At the end of May I wrote about Vietnam and the United States bilateral free-trade agreement, paving the way for the United States to approve a bill leading the country’s accession to the WTO later this year. Trade will lead to growth and prosperity; and, eventually, real democracy. Even we fought a war with them so many years ago, Washington and Hanoi are on pretty good terms these days. The latter knows that being friends with the former leads to big benefits in the long run.

There are some, however, who don’t want to see that happen. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, after just signing a flurry of arms deals in Belarus and Russia, is now sniffing butt in Vietnam. They signed some deals, mostly related to development of oil industry. But Vietnam, despite its so-called communist rulers, did not get suckered into his anti-imperialist game. Chavez may have “spoke warmly” about the Vietnam War, but they wouldn’t let him visit a museum of a shot-down U.S. warplane. Fact is, they don’t want to sour ties with the United States, and any deal they can make with Chavez is strictly business and small potatoes.

He’ll have to do better than that if he wants to sucker more people into his maniacal schemes. Only the true crazies, like Lukashenko of Belarus, Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Mugabe of Zimbabwe go for this stuff. Essentially, Chavez is trying to convince countries like Vietnam that working to destroy the guarantor of their prosperity is in their best interests, a logic that could only make sense to a madman. Luckily the Vietnamese are not mad and want nothing of it.