Russia Delivers 1,800 Shoulder-Launched Anti-Aircraft Missiles to Venezuela: Should We Threaten to Return the Favor and Send the Same Number of Stinger Missiles to Chechnya?

Venezuela has continued its massive arms buildup, preparing to export the weapons to rebel groups in neighboring democratic nations, with most of its weapons purchases coming from the Russian Federation.

This is not particularly helpful.  Russia needs to stop supporting Hugo Chavez.

Vladimir Putin seems to want to reignite the Cold War, and is using proxies like Venezuela to do it.

In that vein, should we threaten to match the Russian arms sales to Venezuela with shipments of arms to Chechnya in equal numbers?   Russia recently delivered 1,800 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to Venezuela.  What if we were to send 1,800 shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to Chechnyan rebel groups?  Russia would have a stroke!

Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has been known to support the Chechnyan independence drive, and there’s no guarantee that any Stinger missiles provided to Chechnya wouldn’t end up elsewhere in the world, being used against American, Israeli and European airliners as well as Russian interests.

It’s an interesting “What if?” 

But the risks far outweigh the benefits of taking an action as dangerous as supplying advanced arms to the Chechnyans.

When our nation provided Stinger missiles to the Afghans in their war against the Soviets in the 1980s, we had little idea that some of the same people we were supporting back then would become America’s most dangerous enemies down the road.   In those days, the Soviets were the #1 threat, and the perception was that they’d be around for a long time to come.

All Stingers provided to the 1980s mujahedeen in Afghanistan were either used, or went off-line when the batteries in the Stinger’s target-acquisition system ran out, or became unusable due to lack of maintenance by qualified technicians.  Remember, we are talking about 12rh century horse soldiers using 20th Century technology. 

But with today’s arms market, it might be possible to keep Stinger technology going for a lot longer if we WERE to provide Stingers to Chechnya.  We’d probably have issues with the missiles for a LONG time to come should the missiles fall into the wrong hands.

But what if….