An enemy so close to home

By Diego Arria And Douglas E. Schoen / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

 "My sense is that what [Hugo] Chávez has done over the last several years has not had a serious national security impact on us,” President Obama said recently, minimizing the threat posed by the Venezuelan dictator. He’s wrong — and the U.S. is jeopardizing its national security by failing to take seriously a challenge so close to its own shores.

Chávez has the means and the motivation to harm the U.S. like few others can. He has built strategic alliances with Cuba, Iran, Syria and Russia. This year, while much of the international community has been busy condemning Bashar Assad for massacring his own people, Chávez sent large shipments of oil to the Syrian leader, in defiance of international sanctions.

Venezuela is involved in drug trafficking, money laundering and providing safe haven for terrorists. Chávez is an active supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah.

He severed ties with Israel in 2009 to protest its offensive against Hamas, and in 2010, he is believed to have hosted a secret summit in Caracas for senior members of the two terrorist organizations, along with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Running a nation that is the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the U.S., Chávez sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves, enjoying annual windfall oil profits of close to $90 billion. He has more modern weapons than anyone in Latin America. And his influence in propagating hatred for the U.S. cannot be underestimated.

Yet he has duped many Americans — including, apparently, Obama — into believing he is something closer to a friend than the enemy he actually is.

The dictator’s real friends — like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — know who they are. Chávez has called the Iranian leader his brother, partnered with him in a joint Iranian/Venezuelan bank and declared that he would consider any attack on Iran an attack on Venezuela.

And, indeed, should the U.S. take military action against Iran, the quickest route of retaliation would be through Venezuela, as it’s close enough to the U.S. that intercontinental missiles wouldn’t be needed.

Ahmadinejad has been placing Iranian intelligence agents in Venezuela. For years, Venezuela has been operating a weekly flight from Tehran to Caracas, bringing untold numbers of Iranians into the country. Just 1,500 miles from its shores, then, the U.S. faces an alliance of two sworn enemies who have developed a close partnership.

Obama’s laid-back attitude conflicts with that of his own Treasury Department, which lists five prominent Venezuelans on its drug “kingpin” list for cooperating actively with Colombian narco-terrorists. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, some 60% of cocaine exported to Europe in 2011 came through Venezuela.

Chávez’s provocations also reach inside the U.S. For years he has been financing Bolivarian Circles in American cities — community groups named after Venezuelan hero Simon Bolivar. The groups further socialist principles while building support for the Venezuelan revolution, as well as opposition to the U.S.

They are organized primarily in poorer neighborhoods, giving Chávez access to many disgruntled people, mainly Hispanics and African-Americans. Their venomous message is clear: rich against poor, America against the downtrodden of the world. Think of them as the South American version of madrassas.

Obama, unfortunately, seems mostly interested in keeping Chávez’s oil flowing to the U.S. while giving lip service to the need for free and fair elections in Venezuela. His casual attitude has seriously weakened the Chávez opposition movement’s attempts to make the case against the regime’s many human rights violations.

It’s too bad that many Americans merely regard Chávez as little more than a Fidel Castro knock-off, a blowhard without real substance.

He is probably best known in the U.S. for his over-the-top fulminations against President Bush, whom he labeled as a genocidal maniac, a warmonger, a drunkard, a coward and the world’s biggest terrorist.

He’s been kinder to Obama — whom he recently called “a good guy” — seeing little reason to antagonize a President reluctant to confront him.

Without an American Satan to rail against, Chávez has kept a lower profile in the U.S. media.

But his deeds remain to be reckoned with, and they speak more vividly of his true intentions than his words.

If he is a buffoon, then he’s a dangerous one. Ignoring the threat Hugo Chávez presents to the United States is a grave and potentially disastrous miscalculation.

Arria is a former ambassador to the UN from Venezuela. Schoen, who advised the Venezuelan opposition from 2004 to 2006 and has consulted for two prior presidents of Venezuela, is the author of “The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America.”