Venezuela (2006-2018)

[Wildcat]

I'm with John. Colombia will wipe the proverbial floor with Venezuela. Chavez's air force may be sporting a few Su-30MKs, but I'm willing to bet Colombia's pilots are qualitatively better. And of course Colombia has the perennial battlefield advantage of fighting defensively on its home turf. They certainly won't be the aggressors in any case, so they have a definite leg up on Venezuela.

I've got a friend in Bogota who was my "liaison" while I was in Colombia doing research. He's an advisor to the House of Reps down there, and I've asked him to keep me informed about attitudes and perceptions at the local level. No word back from him yet, though. I think he's probably a little busy at the moment...

[Wildcat]

This is old news now, but the situation has cooled with an apology from Uribe. The good news is that we avoided a war and two FARC leaders have assumed room temperature. The OAS also proved itself useful in mediating the dispute. The bad news is that Chavez is still in power, and he successfully stood up to Uribe without much in the way of repercussions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/wo...yt&oref=slogin

After leaders in the Andes tiptoed from the edge of war to bear hugs and oaths of brotherhood, Latin America was trying to sort out the winners and losers in the region’s worst diplomatic dispute in years.

A day after the crisis was resolved at a summit meeting in the Dominican Republic on Friday, it was already clear that nearly all of the players lost something. The leaders of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela traded charges that muddied each of them. Colombia and its ally, the United States, found themselves isolated in the region.

And Latin America’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, lost two senior commanders in a week, the latest in a string of tactical and strategic defeats.

But the biggest winner appears to have been the region itself, which resolved its own dispute without outside help and without violence.

Also this: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/worl...olombia&st=nyt

[Ron Humphrey]

The bad news is that Chavez is still in power, and he successfully stood up to Uribe without much in the way of repercussions.

He may seem to have come out unscathed but one can only imagine what his military leaders think about his willingness to throw them to the wolves over ??.

Might be a bit but I don't think we've seen the last of reprucussions yet

[Watcher In The Middle]

Originally posted by Wildcat:

The bad news is that Chavez is still in power, and he successfully stood up to Uribe without much in the way of repercussions.

Yes, and no. Latest floating out there is that (a) the material coming out of the 2 notebooks "cannot be verified as authentic", and (b) There's a flood of the material being pushed out in front of God and everybody, for all to see. Uribe has played this just beautifully.

Wait for it, there's even more to come. Some of the material is likely to be very sensitive, to some certain political figures back home here.

Hugo and his minions are working to spin the press like nonstop whirling dervishes, Correa [President, Ecuador] is trying to figure out a way to keep accommodating FARC without looking complicit with all the released email bombshells, and Uribe is sitting back and quietly laughing to himself.

Going to be fun to watch as it plays out.

[AdamG]

Venezuela is training a "guerrilla army" aiming to be a million strong by 2013 to fight off a possible US invasion, an opposition lawmaker said Sunday.

"Plan Sucre" -- apparently crafted with input from close ally and fellow US foe Cuba -- covers the legal, logistical and other angles necessary to "transform a professional army into a guerrilla army," Representative Maria Corina Machado told El Universal newspaper.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/venezuela-p...225507615.html

[davidbfpo]

This thread was locked in August 2012, since than President Chavez has died from natural causes and there is not another thread on Venezuela, so I have changed the title and unlocked it.

US interest in the country remains, although possibly not with the passion of yesteryear.

[davidbfpo]

A long article from Open Democracy on Venezuela's internal policing issues, which starts with:

Faced with soaring levels of crime and violence, Venezuela's government continues to militarize the police. The public disproves of the crime, but not the response. Why?

It ends with:

..unless there is a drastic change in the current government, which has a strong military faction and is plagued by rampant corruption, the military policing model is likely to stay.

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensec...zuelas-streets

[davidbfpo]

I am a little surprised that SWC has not posted on this nearby neighbour for sometime, perhaps it is too painful?

The Daily Telegraph has a long article on the current situation, as indicated by the sub-title:

Death in the streets, rationing by fingerprints and a general on the run: how oil-rich Venezuela has descended into chaos

These two passages provide the context:

The country is mired in a dangerous cycle of economic crisis and violent chaos, polarised between government loyalists in areas heavily dependent on state support and protestors who have taken to the streets over soaring crime rates, surging inflation and shortages of basic goods.

With the world’s largest known oil reserves, Venezuela should be reaping windfall gains. Yet in another sign of its parlous economics, the government has just announced a new rationing system using fingerprint registration to track purchases of subsidised but scarce foodstuffs milk, flour and rice.

Then I found this, which was a surprise, although given Venezuela's political path of late predictable, with my emphasis:

The rancour over “Cubanisation” of Venezuela is a growing theme of the protests. Indeed, what drove Gen Rivero’s rift with his former comrade-in-arms of Hugo Chavez, the late socialist autocrat who even in death still dominates life here, was the import of Cuban officers into the highest echelons of the the military and security services.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...n-the-run.html

[Dayuhan]

It is as you say predictable: I've often said the only really wise policy decision Chavez even made was to die before his chickens came home to roost. How it plays out, and where it leads, is anything but predictable. The Cuban influx suggests that Maduro has every intention of fighting it out. Would be interesting to see some material from other sources on the Cuban issue...

[Firn]

Indeed the man who largely created this mess died before the economy went from a disaster to an utter catastrophe:

Venezuela Doesn't Have Enough Money to Pay for Its Money

In a tale that highlights the chaos of unbridled inflation, Venezuela is scrambling to print new bills fast enough to keep up with the torrid pace of price increases. Most of the cash, like nearly everything else in the oil-exporting country, is imported. And with hard currency reserves sinking to critically low levels, the central bank is doling out payments so slowly to foreign providers that they are foregoing further business.

Venezuela, in other words, is now so broke that it may not have enough money to pay for its money.

It is certainly an excellent case in point that elections do matter sometimes a very great deal and an economy in tatters can still fall to formerly unthinkable lows.