While the Middle East has absorbed the Bush Administration’s attention to National Security hotspots, until very recently our policy regarding Latin America could best be described as business as usual. Yet when Condoleezza Rice traveled to Latin America this week to attend the Community of Democracies meeting, Venezuela’s recent international outbursts against the United States have overshadowed her agenda. Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s populist, beret-wearing president, has recently engaged in vociferous outcries against purported U.S. wrongdoings that have caused the Bush Administration’s policy of what Business Week called “benign neglect” to be completely reevaluated. These more than brusque statements cannot help but irk the United States – who heavily relies on this South American country’s oil largesse that is ranked fourth for U.S. oil imports.

But Chavez’s anti-American rhetoric is nothing new. In 2002, after briefly being ousted by a coup, Chavez vocally denounced the United States as “an imperial power” and threatened the withdrawal of Venezuelan oil from the US market if the policy of U.S. intervention towards Venezuela continued. Now, Chavez is beating the rhetorical war drums again. The rapidity with which Chavez has undertaken belligerent and hostile actions towards the United States in the past week marks the conclusion of a two-year détente and the initiation of a reenergized anti-U.S. mantra.

Last Sunday, Chavez promised Fidel Castro 53,000 barrels a day of crude oil at discounted prices along with social aid to the communist island nation. Given these actions, one can posit that Chavez’s anti-American rhetoric reemerged in an effort to openly link himself with Castro. Chavez even described the leader of Cuba - and possibly the most disliked man in the Western Hemisphere – as not only his close personal friend, but also his metaphorical “older brother.”

Possibly viewing himself as the new Castro of the Western Hemisphere, Chavez required all Venezuelan national networks to broadcast a speech in which he decried the United States as an “imperial aggressor” and a “negative force that generates violence and wars among our, [as well as] divisions to keep us as if we were colonies, its backyard.” This speech was the second verbal denouncement of the United States in less than 24 hours.

In view of these recent comments and Chavez’s actions, analysts have begun to see the realization of their worst fear: the Venezuelan leader may be trying to form a coalition, through the manipulation of oil, composed of those deeply opposed to U.S. hegemony. A primary target is undoubtedly Iran, with whom the United States has previously had vigorous confrontations over similar matters. In March, several trade, political, and economic agreements, valued in the billions, cemented the developing relationship between Iran and Venezuela. Adding to the ire of U.S. officials, the government of Venezuela has also attempted to procure 100,000 rifles from Russia. Furthermore, last December, Venezuela made agreements with China that would allow the Asian country to begin the exploitation of 15 mature oil fields in eastern Venezuela.

Combined with domestic reforms, this careful politicking and devious web of agreements can hardly be construed as coincidental. The recent leap of tax revenues on private oil companies and the erosion of contract and private property law have made the world aware that Chavez’s promises for a “new socialism for the 21st century” are anything but empty. He has instituted reforms that allow the government to seize “under-utilized” or “illegally occupied” lands. The government has also started creating state owned airline, banking, and telephone companies.

But, Chavez is playing an extremely dangerous game.

Not only is the United States a priori wary of any country whose economy leans heavily on oil production (largely because of U.S. economic dependence on oil and such oil-producing nations’ tendencies to become both unstable and autocratic precluding their ability to meet US demand) but Chavez is also forming policies and agreements that both challenge President Bush’s willingness to enforce the Bush Doctrine in Latin America as the 21st century’s Monroe Doctrine.

During her visit, Rice has already invoked the Bush Doctrine’s belief in the importance of domestic institutionalism. Condoleezza Rice decried Venezuela’s policies as having a “destabilizing” influence on South America and called for “a free and completely democratic Venezuela.” Peter Hakim, President of Inter-American Dialogue, went one step further by claiming that “Venezuela is dividing the Hemisphere.” Meanwhile, pundits have decried the Bush Administration’s neglect of our neighbors to the South since September 11, and continue to gripe about the Administration’s ambivalent stances toward the continent.

Yet Chavez doesn’t go into these policies blindly. Amidst the raising of an army reserve of two million to defend against “any internal or external threat,” the leader espoused the clear message a lá Texan patriotism: “Don’t mess with Venezuela.” On Friday, Chavez released his plans to train his army with the principle of “asymmetric warfare”: training procedures designed to wear down a vastly superior external enemy through guerilla warfare and unconventional tactics including suicide bombings. Among those invited to talk at the military forum when Chavez released these plans was Jorge Vestringer, author of “Peripheral warfare and Revolutionary Islam.” The target of the new training is obvious.

While the United States has actively engaged its armed forces in the Middle East, a more local and perhaps a more salient threat to U.S. national security has emerged. To the south, a dangerous president has slowly been building his own “coalition of the willing and able.” However, this coalition of the other side of the oil industry is composed of the United States’ most dangerous 21st century opponents. Unless dealt with prudently, the situation in Venezuela, which we have ignored, could explode - causing a huge embarrassment for the United States close - all too close - to home.