Hugo Chavez: friendship tour & arms deals.

Petro-dollars for guns, fighter jets, helicopters, submarines--and possibly a rotating seat on the UN Security Council. That's the plan behind Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' July-August whirlwind tour of Russia, Belarus, Iran, Vietnam, and Mali. Communist North Korea was also on the agenda, reportedly, until Chavez' advisers convinced him that current international concerns over North Korea's nuclear weapons and its recent belligerent actions might make a visit there counterproductive.

Chavez, who has been aptly described as "a younger Fidel Castro--with oil," reportedly signed a $1 billion arms deal with Russia that includes 30 Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets, 30 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles, a license to build a Kalashnikov factory in Venezuela, and maybe a couple submarines. Meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on July 27, Chavez said that he is "determined to expand relations with Russia" and is also considering buying Russian Tor-M1 surface-to-air missiles. In addition, he reportedly closed deals for joint Russian-Venezuelan oil drilling and pipeline construction. This was the fourth trip to Moscow for Chavez, Latin America's new Marxist strongman.

Besides arms and oil deals, another major objective of this current global whistle-stop tour by Chavez is to gain support for his campaign to elect Venezuela to one of the non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. With the support he has been building among the anti-U.S. Third World and Muslim states, he may have a pretty good chance of attaining that goal.