Colombian police escort suspected Venezuelan drug lord Walid Makled Garcia in Bogota last August. He says Hugo Chavez protected his drug empire. AP View Enlarged Image

Last week, Chavez promoted Major General Henry Rangel Silva to general-in-chief, the top position in the Venezuelan military command.

It was a rogue act because, in 2008, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control named Rangel and two other Chavez loyalists as “Tier II Kingpins” for material support of drug trafficking.

The U.S. designation came of an administrative process so strict and thorough the U.S. government could indict someone if it’s right — and be sued if it’s wrong. There have been no lawsuits.

Rangel is said to provide material support for Colombia’s FARC communist terrorists, who control 60% of Colombia’s cocaine production, pushing it into Mexico and other destinations.

With Mexico endangered by local cartels’ trade with Venezuela’s government-linked suppliers, the link to Mexico’s drug war is very real. And it’s a national security problem for the U.S. — a big one.

The promotion shows Chavez is surrounding himself with drug lords. Most leaders would expel someone with those credentials. Not Chavez. He almost seems to be flaunting Rangel and others like him. One can only conclude that Venezuela is now a narcostate.

With seven other Chavez loyalists also on the Treasury’s list (but not yet announced) the rot is far deeper than the U.S. wants to admit. The only real question left is what will we do about it?

It’s important because drug lords have turned Mexico a battlefield. Violence on the U.S.-Mexico frontier began in 2005, the same year Chavez stopped cooperating with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon began his six-year term by declaring war against the drug cartels. So far, it has cost 30,000 lives, and the war’s now spilling over our borders.

Two Fridays ago, Mexican marines killed Antonio Cardenas, the chief of the Gulf Cartel, in a shootout that shut the U.S. border with Mexico down. Cardenas’ war was fueled by people like Rangel.

Now, there are even people who can prove it. Last August, Colombian forces captured a major Venezuelan drug lord named Walid Makled-Garcia, who’d had a falling out with Chavez.

Makled was so high-ranking the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration last week declared him the “King of Kingpins” after his indictment in New York. Until this summer, Makled commanded Venezuela’s air and seaports. His gigantic jetliners loaded with tons of cocaine flew from “the presidential ramp” headed for Mexico.

Makled says he kept records and tapes of his encounters with Rangel, and other top Venezuelan military and intelligence leaders, bribing them to let his drug jets take off. He made $1.4 billion from his work — about the same amount as Chapo Guzman, Mexico’s richest cartel chief, whom Forbes magazine estimates is worth $1 billion.

In 2006, Makled’s records show, a DC-9 loaded with five and half tons of cocaine crashed in Mexico. It was discovered by Mexican police before it could reach its “buyer” — who happened to be the Sinaloa drug lord Guzman, known for his shootouts in Juarez.

There’s also a political aspect emerging in that Mexican war: In recent news item about a child assassins turning up in Mexico, Mexican police report that these gangs are being protected by Chavez’s leftist political ally in Mexico, the PRD Party. If PRD continues in this way, it may soon become a leftist drug insurgency, like FARC.

It all pushes the question of what to do about Chavez to a new level of urgency. Right now, Colombia must decide whether to extradite Makled to the U.S. to tell everything he knows about Chavez, or to send him to Venezuela, where he is likely to be killed.

Chavez asked for Makled first, and the murders he’s charging him with are graver than the U.S.’ cocaine-smuggling charges. Chavez badly needs to silence him to promote his generals.

The Obama administration has its own dilemma — does it want Makled to talk, or does it just want to sweep him and his shocking revelations under the rug as war continues to rage in Mexico?