The Collapse of Venezuela: Scorched Earth Politics and Economic Decline 2012-2020

"This is an excellent book by my colleague, Francisco Rodriguez, at the University of Denver. He particularly focuses on the period between 2012 and 2020, from when Hugo Chávez died and into the Nicolas Maduro presidency. When I was choosing these books, I thought Francisco’s book was the best at capturing the state of degradation and at explaining the economic and social collapse that Venezuela has experienced since 2012, and after Maduro became president. It also coincides with the incredibly aggressive US responses to the Nicholas Maduro government. So what we see is the beginnings of the Maduro government coinciding with a very tough response, initially from Barack Obama, then from the first Trump presidency, from the Joe Biden presidency, and again, currently, under the second Trump presidency. What Francisco does very cleverly in this book is to demonstrate—and it’s a very serious claim to make—that destroying Venezuela’s economy was actually a political strategy, both of the Venezuelan government and of the Venezuelan opposition. It hasn’t just been institutional failings that account for the fact that seven million Venezuelans have fled the country. It’s not just misgovernance. It’s been the strategy of the government to hollow out institutions—and also of the opposition, in an attempt to get US support. If that included US sanctions, then so be it, according to the opposition. Both of those strategies have combined to have a devastating effect on Venezuela’s economy. Where we are right now is trying to see if the actions that have been taken in Venezuela, most recently by US President Donald Trump, are going to be able to reverse this calamitous situation that Venezuela now finds itself in, after many decades of misgovernance. We are in complete limbo with Venezuela right now. I think the decapitation strategy has been the most extraordinary thing we’ve seen on the part of the US. Right now, there is no way that the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, could have taken state power. From top to bottom, local government, the National Assembly, the judiciary, everything is controlled by the Chavistas, by Maduro’s people. So I don’t think Maria Corina Machado could have realistically stepped into power, but I don’t think any of us had really quite anticipated the Trump administration being able to work so smoothly with Delcy Rodriguez, the new president, as appears to be the case. But, realistically, no oil company, no investor is going to be going near Venezuela as long as we’re in this limbo. It’s just completely unrealistic to think significant investment is going to go into the country when we’ve got such legal and political uncertainty. It touches on this because the rationale for Trump going into Venezuela was that this was a narco regime. Anti-drug operations are a constant justification for US intervention in countries overseas. The book discusses the evolution of the international system of drug control, which is overseen by the United Nations, but for which the US has been the lead architect. Basically, it’s arguing that drug policy is about everything apart from drugs. It has nothing to do with drugs whatsoever. For instance, we’ve heard that Maduro is running a narco-regime in Venezuela. But what people don’t seem to understand is that when a kilo of cocaine leaves Venezuela, it’s only worth £2,000. It’s only when it arrives in the UK that it’s worth £27,000. The price of cocaine in Venezuela is very, very low. You could barely run a narco village on the cocaine revenues, let alone a narco regime. More money is made in illicit gold, illicit oil and other things like that. I’m just trying to tackle some of the taboos and misunderstandings about what drug criminalization is for, how supply chains work, and how terribly unsuccessful drug policy has been. The main emphasis is on reform of the international drug treaty system. The whole of the global treaty framework is directed by the 1961, the 1971 and the 1988 UN conventions and there is very little latitude outside of those conventions themselves. Without some mechanism for flexibility, we are just seeing some very slow reforms to the thinking behind the UN international drug control. They are moving away from the model of decision-making by consensus, but at the moment it’s still a very, very sclerotic system. I’m trying to demonstrate in the book that there is a way forward. I’m not confident that initiatives such as small, local-level decriminalization of cannabis and things like that are actually doing us very much good or very much help at the moment. Exactly."