Nuclear Proliferation: Venezuela

The newest arrival to the nuclear proliferation party is no longer trouble-making Iran.  After his recent meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has declared that his country will develop nuclear energy with Russian help.  Chavez directly addressed the immediate concern by saying that they're not looking to develop a bomb (like we believe him) so we shouldn't bother with them like we bother with Iran (like we're just going to let it happen).

If Chavez hadn't already been making so much trouble in Latin America / South America, this might have been unexpected.  The fact of the matter is that Chavez and Russia have been so close over the past several years, Russian media calls him "Russia's comrade-in-arms-and-oil."  However, nothing quite illustrates the relationship between the two countries like big numbers, specifically the $20 billion joint oil venture and the $2.2 billion credit for Russian weapons.  Both of those numbers come from deals struck during the same visit as the nuclear technology deal.

But, reading further into that arms deal may provide a bit of information that is relevant to the nuclear energy debate, specifically that Venezuela is buying rockets from Russia.  Chavez has been at the center of arms race controversy with his buying habits over the past several years.  While Chavez insists the military hardware he acquired from Russia is purely for defense, Colombia has to wonder.  Furthermore, one has to wonder if this deal was a form of deterrence for when Chavez breaks the nuclear energy deal to the press.  Whatever the reasons, Chavez can't actually think that breaking this kind of news now with Obama about to head up  the UN Security Council is going to go over well.

The gut check here is incredulous.  While it is believable that Russia is looking to expand their venture into the nuclear energy market, it is completely unbelievable that they haven't learned a single thing from their experiment with Iran.  Iranian nuclear energy hasn't gone smoothly to say the least.  There is an international governmental organization known as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that determines who gets to play with nuclear materials.  Russia circumvented the IAEA on its deal with Iran, and look where that got them.  Russia is once again circumventing the IAEA on a nuclear deal, so they clearly didn't learn that lesson.  Now, Venezuela, of all countries, is the one country that could start a full blown arms race and potentially completely destabilize the entire region.  Assuming that this deal actually goes through, Russia is fast becoming a facilitator of nuclear proliferation, something the UN, the IAEA, and the US are committed to opposing.  This new deal with Venezuela, right in our backyard, promises to produce some political fireworks.