With so many presidents, prime ministers and dictators visiting New York in early September for the U.N. Millennium Summit--it was billed as the biggest gathering of heads of state in history--more than a few of those world leaders felt downright ignored by the American mass media.

After all, with proven show-stoppers like Cuba's Fidel Castro and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat around, what reporter wanted to be left behind to cover Hasina Wazed, the prime minister of Bangladesh, or Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, president of the Maldives, or even Britain's Tony Blair?

No matter what publicity ploys the foreign dignitaries tried, Castro and Arafat kept attracting most of the media attention, and the longest applause, wherever they went. The reason is simple: These two have defied U.S. government for so long, and have done it so successfully, that they're now practically elder statesmen of the opposition. Even many Americans who detest the pair see them as almost comfortable adversaries. Besides, deep down inside, they know that neither leader poses any threat to the American consumer's way of life.

The same cannot be said of the rising new revolutionary star of Latin America, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

In the less than two years since he was elected, the 46-year-old former military officer has sparked a remarkable social revolution, one being felt both in his own nation and on the world scene. And Venezuela is far more important to the United States than Cuba or Palestine. Beneath its soil lie 73 billion barrels of oil, the largest proven petroleum reserves in the Western Hemisphere.

Chávez was jailed in 1992 after staging a failed coup against the government of Carlos Andres Perez. He served a few years in jail, but rebounded quickly after huge corruption scandals drove Perez from office. In December 1998, Chávez was elected by a landslide on a populist agenda.

Since then, he has spearheaded an upheaval in Venezuelan society, including the writing of a new constitution that goes against many of the neoliberal policies favored by the United States. The constitution forbids the privatization of Venezuela's social security, health systems or the government-owned oil company, and it replaced the old two-house congress, comprised largely of the nation's elite class, with a new national assembly.

The Chávez government also has decreed a 44-hour work week, down from 48 hours; it has started a huge FDR-type public-works program to reduce the high unemployment rate; and it has forced the corrupt trade unions to allow their members to elect leaders directly. In wildly popular weekly radio broadcasts, Chávez answers citizens' questions and resolves their problems. He even has visited prisoners in Venezuela's notorious jails and promised to address their complaints.

Most important to the rest of the world, Chávez and his new oil minister, former left-wing guerrilla fighter Ali Rodriguez Araque, have single-handedly put teeth back into the OPEC oil cartel. They successfully convinced the other OPEC nations--as well as some key non-OPEC countries like Mexico, Russia and Norway--to restrain or cut back their production instead of secretly vying to exceed their quotas. The new discipline has led to a tripling of the international price of oil in less than two years, which in turn has sparked massive protests across Europe and outcries from the United States over the escalating price of gasoline and home heating oil.

For the first time in decades, the industrialized countries have gotten a taste of the same medicine that cartels controlled by the West regularly force upon the Third World. OPEC, which practically had been declared dead by the great powers as its share of world oil production dropped, once again is being watched anxiously by the politicians and central bankers in London, Washington and Tokyo.

At the end of September, as a sign of that renewed strength, Chávez will host the second-ever summit of the OPEC heads of state, on the 40th anniversary of the cartel's founding. Only five years ago, Venezuela was the world's largest supplier of oil to the United States. Today, thanks to the Chávez strategy, it ranks third behind Saudi Arabia and Mexico--but Venezuelans are earning considerably more revenue from that reduced production. With those revenues, Chávez hopes to finance his promises to the people.

Thanks to his peaceful revolution and cunning oil strategy, Chávez has become the world leader who makes the State Department most nervous these days--though you wouldn't know it by reading our national press, which usually goes only where the State Department sends it. Meanwhile, no doubt, some enterprising souls in obscure corners of the CIA and Pentagon are already hard at work preparing seamy contingency plans for Chávez. We can pretty well guess the contours of these subversions of democracy from our government's past practice in places like the Chile of Allende, the Haiti of Aristide or, to go back even further, the Guatemala of Arbenz.

If so, Bill Clinton's $1.3 billion aid package for the drug war in Colombia, which positions gobs of U.S. military advisers right next door to Venezuela, could be seen in another way--as a security deposit on a far greater future investment.

Oil and revolution, you see, are a dangerous mix.