While the US certainly has been interfering with Chavez and generally trying to mess around in Venezuela for a while, most of what's happening here is just that Chavez is running off at the mouth for domestic political reasons. (Pat Robertson was partly doing that also and partly just babbling.)
The leftist Z-mag had an interesting article about Chavez last month. Although most of Z-mag's articles are fairly silly leftwing ranting, you defiintely have a few in-the-trenches-type articles that show up every now and then. The article on Chavez is most interesting and strongly suggests that what Chavez is actually doing is trying to drive up the price Venezuela gets per barrel. Apparently, he's been successful, and most major oil companies (with the notable exception of Exxon) have recently signed very favorable contracts with his government. Also of interest is the proliferation of Chinese and other oil companies edging in next to the big US & UK oil firms that have traditionally dominated such deals.
The business about shipping oil to Jamaica is interesting; he'd previously been talking about selling cheap gasoline to poor US communities, which was high-grade political bullshit that he had no mechanism for implementing, and quite amusing.
Maybe not quite bullshit after all...the major barrier to doing this (ie, shipping low cost oil to some contries and communities) was that the oil was in a form that required processing before it could be used (when I get home I'll try to look up the specifics). Only a few companies could do this and he now has such companies signed (one is Chinese, I think).
But fundamentally the US government's problem is that he's a leftist who hangs out with Castro and has oil and likes to do "land reform" and nationalize oil companies, which is not the kind of thing that right-wing industrialists like.
Well, that's always the catch. Mao and (to a much lesser extent) Castro were effective guerilla warriors, but Mao had to die of old age in order for China to start developing itself (Cuba speaks for itself). Chavez seems to be spending a lot of the oil wealth on lots of social services which, though perhaps noble, is not sustainable. If Chavez were bright enough to use this $$$ to kick-start a modern economy his rhetoric would then prove to be much more than hot air.
In short, I'm not convinced Chavez is an idiot. From this vantage point I'd argue it's way too early to tell.
-TD
