It's not just rhetoric

At least, it isn't in the case of Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez, flush with oil cash from CITGO, is debating buying submarines from Russia: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/6/21/203912.shtml?s=ic. Let me ask this again, because no one ever seems to offer an answer: Why is it that Russia is not considered an outright enemy of this country? And why why WHY are we not trying to find a cost-efficient fuel alternative to oil so that we can tell Chavez and his Arab buddies in OPEC where to go?