Pat Dollard | Young Americans

As we’ve said … Something’s cooking …

(IBD)

As Barack Obama luxuriated in the adoration of Europeans, a less charming leader was also making his way across the Continent, seeking arms and military bases to direct toward the United States.

What happened under the radar last week ought to have gotten more attention, because it’s the beginning of a problem that will carry well into the next administration.

While Obama was drawing applause in Germany, Venezuela’s hostile and anti-American president, Hugo Chavez, was conducting a stealthy parallel trip across Europe spending billions of petrodollars on weapons of war he doesn’t need.

In Russia, he vowed to buy $1 billion worth of diesel submarines, mobile missile systems and tanks. He also told Russian leaders he’d spend $30 billion for arms in coming years. He even offered Russia a military base on Venezuelan soil, according to Russian media.

Meanwhile, Chavez’s closest ally, the Republic of Cuba, offered refueling stations for Russia’s bombers, raising an echo of the 1962 missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of war. There was also talk of Russia re-opening the Lourdes electronic surveillance post to train on the U.S.

“Cuba is a unique place to gather intelligence on the U.S.,” a Russian official told a news conference in Moscow. To make sure no one misunderstood, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro wrote a rare missive from his sickbed to declare he owed the U.S. no explanation for this breach of the ‘62 treaty to keep Russian arms out of Cuba — a veiled threat if there ever was one.

These developments could destabilize the region, involve Latin America in other global disputes and draw the U.S. into a conflict. No matter that Chavez and Castro later denied everything; this was a trial balloon to gauge any weakness they can exploit.

If they find what they’re looking for — and they will if the U.S. has a weak, naive or inexperienced president after November — then America faces a reconstituted Cold War south of the border.

Unlike the last one, however, we’ll face a Venezuela armed to the teeth, possibly with a Russian base on its own soil and Russian bomber bases and spy stations just 90 miles off the Florida coast. Add a possible Iranian base in Nicaragua, and this is more ominous than anything we faced when we last locked horns with the communists.

These bases will also intimidate the best ally America has ever had in Latin America — Colombia. Chavez has already threatened to use advanced Russian Sukhoi fighters over Bogota when Venezuela and Colombia stood on the brink of war last March.

The symmetry of new bases is disturbing. Russia is eager to retaliate against the U.S. for Europe’s missile shield, and Chavez wants to counter a coming U.S. base in Colombia.

This may happen because Ecuador is expelling the U.S. from its anti-drug base in Manta. A Russian base in Venezuela would serve both purposes.

Colombia will be just the ally we need in this situation. Unfortunately, it’s also the ally Barack Obama and other congressional Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have weakened through their bid to quash its U.S. free-trade pact.

The Bush administration has repeatedly stated that the pact has national security significance. Colombia is strategically situated on two ocean coasts, and its victory over terror can be consolidated with prosperity, something a permanent trade deal would bring.

But it’s not just Bush who grasps Colombia’s importance. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil recently moved to draw Colombia into his nation’s orbit by vowing to enhance trade ties.

This would be good for both countries, he argued, “so we aren’t left dependent on a single partner.” This was a not-so-subtle knock on American trustworthiness as long as Obama and the Democrat-led Congress are calling the shots.

Unlike Germany, for example, Colombia is a friend that hasn’t hesitated to help the U.S. It most recently put its own troops in harm’s way to rescue three American men held hostage by vicious jungle terrorists.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted last week on RealClearPolitics.com, a nation that might have cut side deals with terrorists to get its own men out first at the expense of ours refused to do so.

That’s an ally we’ll need as Chavez and Castro remain up to no good and Russia begins to meddle again in our hemisphere.