(To be clear I'm not a fan of Chávez or of Maduro.)
The Venezuelan economy was dying before the sanctions.
Burning the economy to hand out free money isn't good for the people.
Maduro and Chavez fixed the exchange rate, imposed price controls, printed money and did a wave of nationalisation (not the oil infrastructure that was in the 70s). USA isn't to blame for Venezuelan dysfunction.
Sanctions go way beyond just direct trade with the US; they attempt to prevent all countries on earth from trading with the sanctioned entity, by force of the USD settling system, or as the past week has shown - the US Navy. So it reduces the number of potential trading partners from hundreds to a handful with (near) reserve currencies, and a navy that's not a pushover.
Also tells you how serious US is with sanctioning russia and its army of oil&gas resellers btw, which is the primary cash flow financing russian war in Ukraine.
Where it failed is that Venezuelans are an utterly corrupt people lacking any sense of nationalism or patriotism.
I'm reminded of Noam Chomsky and what has recently come out about his social time with Epstein. He would talk about how the media only allows leftist thought in public as a sort of controlled opposition. Then he turns out to be exactly what he was complaining about. One moment he's calling Steve Bannon the enemy and the next he is smiling with him and Epstein, in a photo I've heard multiple people describe as "the happiest they have ever seen him".
All this is to say: it's not enough to "say the right things". Your actions have to match.
Also can’t believe that no matter who I voted for in 2016 I had to vote for someone who performed fellatio on bill clinton.
sounds like a common theme… only this one involves war and prison and taking oil money for US cronies.
whole thing truly makes me skeptical of anyone’s claims that “socialism always leads to corrupt leaders while capitalism doesn’t.”
Well, technically it's only better for the few that are not poor, for all of the others, it's the same. It's even probably worse because rich people in a country with mostly poor people tend to be very efficient with capturing most of the value produced by the others.
