Hugo's Coming, You Better Hide

Occasional Reasonoid John Hood is worried about Vladimir Putin's sale of arms to Hugo Chavez: "submarines and air-defense weaponry that could only be intended for use against the United States."

So, what do you have to do to be called an adversary, or dare I say it, an enemy?

But… how do we hurt from this deal? Russia lops off a chunk of its military machine and gives to Venezuela. Hugo Chavez, in the grand tradition of dippy despots (see Shah, The), wastes some of his oil money on weaponry he'll never get to use. Seriously, who thinks Chavez will actually get to use Tor-M1 air defense missile complexes against the Great Satan? Unless we're planning to set up a Caracas no-fly zone or an honest-to-God land invasion, this stuff is going to sit around Venezuelan docks and bases, looking threatening, reminding the average Chavista that his leader is squandering the treasury on some paranoid superpower envy. Putin's doing us a favor if he's doing us anything.