The thesis of my dissertation on the issue of respect in the US-Venezuelan relationship is that the extreme confrontational external policy and rhetoric of Hugo Chávez and his government serves as retaliation and defiance to compensate a feeling of disrespect mainly from the US side. The further objective would be to find out on the contents of the concrete accusations, demands and claims of the as such perceived none-respected actor Venezuela. This thesis was supported at once by political officials as well as academic analysts in interviews during a six months research stay in Caracas this year, however, in order to make it scientifically plausible one has to develop an appropriate research design. With the help of discourse-analytical approaches there already could be shown that there exist a general status mismatch between Venezuela and the US with regards to the left-side Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chávez. Yet, the radicalization of foreign policy in actions and rhetoric only happened after the oppositional coup attempt in 2002 that was indirectly supported by the US. The afterwards beginning radicalization of chavismo foreign policy can partly be explained by the need of Venezuela to secure its political anti-imperialist program in finding allies to counter US influence. However, that does not explain all of the Chávez government’s actions and above all not the inflammatory rhetoric. It seems that besides the concrete political goals of the Bolivarian Revolution, chavista Venezuela needs to provoke the United States to show that the chavismo project is not only still there but is also getting ever more powerful and above all cannot be simply overthrown by a coup.
