Senate Venezuela

I still have to decide what to believe and what to hope for.
Mainstream media, meanwhile, give everything for granted and it feels like it is almost outrageous to even claim that there is anything to discuss in the first place.

I do have some opinions but since it is not a simple issue and I'm frankly a bit ignorant I am firstly willing to listen to whoever knows more than me on the subject.

So what do we know so far and what is the best outcome we are hoping for?

 

Best outcome is Maduro resigns and admits he's full of crap. Followed by Trump.

 

Maduro is awful.
American intervention is awful.
Everything sucks.

 

UK Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has praised socialist Venezuela in the past. Hasn't been doing much praising lately.

 

You love talking about Corbyn everywhere, don't you?

 

Shows how much I can't stand the guy. He'd be a disaster if Labour got into power here.

 

It seems like things are coming to a head, with the blockades stopping the aid, closure of the borders and firing on civilians.

But Maduro still has the backing of Russia and China and - most importantly - the military. Unless the military turns on him, he's going to stay in power.

 

@blackmyron
But do you think the coup is the right way to go?
Don't we risk unexpected consequences like in the other countries where we did the same?
Is it wise to devastate Venezuela's economy with sanctions, considering that we suddenly decided that apparently starting from few weeks ago we care about Venezuelan people more than anyone else? Doesn't it sound hypocritical?
If it is not possible to have Maduro resigning, do you think that the military option should be considered?

 

A coup already happened - Maduro's bypass of the elected Venezuelan Congress was effectively the end of the democracy. His control of the military is what allows him to maintain his own control of the country. And I'm not saying that "we" should be involved in the military taking over. I'm talking specifically from a historical perspective of the military turning on Maduro on its own without the backing or support of foreign countries.
As far as military intervention, US troops being sent to Venezuela is only going to happen in Bolton's fantasies. However there's support in Brazil and Columbia, independent of each other, about "helping their neighbor" by sending troops and effectively turning the country into a colony; if anything Venezuelans should worry much more about that, although I suspect that many might be fine with it as long as the humanitarian aid comes in. That is mostly just 'talk' among Columbians and Brazilians, but I could see private discussions being made in the respective governments about such a situation.

 

US impose regime change on countries pretending to care about their people. But then things get worse than before, and the same process is applied to another country, over and over again, more or less like in Groundhog Day.

 

I don’t see how the US commits troops openly in Venezuela. If we try, I expect a violent response from Putin. Even if the opposition ‘invites’ America in, Maduro will do the same for Russian and perhaps Chinese forces. A proxy war in the Western Hemisphere against the United States might be Putin’s wet dream, but with Trump’s finger on the button, I would be very unhappy if said scenario were to develop.

Brazil and Columbia going in, well, that’s a different story.

 

It's Colombia, guys. And if they and Brazil went in, it would be as U.S. proxies and I would expect with U.S. "advisers."

 

I sort of assume they were doing that intentionally. Any violence would likely involve the District of Columbia.

 

Maduro - and Chavez before him - already led Venezuela's economy into the gutter. There is nothing left of it that sanctions could really hurt anymore. Chavez at least had the charisma to make people think everything was going fine while things were going downhill, but Maduro is just inept in every way.

That being said, outside involvement, especially from the US, would likely hurt anyone who follows as head of government. The remaining followers of Maduro would always try and paint such a person as puppet of the US, regardless of whether that would be true or not.

 

What you should believe is that people want to eat, and what you should hope for is that they get to eat.

 

So I like the part where the guy in charge of sending humanitarian aid to Venezuela is the guy who sent weapons to the Contras under the guise of....humanitarian aid.

 

Follow the money.

 

This situation sounds very familiar for some reason and what's worst is that people are falling for it all over again.

 

Nah, Venezuela’s economy was already at the brink of collapsing before Chavez took presidency. Chavez just delayed the problem by offering a temporary band-aid, and Maduro is either too incompetent or too self-serving (or both?).

 

Chavez didn't offer a temporary band-aid, he merely moved money from one pocket to the other, excelerating the demise while enriching a small group of people.

It wasn't wrong to stop the over the top privatization of core pillars of the economy, but he didn't do it to fix the problem, he did it to waste it in a way that helped no one but himself and a few supporters. And then he proceeded to go with an over the top nationalization instead, which didn't help either. Instead of opting for a long-term development he wasted the resources on grand plans, hiding the weaknesses of the economy behind false numbers and cheap tricks, and ruined the only part of the economy that was actually strong. If it hadn't been for very high oil-prices, none of it would have worked even for a very short period. He basically was handed a big lottery-win and threw it away in quick fashion.

That isn't to say that Venezuela had a well-running economy before Chavez, or that corruption wasn't through the roof, but everything he did made the problems worse, while taking the one strength the country actually had. He was incredibly lucky to stumble into a period of extremely high oil-prices, which should have been used to build up other sectors of the economy, instead he did the complete opposite.

 

I didn’t say Chavez fix the problem. I said he put a band-aid to it temporarily, which is what he did.

Venezuela absolutely had not a well-running economy before Chavez. The poverty rate had already risen to a whopping 66% in 1995 which is freaking insane for a former rich country. Inflation and poverty rates were higher under Caldera than it was under Chavez - but even that, it's hard to place the blame on Caldera because he just inherited an already flawed system with no provisions to counter financial liberalization in an economy too much dependent on oil exports.

Nobody fixed the problem - but it didn't start with Chavez.

 

Not only will this continue, but it's going to get worse, which is partly why Putin has been challenging America on the world stage. Russia's economy is in for a world of hurt once the United States becomes the largest producer in the mid-2020's. He can't afford the modernization he's undertaking, and will be looking for even more ways to distract the Russia people.

The only 'multilateral' thing about America's foreign policy is how many people we always manage to screw over at the same time. It seems to be our biggest talent right now.