The CSM has an interesting piece on Chávez’s usage of oil as a tool of international politics: Chávez’s oil largesse winning fans abroad

His offerings go beyond oil and have been announced with particular frenzy since he won a third term in December, promising $500 million in financing for Ecuador, $135 million for a dairy cooperative in Argentina, and a development plan in Nicaragua that includes generators to ease blackouts as well as a new development bank.

Analysts say his projects both in Latin America and beyond are singular among leaders sitting on vast energy reserves, as Chávez sets out to create a counterbalance to US dominance with a flurry of deals, measures, gifts, and grandiose schemes. To his harshest critics he’s an egomaniac using an “energy bribe” to inflate his reputation. To fans he’s the consummate humanitarian. Both agree that his moves have amounted to a PR coup, and some analysts even say the fallout could lead to a shift in social, economic, and political balances across the region.

“By situating Venezuela in these various international arenas of cooperation, the Chávez government is also attempting to limit what the US can do to isolate Venezuela,” says Miguel Tinker-Salas, a Latin America oil and politics expert at Pomona College in California.

[…]

In the US, Venezuela is sending oil subsidized at a 40 percent discount from the delivery price to 16 states – double from the year before – as well as 163 native American tribes. That represents 100 million gallons of fuel this winter. The program brochure describes it this way: “This is a people-to-people program that comes from the heart of Venezuela to the homes of American families who just can’t pay their energy bills.”

“In New York, residents wonder why a foreign country has to provide this. They want to know, ‘Why can’t you provide it? Or BP and Shell?’ ” says Tinker-Salas. “It’s highlighting what those countries are not doing for their own populations.”

[…]

Chávez’s latest scheme, signed by London’s leftist mayor Ken Livingstone on Feb. 20, will save the city $32 million a year. In return, London transport chiefs will visit Caracas next month to advise on traffic management and urban planning. “The agreement with Venezuela is to use the energy cost contribution to alleviate the impact of high energy costs for some of the poorest Londoners,” says a spokesperson for Mayor Livingstone.

An at least partial answer to the question posited by Tinker-Salas above is that it is a lot easier for an autocrat to divert resources than it is for a democratic state where it would require a Congressional vote—not to mention tax revenue to offset the subsidy. Further, Chávez can engage in these policy for exactly as long as he wants to, and no longer. If the money dries up, or if the PR/political value of the act evaporates, then he can quite whenever he likes. For the US or British government to start subsidizing fuel costs on this scale would require a long term commitment of resources that would essentially be permanent in nature. Further, the federal government of the US could hardly, for a political point of view, decide to subsidize specific cities or neighborhoods, let alone target only some of the states. Chávez has latitude in these affairs that national policy makers in a given country do not.

As such, I think he is fully aware the he is doing something that causes problems for the host country’s governments that they can not adequately address.

In regards to what it all may mean over the long term, the following helps provide, I think, some perspective (and also underscores why I would argue that a lot of Chávez’s actions are about building an image that is politically advantageous, rather than about promoting a specific ideology) :

Yet some say that his influence is overestimated. “He needs the US more than the US needs him,” says Gal Luft, co-director of the conservative Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in Washington, an energy security think tank. “I don’t think we should scare ourselves to death by what Hugo Chávez is doing,” he says pointing out that Venezuela is the fourth biggest supplier of US crude imports.

In other words, the great anti-Yanqui politicians relies rather heavily on American dollars to fund his activities:

Mr. Luft dubs Chávez’s moves an “energy bribe” and says that most leaders will leave his side when he runs out of money. “There is a great game going on now in Latin America, in which he is trying to pour a little oil money into every one of the chess squares,” says Luft. “If someone offers you a gift, it’s hard to turn down. Hugo Chávez does all kinds of things that make a lot of headlines but at the end of the day everyone knows who he is.”

Indeed, as I noted recently, Chávez isn’t as popular as some in the US may think he is:

In fact, his popularity may have surged in pockets where residents are direct beneficiaries of his aid, but overall his popularity has not changed dramatically. According to a regional survey in late 2024 by Latinobarometro, a polling firm in Chile, respondents grouped Chávez, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and President Bush all as bad leaders.

Ultimately, I think that the following assessment is on target:

Michael Shifter, the vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington who is coming out with a report this week on the challenges the Chávez administration poses to US policy makers, says that Chávez is able to point out what is wrong with Latin America, but his direction is not necessarily a solution. “He offers a seductive project, and his appeal is totally understandable. His gift is to tap into … this resentment toward the US, which has a real basis,” says Shifter. “But I don’t think Chávez has an answer to the problems either.”

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