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The item from Foreign Affairs magazine recently came in. At the end
of this e-mail, I have pasted in the article on Venezuela's collapse
referred to in the Foreign Affairs e-mail. It's not a short article,
but you may want to skim it, and some of you may want to read the
whole article. <br>
<br>
I look forward to seeing some of you next Monday at the HAC Monthly
Meeting/Timely Topics/pot luck dinner meeting:<br>
<b>Monthly Meeting & Timely Topics - Venezuela and the
curse of its oil
</b>(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.meetup.com/cthumanist/events/311754193/?eventOrigin=group_upcoming_events">https://www.meetup.com/cthumanist/events/311754193/?eventOrigin=group_upcoming_events</a>
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<br>
Manny
<div class="moz-forward-container"><br>
<br>
-------- Forwarded Message --------
<table class="moz-email-headers-table" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th valign="BASELINE" nowrap="nowrap" align="RIGHT">Subject:
</th>
<td>Venezuela’s Suicide</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="BASELINE" nowrap="nowrap" align="RIGHT">Date: </th>
<td>Sat, 8 Nov 2025 07:01:01 -0500 (EST)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="BASELINE" nowrap="nowrap" align="RIGHT">From: </th>
<td>Dan Kurtz-Phelan <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:news@foreignaffairs.com"><news@foreignaffairs.com></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="BASELINE" nowrap="nowrap" align="RIGHT">To: </th>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:manny@ratafias.com">manny@ratafias.com</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
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<title></title>
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<div class="sailthru-emco-preheader" style="display: none;
max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">Foreign Affairs Editor’s
Spotlight</div>
<div style="display:none"><a
href="https://link.foreignaffairs.com/click/42421142.117501/aHR0cDovL2ZvcmVpZ25hZmZhaXJzLmNvbT91dG1fbWVkaXVtPW5ld3NsZXR0ZXJzJnV0bV9zb3VyY2U9ZWRpdG9yc19zcG90bGlnaHQmdXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPSZ1dG1fY29udGVudD0yMDI1MTEwOCZ1dG1fdGVybT1O/5d6fa6f3bf00812b9f4a470eBe6da38cf"
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style="mso-table-lspace:0;mso-table-rspace:0;background-color:#fff;color:#000;width:690px;margin:0
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<div style="max-width:268px"><a
href="https://link.foreignaffairs.com/click/42421142.117501/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZm9yZWlnbmFmZmFpcnMuY29tL3NvdXRoLWFtZXJpY2EvdmVuZXp1ZWxhcy1zdWljaWRlP3V0bV9tZWRpdW09bmV3c2xldHRlcnMmdXRtX3NvdXJjZT1lZGl0b3JzX3Nwb3RsaWdodCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249JnV0bV9jb250ZW50PTIwMjUxMTA4JnV0bV90ZXJtPU4/5d6fa6f3bf00812b9f4a470eB7e4d6b8a"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><img
src="https://media.sailthru.com/composer/images/bazh/rkajqc8d/zak/11o/hf6/Editor%27s%20Spotlight.png"
style="display:block;height:auto;border:0;width:100%" alt="Foreign
Affairs Editor's Picks "
title="Foreign Affairs
Editor's Picks "
moz-do-not-send="true"
width="268" height="auto"></a></div>
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style="word-break:
break-word; font-size:
13px; color: #000000;">November
8, 2025 <strong>| </strong><span
style="word-break:
break-word; font-size:
13px;"> <a
href="https://link.foreignaffairs.com/view/5d6fa6f3bf00812b9f4a470ep98d2.2inx/c0577526"
target="_blank"
style="text-decoration:underline;color:#000000;"
rel="noopener"
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in B<span
style="word-break:
break-word;
font-size: 13px;">rowser</span></a></span></span></p>
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style="word-break:
break-word; font-size:
12px;">Sponsored by <a
href="https://link.foreignaffairs.com/click/42421142.117501/aHR0cHM6Ly9nbG9iYWwub3VwLmNvbS9hY2FkZW1pYy9wcm9kdWN0L2VsLWdlbmVyYWxpc2ltby05NzgwMTk3ODMyMzE4P3V0bV9jYW1wYWlnbj04Njk5eXg2dTEtODY5OXl4NzQ3LVRuLUdmLUZkLUNyLUFlJnV0bV9zb3VyY2U9dGhpcmQlMjBwYXJ0eSZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPXJlZmVycmFsJnV0bV9jb250ZW50PXdlYiUyMGJhbm5lciUyMGxpbmsmdXRtX3Rlcm09Zm9yZWlnbiUyMGFmZmFpcnM/5d6fa6f3bf00812b9f4a470eB3212737e"
target="_blank"
style="text-decoration:
underline; color:
#447FA8;" rel="noopener"
moz-do-not-send="true">Oxford
University Press</a></span></p>
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<p
style="margin:0;font-size:16px;mso-line-height-alt:24px">Good
morning,</p>
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<p
style="margin:0;font-size:16px;mso-line-height-alt:24px">
What drives a country to the
point where many of its
citizens “fantasize about a
Trump-led military
intervention”? That’s the
question Moisés Naím and
Francisco Toro took on in <a
href="https://link.foreignaffairs.com/click/42421142.117501/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZm9yZWlnbmFmZmFpcnMuY29tL3NvdXRoLWFtZXJpY2EvdmVuZXp1ZWxhcy1zdWljaWRlP3V0bV9tZWRpdW09bmV3c2xldHRlcnMmdXRtX3NvdXJjZT1lZGl0b3JzX3Nwb3RsaWdodCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249JnV0bV9jb250ZW50PTIwMjUxMTA4JnV0bV90ZXJtPU4/5d6fa6f3bf00812b9f4a470eC7e4d6b8a"
target="_blank"
style="text-decoration:
underline; color:
#447FA8;" rel="noopener"
moz-do-not-send="true">a
sweeping 2018 essay</a>
that I’ve returned to again
and again over the years.
Naím and Toro trace
Venezuela’s descent from a
prosperous, democratic,
U.S.-aligned country in the
1970s to an impoverished
dictatorship a few decades
later—and conclude with a
warning that is newly
pertinent as the United
States builds up its
military forces in the
Caribbean. A potential U.S.
invasion, they write,
“amounts to an ill-advised
revenge fantasy, not a
serious strategy.” </p>
<p
style="margin:0;mso-line-height-alt:18px"> </p>
<p
style="margin:0;mso-line-height-alt:24px"><span
style="word-break:
break-word; font-size:
16px;">Until next week,</span></p>
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<div
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Roman',serif;font-size:12px;mso-line-height-alt:18px;color:#000;line-height:1.5">
<p
style="margin:0;font-size:14px;mso-line-height-alt:21px"><strong><span
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break-word; font-size:
14px;">Dan Kurtz-Phelan</span></strong></p>
<p
style="margin:0;font-size:14px;mso-line-height-alt:21px">Editor, <em>Foreign
Affairs</em></p>
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<p
style="margin:0;font-size:14px;mso-line-height-alt:21px">Editor, <em>Foreign
Affairs</em></p>
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<div class=""
style="font-family:Georgia,Times,'Times
New
Roman',serif;font-size:12px;mso-line-height-alt:18px;color:#000;line-height:1.5">
<p
style="margin:0;font-size:16px;mso-line-height-alt:30px"><span
style="word-break:
break-word; font-size:
20px;"><a
href="https://link.foreignaffairs.com/click/42421142.117501/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZm9yZWlnbmFmZmFpcnMuY29tL3NvdXRoLWFtZXJpY2EvdmVuZXp1ZWxhcy1zdWljaWRlP3V0bV9tZWRpdW09bmV3c2xldHRlcnMmdXRtX3NvdXJjZT1lZGl0b3JzX3Nwb3RsaWdodCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249JnV0bV9jb250ZW50PTIwMjUxMTA4JnV0bV90ZXJtPU4/5d6fa6f3bf00812b9f4a470eD7e4d6b8a"
target="_blank"
style="text-decoration:
none; color: #000000;"
rel="noopener"
moz-do-not-send="true">Venezuela’s
Suicide</a></span></p>
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role="presentation"
style="mso-table-lspace:0;mso-table-rspace:0;word-break:break-word"
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<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="pad"
style="padding-left:55px;padding-right:30px">
<div
style="font-family:Georgia,'Times
New Roman',serif">
<div class=""
style="font-family:Georgia,Times,'Times
New
Roman',serif;font-size:12px;mso-line-height-alt:18px;color:#586876;line-height:1.5">
<p
style="margin:0;font-size:16px;mso-line-height-alt:24px">
<a
href="https://link.foreignaffairs.com/click/42421142.117501/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZm9yZWlnbmFmZmFpcnMuY29tL3NvdXRoLWFtZXJpY2EvdmVuZXp1ZWxhcy1zdWljaWRlP3V0bV9tZWRpdW09bmV3c2xldHRlcnMmdXRtX3NvdXJjZT1lZGl0b3JzX3Nwb3RsaWdodCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249JnV0bV9jb250ZW50PTIwMjUxMTA4JnV0bV90ZXJtPU4/5d6fa6f3bf00812b9f4a470eE7e4d6b8a"
target="_blank"
style="text-decoration:
none; color: #586876;"
rel="noopener"
moz-do-not-send="true">Lessons
From a Failed State</a></p>
</div>
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role="presentation"
style="mso-table-lspace:0;mso-table-rspace:0;word-break:break-word"
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<div
style="font-family:Georgia,'Times
New Roman',serif">
<div class=""
style="font-family:Georgia,Times,'Times
New
Roman',serif;font-size:12px;mso-line-height-alt:18px;color:#586876;line-height:1.5">
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style="margin:0;font-size:16px;mso-line-height-alt:24px">
<a
href="https://link.foreignaffairs.com/click/42421142.117501/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZm9yZWlnbmFmZmFpcnMuY29tL3NvdXRoLWFtZXJpY2EvdmVuZXp1ZWxhcy1zdWljaWRlP3V0bV9tZWRpdW09bmV3c2xldHRlcnMmdXRtX3NvdXJjZT1lZGl0b3JzX3Nwb3RsaWdodCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249JnV0bV9jb250ZW50PTIwMjUxMTA4JnV0bV90ZXJtPU4/5d6fa6f3bf00812b9f4a470eF7e4d6b8a"
cmp-ltrk="FA author
profile links"
cmp-ltrk-idx="0"
mrfobservableid="e83403db-1baa-436a-a51d-6db842a1519e"
target="_self"
style="text-decoration:
none; color: #000000;"
moz-do-not-send="true">By
Moisés Naím and Francisco
Toro</a></p>
</div>
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<a
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target="_blank"
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src="https://media.sailthru.com/fss/fbat6d/ccaf1848-7162-4e79-8c52-24648407effa/naim_kcxm.jpeg"
style="display:block;height:auto;border:0;width:100%" alt="" title=""
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width="227.5"
height="auto"></a></div>
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Generalisimo: A
Biography of Francisco
Franco by Giles
Tremlett</strong></a></span></p>
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The first full biography to
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offers a penetrating study
of how Franco seized power,
sustained authoritarian
rule, and shaped Spain’s
modern political identity.</p>
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target="_blank"
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Biography of Francisco
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<p
style="margin:0;font-size:12px;mso-line-height-alt:14.399999999999999px">
The first full biography to
examine both Francisco
Franco’s life and the
enduring legacy of
Francoism. Drawing on new
research and uncensored
sources, Giles Tremlett
offers a penetrating study
of how Franco seized power,
sustained authoritarian
rule, and shaped Spain’s
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<article class="article d-flex flex-wrap justify-center -ml-10
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justify-between -ml-10 -mr-10 col-xs-12 col-lg-10 no-gutter">
<div class="topper__heading-container col-12 mb-40 mb-md-60">
<h1 class="topper__title text-balance title-l mb-20
mb-lg-15"> Venezuela’s Suicide</h1>
<h2 class="topper__subtitle heading-s text-balance
font-style-italic mb-20 mb-lg-15">Lessons From a Failed
State</h2>
<h3 class="topper__byline body-m-smallcaps mb-20 mb-lg-15
lh-1"><a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/mois-s-na-m"
data-mrf-recirculation="FA author profile links"
data-mrf-link="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/mois-s-na-m">Moisés
Naím</a> and <a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/francisco-toro"
data-mrf-recirculation="FA author profile links"
data-mrf-link="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/francisco-toro">Francisco
Toro</a></h3>
<a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/issues/2018/97/6">
<span class="topper__issue body-s d-block fw-semibold
d-inline-block mr-20">November/December 2018</span> </a>
<span class="topper__date body-s font-style-italic mb-0
d-inline-block mr-20">Published on October 15, 2018</span></div>
<span class="lh-22 small-caps fs-20">MOISÉS NAÍM</span> is a
Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, Chief International Columnist for El
País, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic.
<div class="d-flex col-lg-3-base-10 flex-wrap-reverse">
<div class="topper__author-about ml-10 mr-10 mr-lg-0
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<div class="author-about pt-20 pb-5 pb-md-20 pt-lg-0 ">
<div class="author-about__description body-s mb-20">
<p><span class="lh-22 small-caps fs-20">FRANCISCO
TORO</span> is Chief Content Officer at the
Group of Fifty, Founder of Caracas Chronicles, and
a Global Opinion Columnist at The Washington Post.</p>
<div> </div>
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</section>
</article>
Consider two Latin American countries. The first is one of the
region’s oldest and strongest democracies. It boasts a stronger
social safety net than any of its neighbors and is making
progress on its promise to deliver free health care and higher
education to all its citizens. It is a model of social mobility
and a magnet for immigrants from across Latin America and
Europe. The press is free, and the political system is open;
opposing parties compete fiercely in elections and regularly
alternate power peacefully. It sidestepped the wave of military
juntas that mired some Latin American countries in dictatorship.
Thanks to a long political alliance and deep trade and
investment ties with the United States, it serves as the Latin
American headquarters for a slew of multinational corporations.
It has the best infrastructure in South America. It is still
unmistakably a developing country, with its share of corruption,
injustice, and dysfunction, but it is well ahead of other poor
countries by almost any measure.
<div class="article-dropcap loaded">
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mb-md-0 col-12 col-md-6-base-10">
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<div class="article-dropcap--inner paywall-content">
<p>The second country is one of Latin America’s most
impoverished nations and its <a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2016-11-01/final-blow-venezuelas-democracy"
target="_blank">newest dictatorship</a>. Its schools
lie half deserted. The health system has been
devastated by decades of underinvestment, corruption,
and neglect; long-vanquished diseases, such as malaria
and measles, have returned. Only a tiny elite can
afford enough to eat. An epidemic of violence has made
it one of the most murderous countries in the world.
It is the source of Latin America’s <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/08/23/venezuelas-refugee-exodus-is-biggest-crisis-hemisphere/?utm_term=.37c26252e50a"
target="_blank">largest refugee migration in a
generation</a>, with millions of citizens fleeing in
the last few years alone. Hardly anyone (aside from
other autocratic governments) recognizes its sham
elections, and the small portion of the media not
under direct state control still follows the official
line for fear of reprisals. By the end of 2018, its
economy will have shrunk by about half in the last
five years. It is a <a
href="https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/drug-trafficking-venezuelan-regime-cartel-of-the-sun/"
target="_blank">major cocaine-trafficking hub</a>,
and key power brokers in its political elite have been
indicted in the United States on drug charges. Prices
double every 25 days. The main airport is largely
deserted, used by just a handful of holdout airlines
bringing few passengers to and from the outside
world. </p>
<p>These two countries are in fact the same country,
Venezuela, at two different times: the early 1970s and
today. The transformation Venezuela has undergone is
so radical, so complete, and so total that it is hard
to believe it took place without a war. What happened
to Venezuela? How did things go so wrong? </p>
<p>The short answer is Chavismo. Under the leadership of
Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, the
country has experienced a toxic mix of wantonly
destructive policy, escalating authoritarianism, and
kleptocracy, all under a level of Cuban influence that
often resembles an occupation. Any one of these
features would have created huge problems on its own.
All of them together hatched a catastrophe. Today,
Venezuela is a poor country and a failed and
criminalized state run by an autocrat beholden to a
foreign power. The remaining options for reversing
this situation are slim; the risk now is that
hopelessness will push Venezuelans to consider
supporting dangerous measures, such as a U.S.-led
military invasion, that could make a bad situation
worse.</p>
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<h3>chavismo rising</h3>
<p>To many observers, the explanation for Venezuela’s
predicament is simple: under Chávez, the country caught a
strong case of socialism, and all its subsequent disasters
stem from that original sin. But Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Uruguay have also elected socialist
governments in the last 20 years. Although each has
struggled politically and economically, none—aside from
Nicaragua—has imploded. Instead, several have prospered.</p>
<p>If socialism cannot be blamed for Venezuela’s demise,
perhaps oil is the culprit. The most calamitous stage of
Venezuela’s crisis has coincided neatly with the sharp fall
in international oil prices that started in 2014. But this
explanation is also insufficient. Venezuela’s decline began
four decades ago, not four years ago. By 2003, Venezuela’s
GDP per worker had already declined by a disastrous 37
percent from its 1978 peak—precisely the decline that first
propelled Chávez into office. Moreover, all of the world’s
petrostates suffered a serious income shock in 2014 as a
result of plummeting oil prices. Only Venezuela could not
withstand the pressure. </p>
<p>The drivers of Venezuela’s failure run deeper. Decades of
gradual economic decline opened the way for Chávez, a
charismatic demagogue wedded to an outdated ideology, to
take power and establish a corrupt autocracy modeled on and
beholden to Cuba’s dictatorship. Although the crisis
preceded Chávez’s rise to power, his legacy and Cuba’s
influence must be at the center of any attempt to explain
it.</p>
<p>Chávez was born in 1954 into a lower-middle-class family in
a rural town. He became a career military officer on a
baseball scholarship and was soon secretly recruited into a
small leftist movement that spent over a decade plotting to
overthrow the democratic regime. He exploded into
Venezuela’s national consciousness on February 4, 1992, when
he led an unsuccessful coup attempt. This misadventure
landed him in jail but turned him into an improbable folk
hero who embodied growing frustration with a decade of
economic stagnation. After receiving a pardon, he launched
an outsider bid for the presidency in 1998 and won in a
landslide, upending the two-party system that had anchored
Venezuelan democracy for 40 years. </p>
<blockquote class="pullquote pr-md-30 mt-10 mb-20 mb-md-10
ls-normal"> <span class="pullquote__text d-block">Chávez
was brilliant at mining discontent.</span></blockquote>
<p>What drove the explosion of populist anger that brought
Chávez to power? In a word, disappointment. The stellar
economic performance Venezuela had experienced for five
decades leading up to the 1970s had run out of steam, and
the path to the middle class had begun to narrow. As the
economists Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco Rodríguez noted,
“By 1970 Venezuela had become the richest country in Latin
America and one of the twenty richest countries in the
world, with a per capita GDP higher than Spain, Greece, and
Israel and only 13 percent lower than that of the United
Kingdom.” But by the early 1980s, a weakened oil market had
brought the era of fast growth to an end. Lower oil revenue
meant cuts in public spending, scaled-down social programs,
currency devaluation, runaway inflation, a banking crisis,
and mounting unemployment and hardship for the poor. Even
so, Venezuela’s head start was such that when Chávez was
elected, it had a per capita income in the region that was
second only to Argentina’s.</p>
<p>Another common explanation for Chávez’s rise holds that it
was driven by voters’ reaction against economic inequality,
which was driven in turn by pervasive corruption. But when
Chávez came to power, income was more evenly distributed in
Venezuela than in any neighboring country. If inequality
determined electoral outcomes, then a Chávez-like candidate
would have been more probable in Brazil, Chile, or Colombia,
where the gap between the well-off and everyone else was
larger. </p>
<p>Venezuela may not have been collapsing in 1998, but it had
been stagnating and, in some respects, backsliding, as oil
prices slumped to just $11 per barrel, leading to a new
round of austerity. Chávez was brilliant at mining the
resulting discontent. His eloquent denunciations of
inequality, exclusion, poverty, corruption, and the
entrenched political elite struck a chord with struggling
voters, who felt nostalgic for an earlier, more prosperous
period. The inept and complacent traditional political and
business elite who opposed Chávez never came close to
matching his popular touch. </p>
Venezuelans gambled on Chávez. What they got was not just an
outsider bent on upending the status quo but also a Latin
American leftist icon who soon had followers all around the
world. Chávez became both a spoiler and the star attraction at
global summits, as well as a leader of the burgeoning global
wave of anti-American sentiment sparked by U.S. President
George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. At home, shaped by his
career in the military, Chávez had a penchant for centralizing
power and a profound intolerance of dissent. He set out to
neuter not just opposition politicians but also political
allies who dared question his policies. His collaborators
quickly saw which way the wind was blowing: policy debates
disappeared, and the government pursued a radical agenda with
little forethought and no real scrutiny.
<p>A 2001 presidential decree on land reform, which Chávez
handed down with no consultation or debate, was a taste of
things to come. It broke up large commercial farms and
turned them over to peasant cooperatives that lacked the
technical know-how, management skills, or access to capital
to produce at scale. Food production collapsed. And in
sector after sector, the Chávez government enacted similarly
self-defeating policies. It expropriated foreign-owned oil
ventures without compensation and gave them to political
appointees who lacked the technical expertise to run them.
It nationalized utilities and the main telecommunications
operator, leaving Venezuela with <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/04/10/in-venezuela-a-daily-struggle-for-the-basic-necessities-of-life/">chronic
water and electricity shortages</a> and some of the <a
href="http://nomadcapitalist.com/2017/06/04/countries-slowest-internet-speeds/"
target="_blank">slowest Internet connection speeds in the
world</a>. It seized steel companies, causing production
to fall from 480,000 metric tons per month before
nationalization, in 2008, to <a
href="https://tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/steel-production"
target="_blank">effectively nothing</a> today. Similar
results followed the seizure of aluminum companies, mining
firms, hotels, and airlines. </p>
<blockquote class="pullquote pr-md-30 mt-10 mb-20 mb-md-10
ls-normal"> <span class="pullquote__text d-block">The
relationship between Cuba and Venezuela became more than
an alliance.</span></blockquote>
<p>In one <a
href="http://www.iesa.edu.ve/publicaciones/ediciones-iesa/2014-julio-14/2006=gestion-en-rojo"
target="_blank">expropriated company</a> after another,
state administrators stripped assets and loaded payrolls
with Chávez cronies. When they inevitably ran into financial
problems, they appealed to the government, which was able to
bail them out. By 2004, oil prices had spiked again, filling
government coffers with petrodollars, which Chávez spent
without constraints, controls, or accountability. On top of
that were the <a
href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/06/venezuelas-road-to-disaster-is-littered-with-chinese-cash/">easy
loans from China</a>, which was happy to extend credit to
Venezuela in exchange for a guaranteed supply of crude oil.
By importing whatever the hollowed-out Venezuelan economy
failed to produce and borrowing to finance a consumption
boom, Chávez was able to temporarily shield the public from
the impact of his disastrous policies and to retain
substantial popularity.</p>
<p>But not everyone was convinced. Oil industry workers were
among the first to sound the alarm about Chávez’s
authoritarian tendencies. They went on strike in 2002 and
2003, demanding a new presidential election. In response to
the protests, Chávez fired almost half of the work force in
the state-run oil company and imposed an arcane
currency-exchange-control regime. The system morphed into a
cesspool of corruption, as regime cronies realized that
arbitraging between the state-authorized exchange rate and
the black market could yield fortunes overnight. This
arbitrage racket created an extraordinarily wealthy elite of
government-connected kleptocrats. As this budding
kleptocracy perfected the art of siphoning off oil proceeds
into its own pockets, Venezuelan store shelves grew bare. </p>
<p>It was all painfully predictable—and widely predicted. But
the louder local and international experts sounded the
alarm, the more the government clung to its agenda. To
Chávez, dire warnings from technocrats were <a
href="http://todochavez.gob.ve/todochavez/1976-intervencion-del-comandante-presidente-hugo-chavez-en-la-conmemoracion-del-72-aniversario-de-la-guardia-nacional-bolivariana"
target="_blank">a sign that the revolution was on the
right track</a>. </p>
<h3>PASSING THE TORCH</h3>
<p>In 2011, Chávez was diagnosed with cancer. Top oncologists
in Brazil and the United States offered to treat him. But he
opted instead to search for a cure in Cuba, the country he
trusted not only to treat him but also to be discreet about
his condition. As his illness progressed, his dependence on
Havana deepened, and the mystery about the real state of his
health grew. On December 8, 2012, an ailing Chávez made one
final television appearance to ask Venezuelans to make
Maduro, then vice president, his successor. For the next
three months, Venezuela was governed spectrally and by
remote control: decrees emanated from Havana bearing
Chávez’s signature, but no one saw him, and speculation was
rife that he had already died. When <a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/brazil/2013-03-05/so-long-ch-vez"
target="_blank">Chávez’s death</a> was finally announced,
on March 5, 2013, the only thing that was clear amid the
atmosphere of secrecy and concealment was that Venezuela’s
next leader would carry on the tradition of Cuban
influence. </p>
<p>Chávez had long looked to Cuba as a blueprint for
revolution, and he turned to Cuban President Fidel Castro
for advice at critical junctures. In return, Venezuela sent
oil: energy aid to Cuba (in the form of 115,000 barrels a
day sold at a deep discount) was worth nearly $1 billion a
year to Havana. The relationship between Cuba and Venezuela
became more than an alliance. It has been, as Chávez himself
once put it, “a merger of two revolutions.” (Unusually, the
senior partner in the alliance is poorer and smaller than
the junior partner—but so much more competent that it
dominates the relationship.) Cuba is careful to keep its
footprint light: it conducts most of its consultations in
Havana rather than Caracas. <span
class="figure__caption-credit d-block"></span> </p>
<p>It did not escape anyone’s attention that the leader Chávez
annointed to succeed him had devoted his life to the cause
of Cuban communism. As a teenager, Maduro joined a fringe
pro-Cuban Marxist party in Caracas. In his 20s, instead of
going to university, he sought training in Havana’s school
for international cadres to become a professional
revolutionary. As Chávez’s foreign minister from 2006 to
2013, he had seldom called attention to himself: only his
unfailing loyalty to Chávez, and to Cuba, propelled his
ascent to the top. Under his leadership, Cuba’s influence in
Venezuela has become pervasive. He has stacked key
government posts with activists trained in Cuban
organizations, and Cubans have come to occupy sensitive
roles within the Venezuelan regime. The daily intelligence
briefs Maduro consumes, for instance, are produced not by
Venezuelans but by Cuban intelligence officers.</p>
<p>With Cuban guidance, Maduro has deeply curtailed economic
freedoms and erased all remaining traces of liberalism from
the country’s politics and institutions. He has continued
and expanded Chávez’s practice of jailing, exiling, or
banning from political life opposition leaders who became
too popular or hard to co-opt. Julio Borges, a key
opposition leader, fled into exile to avoid being jailed,
and Leopoldo López, the opposition’s most charismatic
leader, has been moved back and forth between a military
prison and house arrest. Over 100 political prisoners linger
in jails, and reports of torture are common. Periodic
elections have become farcical, and the government has
stripped the <a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-08-01/venezuela-after-constituent-assembly"
target="_blank">opposition-controlled National Assembly </a>of
all powers. Maduro has deepened Venezuela’s alliances with a
number of anti-American and anti-Western regimes, turning to
Russia for weapons, cybersecurity, and expertise in oil
production; to China for financing and infrastructure; to
Belarus for homebuilding; and to Iran for car production. </p>
<p>As Maduro broke the last remaining links in Venezuela’s
traditional alliances with Washington and other Latin
American democracies, he lost access to sound economic
advice. He dismissed the consensus of economists from across
the political spectrum: although they warned about
inflation, Maduro chose to rely on the advice of Cuba and
fringe Marxist policy advisers who assured him that there
would be no consequences to making up budget shortfalls with
freshly minted money. Inevitably, a devastating bout of
hyperinflation ensued. </p>
<p>A toxic combination of Cuban influence, runaway corruption,
the dismantling of democratic checks and balances, and sheer
incompetence has kept Venezuela locked into catastrophic
economic policies. As monthly inflation rates top three
digits, the government improvises policy responses that are
bound to make the situation even worse. </p>
<h3>ANATOMY OF A COLLAPSE</h3>
<p>Nearly all oil-producing liberal democracies, such as
Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, were
democracies before they became oil producers. Autocracies
that have found oil, such as Angola, Brunei, Iran, and
Russia, have been unable to make the leap to liberal
democracy. For four decades, Venezuela seemed to have
miraculously beat these odds—it democratized and liberalized
in 1958, decades after finding oil.</p>
<p>But the roots of Venezuelan liberal democracy turned out to
be shallow. Two decades of bad economics decimated the
popularity of the traditional political parties, and a
charismatic demagogue, riding the wave of an oil boom,
stepped into the breach. Under these unusual conditions, he
was able to sweep away the whole structure of democratic
checks and balances in just a few years. </p>
<p>When the decadelong oil price boom ended in 2014, Venezuela
lost not just the oil revenue on which Chávez’s popularity
and international influence had depended but also access to
foreign credit markets. This left the country with a massive
debt overhang: the loans taken out during the oil boom still
had to be serviced, although from a much-reduced income
stream. Venezuela ended up with politics that are typical of
autocracies that discover oil: a predatory, extractive
oligarchy that ignores regular people as long they stay
quiet and that violently suppresses them when they protest.</p>
<p>The resulting crisis is morphing into the worst
humanitarian disaster in memory in the Western Hemisphere.
Exact figures for Venezuela’s GDP collapse are notoriously
difficult to come by, but economists estimate that it is
comparable to the 40 percent contraction of Syria’s GDP
since 2012, following the outbreak of its devastating civil
war. Hyperinflation has reached one million percent per
year, pushing 61 percent of Venezuelans to live in extreme
poverty, with 89 percent of those surveyed saying they do
not have the money to buy enough food for their families and
64 percent reporting they have lost an average of 11
kilograms (about 24 pounds) in body weight due to hunger.
About ten percent of the population—2.6 million
Venezuelans—have fled to neighboring countries. </p>
<p>The Venezuelan state has mostly given up on providing
public services such as health care, education, and even
policing; heavy-handed, repressive violence is the final
thing left that Venezuelans can rely on the public sector to
consistently deliver. In the face of mass protests in 2014
and 2017, the government responded with thousands of
arrests, brutal beatings and torture, and the killing of
over 130 protesters. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, criminal business is increasingly conducted not
in defiance of the state, or even simply in cahoots with the
state, but directly through it. Drug trafficking has emerged
alongside oil production and currency arbitrage as a key
source of profits to those close to the ruling elite, with
high-ranking officials and members of the president’s family
facing narcotics charges in the United States. A small
connected elite has also stolen national assets to a
unprecedented degree. In August, a series of
regime-connected businessmen were indicted in U.S. federal
courts for attempting to launder over $1.2 billion in
illegally obtained funds—just one of a dizzying array of
illegal scams that are part of the looting of Venezuela. The
entire southeastern quadrant of the country has become an
exploitative illegal mining camp, where desperate people
displaced from cities by hunger try their luck in unsafe
mines run by criminal gangs under military protection. All
over the country, prison gangs, working in partnership with
government security forces, run lucrative extortion rackets
that make them the de facto civil -authority. The offices of
the Treasury, the central bank, and the national oil company
have become laboratories where complicated financial crimes
are hatched. As Venezuela’s economy has collapsed, the lines
separating the state from criminal enterprises have all but
disappeared.</p>
<h3>THE VENEZUELAN DILEMMA</h3>
<p>Whenever U.S. President Donald Trump meets with a Latin
American leader, he insists that the region do something
about the Venezuelan crisis. Trump has prodded his own
national security team for “strong” alternatives, at one
point stating that there are “many options” for Venezuela
and that he is “not going to rule out the military option.”
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has similarly
flirted with a military response. Secretary of Defense James
Mattis, however, has echoed a common sentiment of the U.S.
security apparatus by publicly stating, “The Venezuelan
crisis is not a military matter.” All of Venezuela’s
neighboring countries have also voiced their opposition to
an armed attack on Venezuela. </p>
<p>And rightly so. Trump’s fantasies of military invasion are
deeply misguided and extremely dangerous. Although a
U.S.-led military assault would likely have no problem
overthrowing Maduro in short order, what comes next could be
far worse, as the Iraqis and the Libyans know only too well:
when outside powers overthrow autocrats sitting atop failing
states, open-ended chaos is much more likely to follow than
stability—let alone democracy.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the United States will continue to face
pressure to find some way of arresting Venezuela’s collapse.
Each initiative undertaken so far has served only to
highlight that there is, in reality, little the United
States can do. During the Obama administration, U.S.
diplomats attempted to engage the regime directly. But
negotiations proved futile. Maduro used internationally
mediated talks to neutralize massive street protests:
protest leaders would call off demonstrations during the
talks, but Chavista negotiators would only stonewall,
parceling out minor concessions designed to divide their
opponents while they themselves prepared for the next wave
of repression. The United States and Venezuela’s neighbors
seem to have finally grasped that, as things stand,
negotiations only play into Maduro’s hands. </p>
<blockquote class="pullquote pr-md-30 mt-10 mb-20 mb-md-10
ls-normal"> <span class="pullquote__text d-block">The other
Latin American countries are finally grasping that
Venezuela’s instability will inevitably spill across their
borders.</span></blockquote>
<p>Some have suggested using harsh economic sanctions to
pressure Maduro to step down. The United States has tried
this. It passed several rounds of sanctions, under both the
Obama and Trump administrations, to prevent the regime from
issuing new debt and to hamper the financial operation of
the state-owned oil company. Together with Canada and the
EU, Washington has also put in place sanctions against
specific regime officials, freezing their assets abroad and
imposing travel restrictions. But such measures are
redundant: if the task is to destroy the Venezuelan economy,
no set of sanctions will be as effective as the regime
itself. The same is true for an oil blockade: oil production
is already in a free fall. </p>
<p>Washington can sharpen its policy on the margins. For one
thing, it needs to put more emphasis on a Cuban track:
little can be achieved without Havana’s help, meaning that
Venezuela needs to be front and center in every contact
Washington and its allies have with Havana. The United
States can cast a wider net in countering corruption,
preventing not just crooked officials but also their
frontmen and families from enjoying the fruits of
corruption, drug trafficking, and embezzlement. It could
also work to turn the existing U.S. arms embargo into a
global one. The Maduro regime must be constrained in its
authoritarian intent with policies that communicate clearly
to its cronies that continuing to aid the regime will leave
them isolated in Venezuela and that turning on the regime
is, therefore, the only way out. Yet the prospects of such a
strategy succeeding are dim.</p>
<p>After a long period of dithering, the other Latin American
countries are finally grasping that Venezuela’s instability
will inevitably spill across their borders. As the
center-left “pink wave” of the early years of this century
recedes, a new cohort of more conservative leaders in
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru has tipped the
regional balance against Venezuela’s dictatorship, but the
lack of actionable options bedevils them, as well.
Traditional diplomacy hasn’t worked and has even backfired.
But so has pressure. For example, in 2017, Latin American
countries threatened to suspend Venezuela’s membership in
the Organization of American States. The regime responded by
<a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-05-05/venezuelas-bad-neighbor-policy"
target="_blank">withdrawing from the organization
unilaterally</a>, displaying just how little it cares
about traditional diplomatic pressure. </p>
<p>Venezuela’s exasperated neighbors are increasingly seeing
the crisis through the prism of the refugee problem it has
created; they are anxious to stem the flow of malnourished
people fleeing Venezuela and placing new strains on their
social programs. As a populist backlash builds against the
influx of Venezuelan refugees, some Latin American countries
appear tempted to slam the door shut—a temptation they must
resist, as it would be a historic mistake that would only
worsen the crisis. The reality is that Latin American
countries have no idea what to do about Venezuela. There may
be nothing they can do, save accepting refugees, which will
at least help alleviate the suffering of the Venezuelan
people. </p>
<h3>POWER TO THE PEOPLE</h3>
<p>Today, the regime is so solidly entrenched that a change of
faces is much more likely than a change of system. Perhaps
Maduro will be pushed out by a slightly less incompetent
leader who is able to render Cuban hegemony in Venezuela
more sustainable. Such an outcome would merely mean a more
stable foreign-dominated petro-kleptocracy, not a return to
democracy. And even if <a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/south-america/2018-08-22/take-back-venezuela-votes-not-violence"
target="_blank">opposition forces</a>—or a U.S.-led armed
attack—somehow managed to replace Maduro with an entirely
new government, the agenda would be daunting. A successor
regime would need to reduce the enormous role the military
plays in all areas of the public sector. It would have to
start from scratch in restoring basic services in health
care, education, and law enforcement. It would have to
rebuild the oil industry and stimulate growth in other
economic sectors. It would need to get rid of the drug
dealers, prison racketeers, predatory miners, wealthy
criminal financiers, and extortionists who have latched on
to every part of the state. And it would have to make all
these changes in the context of a toxic, anarchic political
environment and a grave economic crisis. </p>
<p>Given the scale of these obstacles, Venezuela is likely to
remain unstable for a long time to come. The immediate
challenge for its citizens and their leaders, as well as for
the international community, is to contain the impact of the
nation’s decline. For all the misery they have experienced,
the Venezuelan people have never stopped struggling against
misrule. As of this summer, Venezuelans were still staging
hundreds of protests each month. Most of them are local,
grass-roots affairs with little political leadership, but
they show a people with the will to fight for themselves. </p>
<p>Is that enough to nudge the country away from its current,
grim path? Probably not. Hopelessness is driving more and
more Venezuelans to fantasize about a Trump-led military
intervention, which would offer a fervently desired deus ex
machina for a long-suffering people. But this amounts to <a
href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-11-08/what-would-us-intervention-venezuela-look"
target="_blank">an ill-advised revenge fantasy</a>, not a
serious strategy. </p>
<p>Rather than a military invasion, Venezuelans’ best hope is
to ensure that the flickering embers of protest and social
dissent are not extinguished and that resistance to
dictatorship is sustained. Desperate though the prospect may
seem, this tradition of protest could one day lay the
foundations for the recovery of civic institutions and
democratic practices. It won’t be simple, and it won’t be
quick. Bringing a state back from the brink of failure never
is.</p>
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