{"id":3664,"date":"2017-06-19T08:30:24","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T07:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/?p=3664"},"modified":"2017-07-30T17:45:11","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T16:45:11","slug":"time-to-end-venezuelas-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2017\/06\/19\/time-to-end-venezuelas-suffering\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to End Venezuela&#8217;s Suffering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In last week&#8217;s post, I made a brief reference to\u00a0the current situation in Venezuela which has gone from bad to worse over the last few months. The combination of the drop in oil prices, the death of the charismatic Hugo Chavez and the appointment of his corrupt and hapless successor, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro,\u00a0has left the country beyond the point of collapse.<\/p>\n<p>For a perspective on what is happening in the country, I recommend the <a href=\"http:\/\/daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com.es\/\">blog<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/danielduquenal?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&amp;ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdaniel-venezuela.blogspot.com%2F\">twitter<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/duquenal_at_vnv\/?ref=badge\">instagram<\/a> of Daniel Duquenal who has been faithfully reporting from Venezuela since Chavez came to power and has a clear view of the decomposition of the Maduro regime. How this man has found the courage, perspective, and the time, to continue to provide insight into the crisis that has befallen his country is beyond me but it is people like him who really show the power of our modern communications infrastructure, especially when dealing with tyrants.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3667\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3667\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/download-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3667\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/download-2-300x162.jpg\" alt=\"Luisa Ortega\" width=\"300\" height=\"162\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/download-2-300x162.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/download-2.jpg 306w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3667\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Luisa Ortega D\u00ecaz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The thing\u00a0is that in the latest wave of protests have lasted more than three months, left almost 50 protesters dead, and is finally causing a split within the regime. Last week, the Chief Prosecutor, something like the Attorney General,\u00a0Luisa Ortega D\u00edaz, called on citizens to rise up against the government as reported in the Guardian. \u00a0Ms. Ortega is reportedly a die hard Chavez supporter but has come to see the Maduro regime as a Mafia State, only interested in staying in power and keeping its leader out of prison.<\/p>\n<p>Writing about the drop in oil prices in February\u00a02015, I posted that &#8220;<strong>it was\u00a0hard to see how Maduro\u2019s government will survive&#8221; <\/strong>and the sad truth is that has done so through repression that Duquenal thinks has been ordered by Cuba. Another player may be China which has lent perhaps as much as $ 60 Billion to Venezuela since 2014. Writing in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/anderscorr\/2017\/04\/21\/remove-maduro-and-china-send-80-billion-in-emergency-aid-to-venezuela\/#390663982a2f\">Foreign Affairs<\/a>, Ander Corr, who runs a geo-political <a href=\"http:\/\/www.canalyt.com\/about-corr-analytics-inc\/\">consulting company<\/a> argues for external intervention in Venezuela. He reports that the Chinese loans were not approved by the country&#8217;s legislative branch and would thus be null and void if the regime would fall from power. Would China actively intervene in Venezuela to protect its investments? This would make sense to me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Monroe and Teddy Roosevelt<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In his annual speech to the Congress in 1823, U.S. President James Monroe made explicit reference to the newly independent states of South America and the role that France played in restoring the deposed Ferdinand VII to power in Spain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Making reference to the European system of monarchies and alliances he emphatically stated that \u201cwe should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety<\/span><span class=\"s1\">\u201d. This idea became known as the Monroe Doctrine and has been a fundamental tenant of American foreign policy ever since. <\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3669\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3669\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/images-4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3669\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/images-4.jpg\" alt=\"Teddy Roosevelt\" width=\"290\" height=\"174\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3669\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Teddy Roosevelt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was later extended by Teddy Roosevelt to embrace the idea that the Unites States would intervene in the internal affairs of countries in the Hemisphere in \u201cflagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence&#8221;.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Venezuela has clearly passed the point of incompetence and it may be time for american intervention in order to save he Venezuelan people fro its government which no longer recognized the sovereignty of its national assembly. The problem with this approach if the initial attack were to fail, the U.S. might find itself in a drawn out guerrilla war and could\u00a0end up creating sympathy for Maduro and his gang.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>Maybe the OAS ?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">With its roots in multilateral conferences dating back to the 1890\u2019s, the Organization of American States has been the primary vehicle of coordination cross the countries of the Western Hemisphere. Founded at a conference in Bogot\u00e1 in 1948, the organization was established in Washington and t<\/span><span class=\"s1\">he objective of the OAS was to initially encourage regional security cooperation. Over time economic and social development, the protection of human rights, and the promotion of democratic government have been added to its core objectives through a series of agreements and charters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/47ag-en.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3670\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/47ag-en-300x180.jpg\" alt=\"47ag-en\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/47ag-en-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2017\/06\/47ag-en.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The OAS started its General Assembly Meeting today in Cancun. While it is extremely unlikely, perhaps the best thing would be for an expeditionary force from OAS members not including the U.S. to occupy Caracas, imprison\u00a0Maduro and restore power to the Venezuelan Assembly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite having the world&#8217;s largest oil deposits, the current situation in Venezuela has gone from bad to worse and the OAS should intervene in the country to remove Nicol\u00e1s Maduro from power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":3671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26749],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3664"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3672,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions\/3672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}