Over the past few months Hugo Chávez has put the most inveterate traveller to shame. One minute the endlessly energetic, anti-American president of Venezuela is in Moscow signing a deal to buy military helicopters and manufacture Kalashnikovs; the next he is in Beijing promising to step up oil sales to China; and then he is in Damascus threatening, alongside Bashar Assad, president of Syria, to “dig the grave of US imperialism”.

In between, he finds time to visit assorted African and Asian capitals in order to press his campaign to win one of the temporary seats on the United Nations Security Council. This week he is in Havana where he is soon likely to be bashing the Americans again at the summit of the non-aligned movement.