I think a lot of his influence in the future will depend on the outcome of the US Presidential election. Right now he's riding a tide of international Bush hatred, but Bush will be gone in a year. If the new US president is more widely accepted on the international scale then I think Chavez's influence will diminish significantly. However, if the new US president is someone he can continue to pick on as an internationally disliked figure then I could see him continuing to be an annoyance. Regardless of who the president is though, Venezuela is a major oil exporter and as long as the US continues to rely heavily on imported oil and Chavez will continue to be a pain in our ass.
Concerning the new US president, I think so. I also think that there is still one year for G.W. Bush to begin a world mess by striking on Iran, making rising more than ever the importance of Chavez on the International scene.
If there is a new US president less disliked in the world (it could be as much Clinton as Giuliani, or else, it won't be very hard to be more disliked than G.W. Bush), if the new US president who is less a sort of "cow-boy of the western freedom", I think there is an other one who could take this place, it is my president, Sarkozy ("My president is Sarkozy", it's hard to say...). I think peoples are still not aware about the importance that could take Sarkozy on the International scene, I think he could have a lot, I think he could represent in the future the arrogance of the Occident, especially concerning Venezuela and its friends like Iran or Russia.
I dunno, Sarkozy seems a lot harder to hate than Bush: Bush embodies negative stereotypes of Americans much more than Sarkozy embodies negative stereotypes of France. I think the revisionist countries are already targeting the entire west, not just the US, but this hasn't been fully appreciated yet because so much of their wrath and ire has centered on Bush and US behavior in the Middle East, which most Europeans have opposed for some time.
Poll
