Venezuela is one of those classic south American countries politically. It either has a government that is extremely socialist or extremely oligarchic.
Venezuela has traditionally been governed by people tied closely to the media empires in the country. Extremely powerful and rich people that use the counter as their plaything. The poor suffer and the upper class prosper. The gap between rich and poor grows.
At some point the balance tips and you get a coup d'etat. They promise the poor that they will take care of them and fuck the rich. Slowly the country turns into a dictatorship.
The US doesn't like socialist governance in their back yard, so they look for ways to turn the screws on that country to flip it back to the rich capitalist trickle down economics ideology.
In the old days they would just send the CIA down there and have a few people assassinated, or provoke unrest and supply weapons to right wing paramilitaries.
Today it is easier to starve then out financially and since both Russia and Venezuela both truly rely on raw material resource exports, especially oil and gas, persuading OPEC to crush the price of oil has been damaging to both of the US's enemies.
In Venezuela's case, it still had huge oil reserves and cash, so the US is just playing the waiting game.
I find both typical political models in south American politics bad, but the US foreign policy doesn't help matters either way.
You're right on many points, but I feel like Venezuela is more of just an innocent (or maybe not-so-innocent) bystander in the current energy tug of war going on right now between the U.S. and Russia / OPEC. The increased tapping on U.S. natural gas reserves hasn't helped any of the smaller nations that rely on energy exports, so I don't think the U.S. is intentionally trying to destabilize Venezuela like it would have in the 70's and 80's- it's just a side effect of the current global energy industry.
Venezuela has traditionally been governed by people tied closely to the media empires in the country. Extremely powerful and rich people that use the counter as their plaything. The poor suffer and the upper class prosper. The gap between rich and poor grows.
At some point the balance tips and you get a coup d'etat. They promise the poor that they will take care of them and fuck the rich. Slowly the country turns into a dictatorship.
The US doesn't like socialist governance in their back yard, so they look for ways to turn the screws on that country to flip it back to the rich capitalist trickle down economics ideology.
In the old days they would just send the CIA down there and have a few people assassinated, or provoke unrest and supply weapons to right wing paramilitaries.
Today it is easier to starve then out financially and since both Russia and Venezuela both truly rely on raw material resource exports, especially oil and gas, persuading OPEC to crush the price of oil has been damaging to both of the US's enemies.
In Venezuela's case, it still had huge oil reserves and cash, so the US is just playing the waiting game.
I find both typical political models in south American politics bad, but the US foreign policy doesn't help matters either way.