Venezuela's Unraveling

I. Venezuela's Unraveling
"Since Chavez's death in 2013, Maduro has presided over Venezuela's unraveling. Its economy collapsed as the price of crude oil fell; corruption and mismanagement made things worse. Hyperinflation, which is expected to reach ten million per cent this year, has left the currency worthless. Hunger and disease are epidemic." "More than ten per cent of Venezuela's population has fled." "Caracas was once [among] the world's most dangerous cities at the best of times; now it's felt to be apocalyptic." The state is effectively nonexistent in some high-population areas, "except for a few services instituted during the Chavez era: monthly food handouts, small allowances, and teams of Cuban doctors who provide primary health care." [1]

At a planning meeting on what to do about Venezuela, someone suggested: "Why don't we use the military?" Then-National Security Director McMasters replied: "Well, Mr. President, there are other options." The Trump administration invited the leaders of anti-Maduro factions to Washington for advice, and urged them to unite, apparently with little success. In 2017, the U.S. helped bring the regime and the opposition together in the Dominican Republic, but the talks quickly fell apart. "In Venezuela, Trump officials have occasionally offered incentives to officials who defected, but there has apparently been no budget for a wider effort to convert the military."

Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said that "all options are on the table," but the rest of the region is alarmed by the prospect of a U.S. invasion." President Trump has warned Cuba that he would impose "a full and complete embargo," if it didn't withdraw support for Maduro. As several officials have pointed out, a military intervention would take months to organize; Southcom, the branch of the U.S. military that handles operations in Latin America, doesn't have enough troops to conduct an invasion.

II. Continental Shift
In elections to the European Parliament, the populists didn't do as well as many had feared they would. "In a number of countries, as it turned out, third or fourth parties -- such as the Green parties -- who at times defy the old, easy right-left categories, held them back." Green parties had been projected to have 69 of the 751 seats in the European Parliament -- an increase of 40 percent. [2]

"The Greens won twenty per cent of the vote in Germany, putting them in second place, behind Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union." In Great Britain, Labour, the main opposition party, got only 14 per cent. "The Liberal Democrats, who had been moribund, came in second,with twenty per cent -- largely, it seems, because they expressed clear opposition to Brexit, while Labour dodged."

III. "It [Iran] has substantial missile assets and considerable ability to attack American forces directly and through proxy forces throughout the Middle East and perhaps well beyond." "Trump has often moved from hawk to dove and from dove to hawk. Just look at his shifting stance on Syria and North Korea." "And given Trump's fundamental dishonesty and alarming ignorance, Americans should have zero assurance that their President or his Administration is accurately describing the nature of the Iranian threat." [3]

"But now is the time for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority."

Footnotes:
[1] Jon Lee Anderson, "Our Man in Caracas," The New Yorker, June 10&17, 2019.

[2] Amy Davidson Sorkin, "Continental Shift," The New Yorker, June 10&17, 2019.

[3] David French, "Blundering Toward War," TIME, June 3-10, 2019.