a global network of strategic allies such as the Kremlin had not enjoyed since the disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.

However, now that global oil prices have collapsed to around $60 a barrel, selling huge quantities of weapons on such easy terms will constitute a far greater drain on the Russian Treasury than was anticipated.

Nor does it make sense for Russia to accept payment in terms of oil imports from Venezuela. Russia is a vastly larger producer and exporter of crude petroleum on the global market than Venezuela, and Russia's oil is, in general, of a far higher standard before it is refined than Venezuela's.

Russia continues to suffer a serious bottleneck in its own refining capacity despite great progress that was made investing in such infrastructure during Putin's two four-year terms as president. Therefore importing Venezuelan crude with its high acidity levels, requiring intensive refining, would put unnecessary additional pressure on Russia's own refining facilities.

The Kremlin's continuing enthusiasm for enormous arms sales to Venezuela following the global oil price collapse, therefore, cannot be explained in economic terms. It only makes sense when viewed as an ambitious, long-term strategic investment in a country that may prove to be the most important and powerful regional ally Russia or the Soviet Union has ever had in the Western Hemisphere.

The scale and nature of Russia's arms investment in Venezuela are also striking. It is far greater in scale and value than Russian arms sales to China have been in recent years. Only Russian arms exports to India have been of comparable scale and volume. Some U.S. military analysts have even privately expressed concern that the Venezuelan military buildup eventually could pose a military threat to seize control of the Panama Canal.

Even after the arms buildup is completed, the Venezuelan armed forces will be in no state to pose any direct challenge to the U.S. armed forces. But if U.S. forces were removed from the region or were preoccupied with major conflicts in the Middle East or Northeast Asia, there is no other military power in the northern tier of Latin America, Central America or the Caribbean region that could stand up to the kind of regional military juggernaut that Chavez is creating with so much help from Russia. Venezuela is also purchasing additional weapons from nations as diverse as Belarus, China and Spain.

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