Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stopped in Moscow on Sept. 10 amid his self-proclaimed "axis of evil" tour, which has included visits to Algeria, Libya, Syria, Iran, Turkmenistan and Belarus. While seeking to forge bilateral deals on a wide variety of deals in areas such as energy, defense and trade, Chavez has also lived up to his reputation as a provocateur against the United States. His meetings with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are the culmination of this tour and the two sides are signing several deals for technical cooperation in several fields, from energy to military cooperation. Most of the technical agreements between Moscow and Caracas are — as usual — promises with an indefinite price tag and time frame, or slow-moving projects subject to delays and of limited importance. Only a few deals could have concrete results anytime soon. But more important than the specific deals is the overall development of their relations, which provide Moscow with a means of needling the United States in the Western hemisphere. So far Chavez's trip across the world has consisted of the usual rhetorical challenges and insults to the United States, and blandishments to his allies. He has congratulated Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on the 40th anniversary of his regime, visited a festival in Venice to praise a film about himself, suggested forming a "union" with Belarus, promoted the idea of a cartel of natural gas exporters mirroring OPEC, and offering to assist with Iran's controversial nuclear program. Venezuela became the third country, after Russia and Nicaragua (another Latin American state with a leftist government and old ties to the Soviet Union), to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the regions that broke away from Georgia after the war with Russia in August 2008 and are not recognized as independent states by the United States and Europe. When touring the world, Chavez always succeeds in attracting attention and thumbing his nose at the United States. But Chavez has been particularly strident on this tour and has made some particularly provocative promises. For instance, he has taken advantage of the tense atmosphere surrounding the West's demands for Iran to negotiate on its nuclear program or else face severe sanctions. While in Iran, he signed a deal to supply Tehran with 20,000 barrels of gasoline per day for $800 million, a deliberate counter to Western threats to target Iran's gasoline imports with sanctions (though one that Chavez will have trouble delivering on, especially if sanctions are in fact enforced). Turning to Chavez's visit to Russia, Venezuela and Russia have long talked about cooperating on a range of issues, especially in the field of energy production, which both economies are heavily dependent on. Venezuela's Orinico River Basin contains massive deposits of crude oil (Venezuela claims the biggest in the world), but it is underdeveloped — the deposits are located in areas difficult to access, transportation after extraction will raise further difficulties, and the crude itself is very heavy and costly to process. Because of the Venezuelan government's habit of intervening in the private sector — and often nationalizing foreign-held assets — foreign investment has dried up and production is faltering, leaving Caracas to seek assistance from foreign nations and state-owned energy firms, such as those of China and Russia. Russia generally encourages Venezuela's hopes without necessarily committing cash. Russian energy companies, put off by the costs and inconveniences of oil extraction in Venezuela, have nevertheless continually expressed their interest in investing there (likely due to pressure from the Kremlin), and have promised to undertake various projects in recent years. Caracas has also become interested in purchasing arms from Russia. Politically antagonistic towards the United States and interested in projecting a revolutionary ideology abroad, Venezuela fears that its national security is under constant threat from a United States that wants to steal its oil resources. Caracas sees this threat taking shape especially in the form of neighboring Colombia, a firm U.S. ally on security matters whose recent decision to grant the U.S. military greater access to airports and bases in its territory has riled Venezuela, adding to tensions over Colombian accusations that Venezuela and its ally Ecuador support armed insurgents in Colombia. Faced with these perceived security threats from the United States and Colombia, and generally interested in attracting patronage from a greater power, Venezuela has bought arms from Russia — some 50 helicopters, 24 Sukhoi fighter jets and thousands of Kalashnikov rifles, to name just a few — worth upwards of $4 billion in the past few years. The most recent round of wheeling and dealing has yielded 10 agreements along these same lines, but few of them carry weight. On the energy front, the Venezuelan state-owned company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) signed two agreements with a consortium of Russian energy giants, including LUKoil, Rosneft, TNK-BP, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz. The first item is a memorandum of understanding for investment into developing the Orinoco belt — the agreement is specifically "long term" and therefore any concrete investment is likely to be elusive. PDVSA has also agreed with Transneft, Russia's chief pipeline construction company, to build distribution networks in the Orinoco area — but these types of projects have not taken off in the past. Another more specific deal calls for a joint venture into the Junin 6 block in the Orinoco area, estimated to contain more than 50 billion barrels of oil. Here, the problem is the enormous capital required — Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, in charge of energy matters, claimed in August that developing the block could run upwards of $30 billion. Financing for the consortium's investments is supposed to be provided by a not-yet-created Russian-Venezuelan bank — but no movement on this issue appears to have taken place today. Venezuela cannot afford these costs, and the Russians are not likely to sink so much cash — cash they could invest into their own production — into oilfields that they lack the technology to develop successfully, knowing that the output would mostly end up supplying the United States. Not to mention the risks of investing heavily into a country whose government's stability is questionable. On the arms deals, Chavez appears to have secured a loan from Russia to fund further purchases (though it is not clear whether this is separate from the $1 billion loan offered in 2008). The purchasing agreements themselves will have to wait until later this year for approval — these specifically cover 20 Tor-M2E short-range air defense systems, 100 T-72 and T-90 tanks, as well as cargo planes and aircraft, totaling $2 billion, according to Russian media. But Chavez has received assurances from Medvedev that these supplies are not merely an empty promise: Medvedev said after promising to meet Venezuela's arms requests, "I will not be insincere, such contracts are seldom signed in public," RIA Novosti reported. Otherwise, Caracas and Moscow have also agreed for broader military cooperation following visits by Russian bombers and naval exercises in 2008. Today's agreements focus on personnel training and information sharing, as well as an agreement on intellectual property rights on military technology (though there are almost no details accompanying the latter agreement, and it is highly questionable whether Venezuela's defense industry has much to offer — or has the expertise and capacity to benefit from — such an arrangement). The United States will not be overly concerned with any of this. Needless to say, Venezuela does not pose a military danger to U.S. security — nor even to its neighbor Colombia. Colombia has a better trained, better equipped, better funded military, plus U.S. assistance — and it knows that Russian tanks are not necessarily the best tools for warfighting in the intractable jungle-covered and partly mountainous terrain between the two neighbors. (Though the tanks may come in handy in the streets of Caracas should Chavez need to suppress major social instability or a second coup attempt.) Nevertheless the underlying importance of Chavez's current tour is geopolitical. Venezuela seeks a foreign patron as it attempts to secure itself from any potential aggression from the global superpower, while Russia sees Venezuela as a useful instrument with which it can needle the United States. And with all these economic and defense deals perpetually in the works, a horde of Russian businessmen, prospectors and government officials will always have reason to visit Venezuela, which offers opportunities for working together in less obvious ways and move intelligence personnel back and forth. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had an extensive network of agents in Latin America that could be activated to stir trouble up for the United States. It is possible that modern Russia is interested in reviving this tool — and Venezuela would serve as the cornerstone of such a strategy.