While an immediate confrontation between Washington and Caracas is unlikely, the potential for a future collision is real. The United States might feel less free to confront Venezuela if Chinese interests were implicated in the decision. It is one thing to face off with a regional power, quite another with an emergent superpower. The Venezuelan government may make the same calculation, and feel emboldened to adopt more destabilizing policies towards the United States.

Chinese support for Chavez's regime would be consistent with Beijing's proven willingness to use its influence at the UN to shield unattractive but oil-rich regimes, like Sudan and Iran, from U.S. and allied pressure. A large and reliable Chinese market for Venezuelan oil makes Chavez's recurrent threats to shut off or slow the export of oil to the United States more credible.

For Venezuela to discontinue its exports to the United States today would be self-defeating, while doing so with a hungry Chinese market ready to absorb redirected supplies might be profitable. Chavez has almost said as much. In a recent speech he warned: "The government of the United States should know that if they go over the line, they are not going to have Venezuelan oil . . . I have already taken measures regarding this. I'm not going to say what because they think that I can't take these measures because we would not have any place to send the oil." Were he one day to follow through on his threats, the short-term supply disruption could roil the global oil market and increase American dependence on other unstable suppliers of oil--the Middle East, Africa and the former Soviet Union.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, a large Chinese stake in Venezuela could mark the end of the comfortable strategic assumption that Washington can keep half an eye on the Western Hemisphere, swat at the occasional dictator, and otherwise focus its foreign policy further afield. U.S. officials with responsibility for Latin America should remember that Beijing has consistently sought to project power abroad to secure its energy supplies. China's military deployment in Sudan is but one example. Chinese strategists have long feared that U.S. naval forces could choke off their oil supply in the event of conflict over Taiwan. Accordingly, Beijing is sinking billions into constructing a blue-water navy as well as deep-water ports in Pakistan and Burma that could serve as bases for Chinese units protecting the shipment of oil from the Middle East to China.

If 20 percent of China's oil were ultimately to come from Venezuela, similar strategies might be extended into the Western Hemisphere. Outside of Venezuela, Chinese efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean are currently focused on improving trade and inducing the region's governments to sever ties with Taiwan. However, the foundations of a strategy focused more closely on energy security may already be in place. In addition to bolstering its friendly relations with Caracas, Beijing has also carefully cultivated Caribbean nations like Grenada and Dominica--into which it has poured hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money. Both islands have recently cut their diplomatic ties with Taipei. In addition, a Chinese company, Hutchinson Whampoa, holds the contract for operating the Panama Canal, likely to be a key artery for the shipment of increasing amounts of Venezuelan oil to China. Taken together, Bolivarian Venezuela, subsidized Caribbean governments, and the Panama Canal could form a chain of positions protecting the flow of oil from Venezuela to China--projecting Beijing's influence into an area where Washington has grown unused to competition.

International events regularly defy precise prediction. Nevertheless, three intertwining trends merit attention from U.S. policymakers: Venezuelan oil production--the lifeblood of Chavez's revolution--is declining and dependent on injections of foreign expertise and investment; Chavez's hostility to the United States has left U.S. companies increasingly unwelcome--and unwilling to do business--in Venezuela; while China, thirsty for oil, invests massively and enjoys much warmer relations with Chavez's government than the United States can hope for.

If the 21st century is as marked by international competition over energy supplies as was the twentieth (and the signs are that it will be even more so), these three trends stand to transform the geopolitics of the Caribbean basin in the decades ahead.