NewsMax.com. CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela is buying helicopters, boats and military transport planes in defense deals worth about $2.7 billion, modernizing its military as tensions grow between leftist President Hugo Chavez and the United States.

Flush with oil profits but blocked from buying U.S. arms, Chavez is increasingly looking to countries like Russia and Spain as suppliers.

A cargo ship carrying 30,000 Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifles is headed to Venezuela with the first shipment of an order totaling 100,000 guns to arrive by year's end. The military is looking to buy more submarines, and Chavez is planning an even bigger deal for Russian fighter jets.

"The United States is failing in its attempt to blockade us, to disarm us," Chavez said after announcing the first shipment of Kalashnikovs.

Washington has pointed to the mounting defense deals with concern and urged Russia and Spain not to do business with Venezuela. Both countries have shrugged off the warnings.

Read more on this vital issue at NewsMax.com

Liberty Letters comment: Will the U.S. enforce the Monroe Doctrine as another Communist implant arises in the Americas? As Liberty Letters has made clear, Chavez is a growing and serious threat that must be nipped in the bud now, not later (when the danger and implications of inaction are far greater). Yet a more fundamental question is this: Is not the arrival of communist hardliner Hugo Chavez the result of a set policy of U.S. interventionism in South and Central America, one that has favored leftist political and economic models (so-called middle of the road ones), rather than true limited government and lessee-faire models?

Thus, in some respects, this has been the Monroe Doctrine in reverse. Our State Department has led the way in implanting the very sort of foreign economic and political order (foreign to our founding principles) that it was intended to prevent. Here's the key: it just isn't as big a step from soft socialism to hard communism as the 'scholars' claim. As Lenin predicted as to the fall of the West, the step from a socialist (or fascist) system can and will occur at the drop of a dime.

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