Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is in final negotiations with Moscow to acquire up to nine submarines, Kommersant reported Thursday. The deal means the largest submarine fleet in South America for Venezuela, probably $3 billion for Russia, and an international insult for Washington.

Snubbing the U.S. is no new phenomenon for Chavez. Since coming to power in 1999, the Marxist leader has grown increasingly bold. In recent months, he has muscled out American oil companies and called the American administration imperial, genocidal, fascist and other epithets less fit to print.

Chavez is not just buying the submarines because they’re on sale. The contract represents more than just another affront to Venezuela’s largest crude oil customer. It composes a large piece of Chavez’s military puzzle, a project he has reportedly spent $4.3 billion on since 2005—more than Iran, Pakistan or China. With that money and leverage from his nation’s substantial oil reserves, Chavez has stocked up on 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, 35 M-17 helicopters, and is looking at an air-defense missile system, all from Russia.

Chavez has justified his massive military expenditures by issuing a consistent flow of vituperative rhetoric against the Bush administration, insisting that Venezuelans are under constant threat of attack from the United States, a charge most recognize as groundless. Nevertheless, this argument provides Caracas a pretense for building a comparatively massive military—a pretense, ironically, that many poverty-stricken and suffering Venezuelans believe. Would that some of those billions were spent bolstering the nation’s sagging economy.

But more than anything, nine Russian subs off the short and unthreatened Venezuelan coast constitute a challenge against Washington. Though not a direct threat to the superior U.S. Navy which could easily handle a conventional naval war with Venezuela, the new subs pose a strategic and a diplomatic threat. Hugo Chavez is challenging Washington to control of the Venezuelan Caribbean and sending another signal that Caracas does not want, does not need, and would be happy to someday fight, Washington.

Equally significant is the fact that the subs come from Russia. Caracas has obtained the vast majority of its arms acquisitions from Moscow, and there appears no end to this trend in sight. It seems Moscow’s worrisome habit of providing U.S. enemies with weapons and technology continues.

Adding insult to insult, the submarine deal is expected to be concluded with Moscow receiving Chavez to sign the contract only days before Russian President Vladimir Putin embarks to meet with President Bush.

One would presume that Hugo Chavez knows the United States would be invincible in a full-scale war between Washington and Venezuela. He also knows that the U.S. is his biggest petroleum customer. But by chipping away at American military superiority as he diverts more and more oil sales away from the U.S., Chavez is ready to do his part to erode and eventually overcome both of those givens.

For more on the importance of Venezuela’s foreign relations and oil, search theTrumpet.com for “Venezuela.”