Is Chavez Crazy Like a Fox?

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Yet the problem for the Bush Administration is that while many Americans recoil, much of the rest of the world applauds. That's a big reason the U.S. is lobbying hard to prevent Venezuela from winning a nonpermanent seat next month on the U.N. Security Council, where Chávez could run interference for his friend, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions. The U.S. is backing Guatemala for the seat, but Chávez has lined up the support of such influential nations as Russia, China and Brazil. And if Venezuela does win it, it would be the latest reminder that while 20th century rebels like Castro could do little more than rail at Washington, the U.S. today faces post--cold war radicals like Chávez and Ahmadinejad who have the will, savvy and resources to constrain American power and thwart U.S. interests. Says an African diplomat: "Chávez will stand up and articulate, however coarsely, the notion many of our citizens hold--that Bush and the U.S. have kicked us around for some time now after 9/11 and we would like it to stop."

Chávez has long been an insurgent. He grew up idolizing his great-grandfather, who went into the mountains to lead a revolt against an early 20th century Venezuelan dictator, and Simón Bolívar, South America's 19th century independence hero. "Chávez has always seen himself as that kind of heroic man of action on horseback," says Alberto Barrera, co-author of the biography Hugo Chávez sin Uniforme (Hugo Chávez Out of Uniform). Venezuela's ambassador to the U.N., Francisco Arias, a former classmate who took part with Chávez in a 1992 coup attempt, says that when the two men went through military training together, "Hugo was the one cadet who stood up to the awful hazing" at the academy.

When Chávez went to jail in 1992 for attempting to overthrow the government, the joke on the streets was that he deserved 30 years: one for the coup and 29 for failing. The incident won him admiration among ordinary Venezuelans, who backed Chávez for taking a stand against their criminally corrupt élite, who for decades had pillaged the oil wealth and left half the population in poverty. That popular support got him and his comrades released, and Chávez set out to take power at the ballot box instead. In 1998 he won a landslide presidential victory (and another in a special 2000 election).