AS EXPECTED, Hugo Chavez handily won re-election as Venezuela’s president on Sunday. Beyond demonstrating Chavez’s widespread popularity across certain segments of Venezuelan society — he won about 60 percent of the vote — the election provided a more general reminder of Chavez’s greatest attribute: his finely honed instincts for political survival. Such instincts led him to victory in Sunday’s election, but they also regularly lead him to notoriety in the staid world of international diplomacy.

Foremost among Chavez’s perceived offenses is the fiery rhetoric he often directs toward the Bush administration. Chavez famously referred to President Bush as “the devil” in his address to the U.N. General Assembly in September, and he has described the U.S. secretary of state—“Condolencia,” to Chavez—as illiterate. Such rhetoric has earned Chavez disdain from the Bush administration, and indeed, he outwardly suspects that the United States seeks to remove him from power. With his blunt and fiery rhetoric, Chavez draws world attention to this perceived threat. In doing so, however, he deftly serves his own instincts for political survival. The brilliance of Chavez’s strategy lies not in its proven success. It lies in the fact that Bush is unwittingly and helplessly complicit in Chavez’s political survival.

Assume for a moment that Chavez is correct and that the Bush administration really does want to remove him from power. Chavez certainly has reason to fear this; in fact, Chavez believes that the Bush administration has already targeted him. In 2002, Chavez was briefly removed from power in an abortive coup attempt. Although he ultimately regained his position after a brief detention, Chavez is convinced that the United States was behind the coup attempt. At the very least, the Bush administration was too quick to recognize Chavez’s usurpers. At most, the United States provided material and moral support for the coup.

This atmosphere of antagonism has led many to agree with Chavez that the Bush administration has him in its crosshairs. But as long as Chavez plays the perennial victim and retains the international spotlight, the United States would find it very difficult to oust him quietly. Even if Chavez faced an internal threat—another coup attempt, for example—suspicion would immediately fall upon the Bush administration. Chavez has essentially created a situation in which he can trace any attempt to oust him back to the United States. In the process, he would demonstrate his own prescience.

Alternatively, assume that Chavez is incorrect and that the Bush administration has neither the plans nor the intention to oust him. The United States buys 60 percent of Venezuela’s oil output, and the country is the fourth largest supplier of petroleum to the United States. Although some analysts claim that Venezuela’s oil industry has been poorly managed under Chavez, the Bush administration would be loath to upset the mutually beneficial arrangement that currently exists. And as much as it may disapprove of Chavez’s friends and fiery rhetoric, the Bush administration must certainly appreciate a stable leadership that keeps the oil flowing. President Bush — or the parodied members of his cabinet — would need to have very thin skin indeed to allow themselves to be goaded into action against Chavez.

Even if the Bush administration is not actually targeting Chavez, he has convinced enough people that it is. And every second that Chavez remains in power—in effect, defying the world’s most powerful country and its very unpopular leader—serves to solidify his political security. In the eyes of the world and his fellow Venezuelans, Chavez is able to beat the United States without even fighting it. All the while, he graciously fuels the U.S. economy with Venezuela’s abundant oil.

Chavez’s fiery rhetoric, then, is part of an astute strategy to ensure his own political survival. It is fair to ask, however, if Chavez’s political survival is good for Venezuela. No one can deny Chavez’s popularity. He is admired tremendously by certain segments of the Venezuelan population, and international observers have certified each of his elections—including Sunday’s — as sufficiently free and fair. His “Bolivarian missions” have directed much of Venezuela’s oil wealth towards its poorer citizens, funding health care, literacy, and housing programs. And Chavez certainly represents a healthy break from a long line of light-skinned Venezuelan leaders. His presidency has empowered wide swathes of Venezuelan society that had previously felt disenfranchised and downtrodden.

The exciting rhetoric that ensures Chavez’s political survival, however, also reflects a worrying trend in his leadership style. Instead of implementing his desired reforms through Venezuela’s pre-existing political structure upon taking office, Chavez immediately wrote (and won approval for) a completely new constitution. This constitution centralizes a great deal of power in the executive branch of the Venezuelan government, at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches. Chavez argues that such institutional changes were necessary to achieve his desired reforms and to purge endemic corruption from Venezuelan politics. Indeed, such changes have proven popular among Chavez’s poorer supporters. But Chavez’s opponents contend that the president is a demagogue, interested only in his own power and in substituting easy, short-term fixes for the difficult, long-term reform most needed to help Venezuela’s poor.

Chavez’s re-election locks him in as Venezuela’s president until 2012, unless he modifies the constitution to extend his term before then. With his domestic mandate renewed, look for Chavez to return to his favored pastime on the world stage, and remember that every time he compares Bush to the devil, he ensures his own political survival that much more.

Daniel Widome is a San Francisco-based writer and foreign policy analyst.