Venezuela president Chavez used the climate summit for his own political agenda, in a speech where he claims Venezuelan rights to the Dutch Antilles, an island group 40 miles north of Venezuela.
These islands have been under Dutch control since the 17th century. Long before attempts of Venezuela to become itself independent.
It seems Chavez is quite fearful of an American invasion, since he also claims that US secret agents, spy planes and warships are staging at the Antilles. Paranoia is rarely a good trait in a head of state.
One would hope Chavez thinks twice about actually claiming those Islands, specially since his tone suggests military action to claim them and secure the islands from US presence. The Dutch military might be small, but it is not weak, and this county is a NATO member. Any attack on Dutch territory is grounds for full NATO response. Venezuela is by no means a weak country, nor poor, but anyone will doubt it’s ability to withstand such a reaction.
However, I think Chavez knows this, the man is not stupid, and that makes this just another feeble attempt to get attention. He is nervous about his neighbor Colombia allowing more US troops in, though he fails to see the why behind it.
So, he thinks everything within 200 nautical miles of the Venezuela northern coast is Venezuela territory? That’s nice, I think international law decrees otherwise.
It is not paranoia. You should lookup what economic hitmen do and when they fail, prepare a coupe, and when they fail send in the military. It’s standard USA operating procedure to obtain valuable resources from a different country. In Venezuela they already tried steps one and two. It’s a matter of time before Venezuela is attacked with military force. Chavez will most likely last not more than five years. So, he will either die in a mysterious plane crash, be assassinated or something similar to that.
Not everything in this world is paranoia.