Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Venezuela

  • Venezuela Is Starving and Still Maduro Clings to Power

    Nicolás Maduro is still president of Venezuela. That may not sound like news, but in the six years he has been in power, he has so poorly managed the economy, with increasingly authoritarian measures, that GDP has shrunk 60 percent, inflation has reached an astronomical 10 million percent, once forgotten diseases have returned, 4.5 million Venezuelans have fled the country and 90 percent of the remaining population lives in poverty. It’s the worst economic collapse outside of a civil war.

    Little wonder mass protests have been a recurrent aspect of Maduro’s administration, but so far all attempts to remove him have failed.

    Maduro only won reelection in 2018 after arresting opposition presidential candidates, sidelining the opposition-controlled legislature and most likely rigging the vote.

    In January, Juan Guaidó, a social democrat and president of the National Assembly, took the extraordinary step of invoking Article 233 of the Constitution to declare himself interim president and call for early elections. (more…)

  • Millions Flee Venezuela, But Maduro Is Going Nowhere

    Twenty years have passed since Hugo Chavez’ Bolivarian Revolution began in Venezuela. Although the first decade halved unemployment and brought poverty levels down to 27 percent, under President Nicolás Maduro there has been a dramatic economic, political and social decline.

    Inflation has skyrocketed and is expected to reach 1,000,000 percent this year. Shortages of basic goods have resulted in widespread malnutrition. The outbreak of previously forgotten diseases and violence has reached unprecedented levels. 73 lives are lost per day.

    This, combined with a political system that has barred and arrested opposition presidential candidates, sidelined an opposition-dominated legislature and last year carried out an election marred by an opposition boycott and claims of vote-rigging, has led to an exodus of almost 10 percent of Venezuela’s 30 million population. 90 percent of those who remain live in poverty.

    With such a parlous state of affairs, how has Maduro kept the show on the road?

    And why haven’t Venezuela’s neighbors, who are sheltering most of its refugees, acted to end the misery? (more…)

  • Dutch Caribbean Caught Up in ConocoPhillips-Venezuela Oil Dispute

    Willemstad Curaçao
    Cruise ships moored in Willemstad, Curaçao (Shutterstock/Galina Savina)

    The Dutch Caribbean have been caught up in a legal dispute between the American oil company ConocoPhillips and the government of Venezuela.

    A judge has allowed Conoco to seize Venezuelan-owned and -operated refineries on the islands in order to collect $2 billion in compensation awarded by the International Chamber of Commerce for the 2007 nationalization of Conoco assets in the socialist-run country.

    The seizure poses a “potential crisis” to the economy of Curaçao, Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath has told Reuters. The Isla refinery, which processes 335,000 barrels of oil per day, accounts for a tenth of the island’s economy. (more…)

  • Chile Shows Better Way to Neighbors in Crisis

    Whether change comes swiftly or slowly, a deafness to cries for change can discredit not just politicians or political parties but whole systems of government.

    This has already happened in Venezuela. It’s in the process of happening in Brazil. Chile, however slowly, is showing a better way. (more…)

  • European Fellow Travelers Refuse to Criticize Venezuelan Dictator

    Seventeen Latin American nations, including those run by leftists, agree Venezuela is now a “dictatorship” under Nicolás Maduro.

    For most of his presidency, Maduro has ruled by decree. When the opposition won a majority of the seats in parliament, he replaced it with a Constituent Assembly full of cronies. Critical lawmakers have been arrested. A “truth commission” is being established to investigate thoughtcrimes. Instead of seeing high crime and low growth rates as evidence of the failure of Venezuela’s socialist experiment, the crude and homophobic Maduro entertains anti-American and anticapitalist conspiracy theories.

    Yet left-wing admirers of Hugo Chávez will not see his heirs for the thugs they have become. (more…)

  • Venezuela Is a Geopolitical Tinderbox

    Surges of protests against a deeply unpopular government have catapulted Venezuela from back-burner regional crisis to a hemispheric one. It’s only a Russian presidential visit away from becoming the world’s next geopolitical hot spot.

    Medical supplies are running short, opposition leaders are calling for nationwide boycotts and now the Americans are rousing themselves to begin a sanctions regime against the beleaguered Maduro government.

    It’s quite the fall from grace. From 2004 until 2013, Venezuela’s economy rocketed upward, bringing a measure of prosperity to a country long accustomed to hardship. It appeared, in those heady days, that Hugo Chávez, the country’s authoritarian ruler, could bring about his socialist Bolivarian Revolution and economic prosperity. For the Latin American left, Venezuela was proof that one did not have to conform to the neoliberal capitalism of the United States to be successful.

    Alas, since 2013, the economy has slid further and further while inflation has hammered the country’s currency to the point of worthlessness.

    With America now poking its nose directly into Venezuelan affairs, with the opposition building a shadow government and with the Russians trying to shore up Nicolás Maduro’s government through increasingly generous aid shipments, the country has all the ingredients of a major geopolitical crisis.

    The Americans could find themselves sucked into an ever-expanding role in managing the Maduro regime; the opposition could give up on peaceful politics altogether and embark on an armed struggle; an opportunistic Vladimir Putin might wedge Russian power into South America in hopes of throwing the Americans off balance in Europe. (more…)

  • Venezuela Lurches Toward Authoritarianism

    Venezuela has plummeted to new depths. In an act of blatant disregard of the separation of powers, the Supreme Court has stripped the opposition-controlled National Assembly of its lawmaking power and revoked immunity from all assembly members after accusing parliamentarians of “contempt”.

    This latest step toward authoritarianism was denounced as a “coup” and “a final blow to democracy” — not just by opposition parties, but by the international community and even some within the government (the state attorney general).

    It was this broad consensus that brought about a hasty volte face within a matters of days. President Nicolás Maduro reversed the judiciary’s decision in order to “maintain institutional stability”. (more…)

  • Trump Could Bring Enemies in South America Closer Together

    The alliance between Cuba and Venezuela has lost prominence in recent years as the former normalized its diplomatic relations with the United States while the latter doubled down on a self-described anti-imperialist policy.

    Now Donald Trump’s presidency threatens to bring the two countries closer together again.

    Trump, who assumed power last week, has pledged to reverse the Cuba policy of his predecessor “unless the Castro regime meets our demands”.

    Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state and the former boss of ExxonMobil, has an acrimonious history when it comes to Venezuela.

    Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, has said Trump — a fellow illiberal strongman — can be no worse than Barack Obama. But that’s probably not how the Cubans see it. (more…)

  • Maduro Defiant as Venezuela Teeters on the Brink

    When Venezuela’s opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) won a two-thirds supermajority in the National Assembly last year, it represented an unquestionable shift after sixteen years of socialist rule. There was desire for change. Not just from the traditional array of opponents to the ruling party government, but also from those who still call themselves Chavistas.

    Those clamors, in part mobilized by the MUD, have become noticeably louder in recent weeks and months and protests have been firmly met by riot police and tear gas.

    The country, home to the world’s largest oil reserves and previously one of the most developed in Latin America, is now suffering from the world’s highest inflation rate, varying between 180 and 700 percent. In the boom times, oil (which accounts for 95 percent of exports) helped pay for a million homes for the poor. Now, after three years of decline, with the sovereign wealth fund depleted and the economy expected to shrink by 8 percent, default is a distinct possibility.

    Everyday Venezuelans are feeling the bite through shortages in electricity, food, water and medicine. The bare essentials of society have been stripped away and replaced by blackouts, endless queues for basic household goods, violence and looting. The country has the second highest murder rate in the world.

    Desperation is in the air and its manifestations can no longer be passed off by the government as “revolts of the rich,” as was the case following similar protests in 2014. (more…)

  • What Oil Prices Mean for Geopolitics

    Persian Gulf drilling platforms
    Saudi drilling platforms in the Persian Gulf (Aramco)

    2003 was a different era. The United States waged a war of choice in Iraq; Vladimir Putin’s Russia was seen as a paper tiger; China’s economic boom roared but didn’t threaten; Dubai was unknown; and the United States seemed like it would forever be an oil importer.

    Much has changed. But today, the price of oil dropped to $27 a barrel, last seen in the heady days of the first W. Bush Administration.

    There’s a lot going on here. Let’s get super. (more…)

  • Venezuela Swears In Opposition Majority

    After sixteen years of Chavismo, a symbolic new phase in Venezuelan politics began this week: members of the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) took their seats in the National Assembly as part of a new two-thirds supermajority.

    Prior to last month’s surprisingly peaceful parliamentary election, the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) had a majority of 96 out of 167 seats.

    Because of the dire straits the country finds itself in, and in spite of considerable obstacles, the MUD has managed to increase their 63 seats to an overwhelming 112. Although an opposition victory was no surprise, the scale of the triumph has sent an unequivocal message of dissatisfaction with the “Bolivarian Revolution” in its current form. (more…)

  • The Beginning of the End of Chavismo?

    Sixteen years after Chavismo took hold in the country, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) could — for the first time — lose its parliamentary majority. Elections in December will test the party’s ability to withstand growing discontent and support for a united opposition.

    The majority of opinion polls place support for the opposition between 50 and 60 percent with government backing at roughly half that number.

    The PSUV currently has 96 out of 167 seats in the National Assembly against 63 held by their opponents who would need 84 for a majority.

    Ever since the PSUV’s president, Nicolás Maduro, took office following the death of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, in April 2013, he has faced an uphill struggle. (more…)

  • The Next Great Geopolitical Crisis: Venezuela

    South America gets a lot less attention that it deserves from foreign policy chats and geopolitical blogs. Much of that is because the continent is largely stable: not since the 1930s have there been any interstate wars and now that Colombia’s FARC revolutionary army is on the back foot, it appears failed states have also receded over the horizon. South America’s stability is taken for granted by both the hemispheric superpower and much of the rest of the world.

    But within Venezuela, all kinds of chaos is breaking loose.

    Last week, the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, threatened to invade and annex half his neighbor, English-speaking Guyana. Before that, he deployed forces to the border with Colombia. Meanwhile, at home, he’s been arresting enemies and presiding over a state that feels very much like it’s collapsing.

    Should Venezuela’s state behave as irresponsibly as its past suggests it will, the next great geopolitical crisis will not be in well-trodden battlefields in the Middle East, Asia or Europe but in the United States’ own backyard. (more…)

  • Why Ukraine, Thailand Are Not Venezuela

    After the “color revolutions,” the European “indignados,” “Occupy Wall Street” and the “Arab Spring,” pundits are again trying to make sense of a wave of public demonstrations around the world. Parallels have been drawn between the protests in Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela but only a superficial analysis could conclude that these are equivalent.

    The advent of new social media and the easier ability for unorganized demonstrators to mobilize themselves has facilitated the emergence of such phenomena. However, the lack of political coherence often implies an inherent anarchic and unsubstantial character to such demonstrations. If all these protests have something in common, it is that they largely failed to achieve any meaningful change. The Arab Spring did shake things up but it is difficult to see how overthrowing the old regimes has managed to improve living conditions in the Middle East and North Africa.

    That said, in 2014, Venezuela’s is probably the most consistent and rational of the protests and it differs starkly from realities in Bangkok and Kiev when it comes to legitimate grievances as well as methodology. (more…)

  • Iran’s Breach of the Monroe Doctrine

    When the fifth president of the United States designed the Monroe Doctrine, which was a watershed moment in the country’s foreign policy to check the ambitions of European imperial powers in Latin America, he could not have imagined that one day, a Persian nation would breach it.

    President James Monroe devised his famous doctrine in 1823 after the Holy Alliance of Austria, Prussia and Russia managed to reestablish Bourbon rule over Spain and its colonies by force. Spain’s dominions in South America were struggling for independence at the time. The Monroe Doctrine made it clear to Europe that armed intervention to prevent these nations from attaining self sovereignty would be considered nothing short of an attack upon the United States.

    Two centuries later it is not a European power with the audacity to challenge American supremacy in the Western Hemisphere but Iran which realizes that the United States’ influence on the continent has peaked. From Brazil to the Southern Cone of Argentina and Chile, South America is asserting itself as a region that is more independent from the United States than it has been in decades. (more…)