Hugo Chavez's Lawless Venezuela Grows More Lawless

The Americas: With U.S. attention focused elsewhere, Venezuela's dictator is at it again — breaking contracts, pushing drugs, plotting cyberattacks and cavorting with Iran's tyrant. This is what appeasement brings.

Well before President Obama gave President Hugo Chavez a handshake at a 2009 summit, wiser heads at the State Department warned him against a "reset." Obama ignored them.

The rube-like naivete has now come to bite Obama as the craziness in Caracas spirals wildly in just the last few days. The Rumsfeld Maxim that "weakness is provocative" seems to be operative here, setting the stage for the astonishing string of lawless acts that now demand hard sanctions. Among them:

• Breaking international contracts. Chavez announced Monday he'll ignore an arbitration ruling from the World Bank that ordered Venezuela to pay ExxonMobil $1 billion for Chavez's expropriation of its investments. Exxon had asked for $12 billion, got $1 billion, but Chavez says he'll only pay $250 million.

• Naming a drug kingpin as head of military. Chavez appointed Henry Rangel Silva — identified by the U.S. Treasury as a "kingpin" — as his defense minister. That act not only flouts global efforts to stop organized crime, but effectively turns Venezuela into a narcostate and its army into a drug cartel.

• Plotting war against the U.S. A Venezuelan diplomat was kicked out of the U.S. last weekend for soliciting cyberattacks on U.S. military, intelligence and nuclear targets. Her acts were clumsy, but her malevolence extended straight to Chavez's palace, where she said she had ties. It calls for a hard response.

• Aiding America's enemies. Chavez defied international sanctions by bringing Iran's tyrant, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to our hemisphere in a bid to gain credibility as a rogue state. The Iranian madman got a red-carpet welcome at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on Monday, undercutting the U.S. efforts to sanction Iran, which threatens the world with nuclear war.

With our military gutted and the long fuse to Iran burning shorter, the last thing we need is a rogue state across the Gulf of Mexico conducting acts of war.

It wouldn't take much to get rid of Chavez, and in light of the high stakes elsewhere, it should be a priority. But our president has had little more than handshakes and a scolding words for what's rapidly shaping up as the most lawless rogue state in our hemisphere.