Your description of Maduro is unfair. He was a bus driver and head of the bus drivers union as well as becoming a loyal supporter of Chavez and a party minister. He was handpicked by a Chavez as successor when the latter was dying.
Sharp observation about Chávez trying to break that oil rent cycle. The distinction between him and Maduro is kinda the whole story here actually, Chávez was genuinly trying to diversify beyond petroleum dependency while Maduro just ended up managing decline. I saw similar patterns in Nigeria and Angola where resource wealth becomes a structural poverty trap when leaders cant translate extraction revenue into broad-based development. The Monoe Doctrine framing is accurate but the real takeaway might be that Trump dropping the pretense exposes what was always happening anyway.
Not entirely fair. Under Maduro the economy was in fact diversifying and the main reason he failed to make it work was sanctions imposed by the US with the support of the western “democracies” who loath outsider government s who don’t play by the globalist rules
Your description of Maduro is unfair. He was a bus driver and head of the bus drivers union as well as becoming a loyal supporter of Chavez and a party minister. He was handpicked by a Chavez as successor when the latter was dying.
True
Chavez was no angel
I wonder if Trump cackled like Hilary did as she watched humans dying in Iraq and Libya.
Sharp observation about Chávez trying to break that oil rent cycle. The distinction between him and Maduro is kinda the whole story here actually, Chávez was genuinly trying to diversify beyond petroleum dependency while Maduro just ended up managing decline. I saw similar patterns in Nigeria and Angola where resource wealth becomes a structural poverty trap when leaders cant translate extraction revenue into broad-based development. The Monoe Doctrine framing is accurate but the real takeaway might be that Trump dropping the pretense exposes what was always happening anyway.
Not entirely fair. Under Maduro the economy was in fact diversifying and the main reason he failed to make it work was sanctions imposed by the US with the support of the western “democracies” who loath outsider government s who don’t play by the globalist rules