After Crimea, What about Venezuela?

As expected, Russia has annexed Crimea and will have enormous influence on Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk unless he wants to also lose the Eastern half of his country.

At issue is that Germany and other European countries are too reliant on Russian natural gas and will not support a complete break with Moscow . Without allied support, U.S. President Barak Obama can not threaten military action because he will then look too much like his predecessor George W. Bush!

Meanwhile the world is still searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370!

These two stories have all but pushed the situation in Venezuela almost completely off the media agenda around the world and as I was reminded by a Venezuelan participant in our Advanced Management Program in Media & Entertainment (AMP) last week in New York, the situation is getting increasingly serious! Her organization, CNN, still has a team in Caracas.

33 deaths so far

According to the BBC, at least 33 people have been killed so far in the protests against Nicolas Maduro‘s government and two were killed this weekend.

For those of you who have not managed to follow the events, Hugo Chavez died about a year ago and hand picked Nicolas Maduro to replace him. After first being interim president, Maduro threw the entire state apparatus and controlled media behind his candidacy and still beat opposition candidate Henrique Capriles by only 1.5 % in the official, but highly contested, vote on April 14th last year.

Meanwhile Maduro’s government has proven to be a disaster and the country has seen a complete breakdown in law and order, hyperinflation and economic collapse, and an increasingly repressive regime.

Last month, students organized nationwide protests against the deteriorating situation and the Maduro government, like Yanukovitch’s government in Kiev, responded with brutal repression by security forces and armed groups of masked gunmen turning the conflict increasingly violent and deadly.

A question of leadership?

It seems that within the political opposition in Venezuela, Leopoldo Lopez, the former mayor of Chacao (Caracas) agreed to support Capriles for the sake of unity but that he was frustrated by Capriles’ reluctance to mobilize the population and took to the streets himself in support of the students causing the government to put out a warrant for his arrest.

Saying that he will give himself up to an “unjust justice” and hoping that his arrest would serve to “awaken the people” Lopez gave himself up the authorities and is reportedly being held in a military prison.

So what’s next?

The parallels to Ukraine are not only powerful but also frightening.

Yanukovitch, of course, fled to Russia when he saw that his situation was untenable but the problem is where can Maduro go and what about the agents of his repressive government?

Venezuela, has, according to Bloomberg, the world’s largest oil reserves and while mismanagement and commitments to China and India has reduced its shipments to the U.S. to the lowest point since 1985, it is still 792,000 bbl/day. According to Alexander Guerrero, a Venezuelan economist, the national oil company PDSVA is  a disaster and needs a complete restructuring.

The issue is who will save Venezuela? In another time perhaps the U.S. could have pushed for “regime change” but this is unlikely and would, of course, add even more credibility to Russia’s annexation of Crimea!