WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- Russia is sending a powerful naval squadron comprising the missile battle cruiser Pyotr Veliky and the anti-submarine warfare ship Admiral Chabenko to visit Venezuela and hold naval exercises in the Caribbean region later this month.

In addition, the head of Venezuela's air force announced last week that the two nations will carry out joint air force maneuvers next year.

"Joint Russian-Venezuelan air force drills have been planned for next year. We could have participated in joint naval exercises due in November if they included a simulated air attack, but this has not been included in the plans so far," Luis Acosta announced in a statement carried on the Venezuelan Ministry of Communications and Information Web site, RIA Novosti announced Oct. 31.

The sheer scale of Russia's arms sales to Venezuela vastly eclipses the size of arms deals, trade and scientific cooperation agreements currently being negotiated with Cuba, which for the last 30 years of the Cold War was the Soviet Union's one major ally in the Western Hemisphere.

The Kremlin is trying to play down U.S. concerns over Venezuela's enormous arms buildup. RIA Novosti noted that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had insisted Venezuela's weapons buildup was purely defensive and that it was not directed against either Venezuela's neighbors or the United States.

"I do not know how such conclusions are drawn. Neither Russia nor Venezuela have any plans to attack anyone. Russia and Venezuela enjoy cooperation based on the norms of international law," Lavrov said, according to the report.

However, once the Venezuelan armed forces have fully integrated the $5.4 billion worth of weapons -- including the $1 billion missile, anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile systems that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered in September -- they will be unmatched throughout the northern tier of Latin American states -- sometimes called the "crescent of crisis" or throughout Central America.

In fact, Venezuela, with its population of 25 million people and its large -- though relatively low-grade and "sour" -- oil reserves, is a vastly more important, strategic and influential Western Hemisphere ally for Russia than the remote, small impoverished and isolated island nation of Cuba under Fidel Castro ever was.

Nor does the argument that Venezuela needs that enormous weapons arsenal to protect itself against possible U.S. invasion appear likely. During the past eight years, the Bush administration paid little attention to Chavez's largely successful efforts to maintain himself in power and build up a powerful military base.

Bush policymakers underestimated Chavez and never took him seriously. They were obsessed instead with creating democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq and supporting small, strategically unimportant nations on the edge of Europe like the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

The incoming Obama administration looks even less likely to pose any military threat to Venezuela. Obama and his Democratic Party policymakers want to improve relations with Russia and with the nations of Latin America. Their model is President Franklin Roosevelt's "good neighbor" policy with Latin America 75 years ago that dramatically reduced the number and scale of U.S. military interventions in the region.

So why is Russia doing it?

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(Part 3: Why profit isn't Russia's motive in arms sales to Caracas)