Yes, there's been an enormous propaganda push to legitimize a future U.S. intervention - either a direct invasion, or igniting a full-blown civil war by arming right-wing paramilitaries, as was the standard operating procedure throughout the 80's.
The inflation rate is 2688670%, they are refusing aid, they are having widespread electricity outages and food shortages, it seems like their leader has become a despot.
At what point is it reasonable for an outside intervention?
They are not refusing food aid, the Red Cross etc. have been let on all along. The US announced the Venezuelan government had no sovereignty over their border and sent "aid" trucks in, which were blocked.
Incidentally, "humanitarian aid" is how the person the USA convicted as a criminal - Elliot Abrams - sent weapons to contras in and out of Nicaragua.
Probably true, but let's face it, there are few good actors in this story. The Venezuelan government is not remotely interested in the actual welfare of its citizens. The US foreign policy establishment is concerned as always only with Empire (the aid story is a lie: https://theintercept.com/2019/02/20/regime-change-we-can-bel...). The nation itself is riven.
Picking a 'side' here could not possibly be done in good faith. And thinking that armed citizens would improve matters is beyond absurd.
I completely agree with you, with one exception. It's easy to see the absurdity of an armed population against a government with a military at its back. Of course the United States was founded by this very contradiction in intuition, but a more modern event is probably a better example. We destroyed Iraq without difficulty, yet never managed to control it. The full force of the US military backed by literally billions of dollars a day, and the best training money can buy, was unable to stabilize control against disparate groups of poorly trained, poorly funded, insurgents armed with little more than 50s eras rifles and some rudimentary homemade explosives. Think about how remarkable it is that these disparate individuals managed to force our military to huddle into small isolated 'green zones'.
The point here is that there's a difference between destroying a location and controlling it. Of course an armed population is not going to stop aerial bombardment and mass destruction, but at the same time it's practically impossible to control a territory when there is a hostile armed population. And there are also morale issues. The government doesn't own the military. Even the military doesn't own the military. The military is made up of real people who, though trained to act as a group, are still independent actors. And when there is real resistance between a population and a government, you can't rely on the military to behave as you might like. Once again - Iraq and the general failure of the Iraq military to enforce western interests is a perfect example here.
Ultimately there is a reason that governments who expect there may be major resistance to future actions tend to work to ban gun ownership. Mao took control of the government by arming a population, and then went to every effort to disarm that very population before engaging in actions leading to the deaths of tens of millions. Shortly after the Bolsheviks overthrew czarist Russia through force of arms - they began working to seize arms from the people. Stalin was already well entrenched in the nation and his actions, once taking absolute control, would come to cost the lives of tens of millions. And perhaps the most well publicized example - Hitler seized all arms from Jews in 1938. The holocaust started 3 years later.
Venezuela banned gun ownership/sales in 2012. This was likely done at the behest of then vice president Maduro. Chavez was terminally ill and would die several months later. It was supposedly done to combat Venezuela's rising murder rate. This [1] is that murder rate. It didn't stop the criminals from having guns, but it did stop the citizenry. Despotism and gun control are invariably tightly linked. So, at the minimum, I think we would be in a different place today if Venezuela did have an armed citizenry. While it's impossible to predict exactly what effect this would have culminated in, I do not find it absurd to suggest it would have been better than the present.
> Despotism and gun control are invariably tightly linked
"Linked" is a tabloid weasel word in this context. It may or may not be true that most despots favour gun control. I'm not familiar with the evidence in that case. But the reverse is not remotely true. Tight gun control has been hard fought for by citizenries of many democracies, and as with other rational policies (eg. real health care systems), once won, populations are loathe to allow corporate lobbies to remove it.
Armed citizenries have a measurably lesser chance of usefully opposing a government (and its military) than do unarmed ones (again, see Chenoweth and others). The post-revolutionary consequences of armed rebellions are invariably unending tales of multigenerational trauma and reciprocal violence.
What is the point of discussion? I'd say it's presumably to convey our ideas and ideally influence one another. I mean we all think we're right about the things that we believe - or we wouldn't believe them. So why don't other people think the same way? Well they must just not be privy to the logic, evidence, and other information that you possess! And so of course the key tools in this are rationale, logic, and evidence. And so let's imagine I'm coming from a different perspective from yourself. Do you think your post is going to help me see your world view in any more clear a fashion?
For instance, I've never heard of Chenoweth. I'd assumed it was some significant revolutionary event I was not familiar with. Search results turn up an actress I've also never heard of. With some degree of effort, I surmise you are talking about some person who wrote some book. Why not share what you find to be the most compelling incident from the book? Major modern events every child is familiar with, from Vietnam to Iraq, demonstrate the power of an armed population. I'm sure your author must have covered this, so why not summarize their logic in practice, offer examples you found particularly compelling and representative, and ultimately perhaps persuade me to their merit?
Given the history of previous U.S.-sponsored coup attempts against the Venezuelan government, and given that the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela was responsible for running guns to right-wing death squads in Central America in the 80's, and given that the "outside interventions" in Iraq and Libya killed hundreds of thousands of people and left those countries as smoking husks, I'd say the appropriate time for an invasion is never.
Incidentally, the Venezuelan government is not refusing aid delivered by genuine humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross - they were refusing "aid" delivered by agencies of the U.S. government, on behalf of an insurrectionist leader currently attempting a coup d'etat. This refused aid was later burned down by the paramilitary arm of the rebels.
Imagine that the Iranian government declared that it was recognizing a random U.S. congressman as the legitimate president and then demanded that the Revolutionary Guard be permitted to deliver aid to this congressman's new government. That's basically the situation
>Imagine that the Iranian government declared that it was recognizing a random U.S. congressman as the legitimate president and then demanded that the Revolutionary Guard be permitted to deliver aid to this congressman's new government. That's basically the situation
No, it isn't. The situation is that a despot is in control of Venezuela and it has failed in its contract with the people to provide the basic services required of government, so it is no longer a legitimate government regardless of your rationalizations of the situation.
If Trump refused to cede control, our inflation rate was over 100000%, and there were rampant food shortages and electricity failures then I hope there would be a revolution.
>> No, it isn't. The situation is that a despot is in control of Venezuela and it has failed in its contract with the people to provide the basic services required of government, so it is no longer a legitimate government regardless of your rationalizations of the situation.
That's up to the people of Venezuela, who by and large have continued to stand by the Maduro government, which is why the opposition has resorted to attempting to incite a foreign invasion to seize power.
It's really pretty disgusting that you're so callously willing to condemn the Venezuelan people to the horrifying fates suffered by Iraqis and Libyans after the United States destroyed their countries. It's not your decision to make, it's not the decision of the United States government, and it's certainly not the decision of a cluster of Reagan-era war criminals with long histories of supporting right-wing Latin American death squads.
This would go exactly as well as it did in Vietnam and Iraq: The Venezuelan people would slaughter the invading imperialists until they gave up and went home.
The government still has the support of an enormous number of people, mostly from the largely non-white working classes, whose economic and political interests were trampled on by the pre-Bolivarian governments and who are naturally suspicious of the right-wing agitators currently attempting to overthrow the government with the backing of foreign powers
