For Venezuela's Chavez, best defense is attack

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez speaks during a meeting with workers in Valencia, some 81 miles from Caracas September 11, 2008.

CARACAS (Reuters) - For Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the best form of defense is attack, meaning that when he appears in trouble he takes aim at the superpower that needs his oil.

On Thursday, the ex-tank division soldier expelled Washington's ambassador, cut back U.S. flights to Venezuela and threatened to stop selling oil to the United States, plunging ties to their lowest point in years.

It was classic Chavez.

Assailed in the United States where a corruption cover-up scandal lapped against him this week and facing elections at home where he risks losing his grip on regional power centers, he took the offensive and escalated a spat into a crisis.

Chavez, one of America's biggest oil suppliers, lashed out at the United States on September 11, the seventh anniversary of al Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

A day later, Washington ejected his ambassador and imposed sanctions on some of his top aides. It showed how quickly the man who calls ex-Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor can draw the Bush administration into a fight and distract voters.

His order for American Airlines, Continental Airlines and Delta Air Lines to cut flights was also typical Chavez strategy. He shifted a diplomatic dispute into a conflict that hurts U.S. companies.

He has done the same against banks and food exporters in disputes with Spain and Colombia over the past year.

GALVANIZING CAMPAIGN

The anti-U.S. moves coupled with his charges on the same day of an opposition plot to kill him, succeeded in galvanizing an election campaign as media focused on Chavez's agenda.

Opinion polls show his allies could lose important governorships in November elections because Venezuelans worry about some of the world's worst rates for inflation and murder. But those issues were pushed off the front pages and TV talk shows.

Gone too was the opposition media's blow-by-blow coverage of a trial, where Chavez was accused this week of sending agents to Florida to buy the silence of businessmen involved in a scandal where $800,000 was funneled to his ally Argentina.

The opposition defeated Chavez last year for the first time in a national vote, a referendum on expanding his powers, and says he wants to fire his political base by creating enemies.

"Chavez is nervous. He should calm down. We will send him a box of sedatives," opposition leader Manuel Rosales said. "It seems the election map and numbers have him nervous."

The Bush administration has irritated Chavez over the past few weeks with the corruption trial and criticism of his drug policies and of Venezuela's airport security.

Washington also said the expulsion of its ambassador was a sign Chavez was weak and desperate in the face of his domestic challenges.

Chavez said he ejected the ambassador in solidarity with leftist Andean ally Bolivia, which accused its U.S. envoy of backing the opposition and expelled him this week.

Chavez's insertion into a neighbor's crisis recalled how in March he sent tanks and troops toward the Colombian border after that country killed a rebel inside Ecuador -- another leftist ally.

Chavez says his popularity is sky-high and that his party will easily win the elections. Still, he has resorted to a campaign tactic he deployed last year when he was behind.

In that campaign, he made a late surge in opinion polls as he criticized the United States and said Venezuelan rivals wanted to spark civil war, although he still lost narrowly.

This year, his attacks have come months before the vote.

That means he has time to intensify his anti-U.S. offensive with substantive moves before the November 23 vote, especially as Venezuelans are jaded by mere hostile rhetoric.

"His insults against the United States and his threats to stop sending oil have all been heard many times before," said Maria Teresa Romero, an international studies professor at the Central University of Venezuela. "So now he is looking for an impact on public opinion with more concrete action."

(Additional reporting by Patricia Rondon)

(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Peter Cooney)