For quite a few years, the United States has been the major aid donar to the poor Latin American country of Bolivia.

The aid money is in the vicinity of $150 million dollars a year.

Despite the amount being generous is absolute terms, critics have charged that much of the aid is tied to the War on Drugs, a situation that devalues the aid, targets cocoa farmers unfairly and allows the US to have a disproportionate hold over the Bolivian military forces.

Moreover, it puts the Bolvian president on the back foot when dealing with the US.

As such, while the aid itself is generous, the kudos the US gets from that aid seems to be minimal. War on Drugs diplomacy is simply not as good as traditional benevolence.

Enter Hugo Chavez, the leftist leader of Venezuela who was once referred to by Collin Powell as “a serious irritant.”

Chavez has been spending the last few years trying to gain himself a place as the pre-eminent South American statesman. His country is currently doing very well, due largely to high global oil prices (Venezuela is the world’s 5th largest producer of oil).

Yesterday’s news that Venezuela has signed a very generous deal with Bolivia giving the Bolivians generous credit, building resources and university scholarships in return for better access to Bolivia’s natural gas reserves was not a huge surprise.

The move will further put pressure on the US to ditch its adherance to the goals of the War on Drugs in favour of winning back Bolivia for the sake of energy security. Having Chavez in control of any more energy in Latin America is very far from what the US would want.

When national energy security needs conflict with the goals of the War on Drugs, the latter might take a battering - at least temporarily.