Venezuela: Safety Valves

VENEZUELA

Safety Valves

Manuel Gonzalez has been sleeping in a park in Riohacha, Colombia, with his 3-year-old son lately. “I beg for food,” the 42-year-old Venezuelan told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “At least I can get food here. I may be sleeping on the ground, but it’s better than over there in Venezuela.”

Gonzalez is among the 3 million refugees that the United Nations estimates have fled Venezuela under the corrupt and incompetent regime of President Nicolas Maduro.

The exodus is the latest example of the internationalization of the Venezuelan crisis.

American officials have included Venezuela along with Cuba and Nicaragua in a so-called “troika of tyranny.” National Security Adviser John Bolton recently announced new measures against the troika, reported National Public Radio.

The Atlantic described the policy as one of “gradual economic strangulation.” But the magazine was not sure it would work.

Russia has vowed to continue helping Venezuela economically and militarily, Newsweek wrote. Iran has even floated the possibility of sending a detachment of the country’s elite Revolutionary Guard to help defend Maduro.

China and India continue to buy oil from Venezuela with foreign currency that is vital to Maduro’s success.

American attempts to discourage those efforts, as well as policies seeking to curb Chinese and Indian imports of Iranian oil, could backfire by hiking prices at gas pumps in the US, analysts told the New York Times.

Those pushbacks against American pressure are one reason Maduro remains in power and can continue to crush his critics, for example, when he banned the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, Juan Guaido, from running for office for 15 years.

If the Venezuelan military opted to withdraw its support of Maduro, he might lose power, but such a shift doesn’t appear likely, New York magazine noted. Still, the president is hedging against such a scenario. He’s expanding the paramilitary forces that directly serve him and act as intimidators or death squads at his behest.

Maduro also turns defeats into victories. After insisting the country didn’t face a humanitarian crisis despite empty supermarket shelves and shortages of medical supplies, the BBC reported, he recently let the Red Cross into the country. The move might have been equivalent to opening a safety valve, preventing an explosion.

The question is, how long can that safety valve work? And, if not much longer, how many more tricks do Maduro and his friends have up their sleeves to keep him in power?