Attracting worldwide concern is the vast American military deployment on the seas off of Venezuela, including the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s most powerful warship, and F-35 jet fighters, the world’s most powerful warplanes.
Explicit in this deployment is the threat of war.
Socialist Venezuela, notorious for a collapsed economy and as a conduit for illegal drugs, has been a pariah state for the past quarter of a century. With the possible exception of socialist Cuba, the nation has no friends in the western hemisphere whatsoever.
Not that the nation ever has been a model of pristine governance or of fiscal propriety. Since achieving independence from Spain in 1821 until a democratically-elected president assumed power in 1959, Venezuela usually was dominated by corrupt and spendthrift military dictatorships.
So deadbeat was the country in settling foreign debts that in 1902 British, German and Italian warships bombarded the Venezuelan coast in retribution.
Likewise did the Dutch in 1908.
The United States Constitution, adopted in 1789, continues in force to the current day. In 1961, Venezuela adopted its 25th constitution.
Socialist Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998 on a platform of sharing more equitably the nation’s large petroleum revenue. Government expenditures on social programs skyrocketed and numerous private businesses were nationalized.
But a decline in oil prices in 2008 shook the economy, a debacle that has deepened ever since. Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013, was succeeded by Nicolas Maduro, a fellow socialist and incompetent.
So horrific are current conditions in Venezuela that they challenge the imagination. Basic foodstuffs are difficult to find; essential medicines are scarce; and price inflation has been as high as 1 million percent per annum.
By some estimates, Caracas now is the world’s most dangerous city.
In recent years, nearly 3 million Venezuelans have fled the country. The equivalent figure in the United States would be 30 million, roughly approximate to the entire population of Texas.
The United States, the European Union and most Latin American countries have strongly criticized Maduro, and have pressed for his resignation from office and permanent exile to a foreign land. This is entirely appropriate.
But an actual military invasion of the Latin republic would be counter-productive. Maduro is a menace only to his own people, and nothing would unite Venezuelans behind the dictator more certainly than blood-soaked “Yanqui” imperialism.
Furthermore, Venezuela is a much larger and more complex nation than Grenada, the Dominican Republic and Panama, countries that mustered little resistance to armed American interventions in years past.
Venezuela could be more like Iraq, resentful and impossible to pacify. Equally disastrous, an intervention there would shatter the unity of the Organization of American States.
Maduro should be fought with boycotts and sanctions, not with guns and bullets. Ultimately, Venezuela must remain the master of its own fate.
Joseph Tipler
Centralia
