Summarizing Venezuela's Implosion

Moisés Naím and Francisco published an article in Foreign Affairs on Venezuela's national suicide. The message: it's not socialism and it's not oil. It's kleptocracy with a Cuban foundation. And there is very little that can be done about it since most actions will make everything worse.

Given the scale of these obstacles, Venezuela is likely to remain unstable for a long time to come. The immediate challenge for its citizens and their leaders, as well as for the international community, is to contain the impact of the nation’s decline. For all the misery they have experienced, the Venezuelan people have never stopped struggling against misrule. As of this summer, Venezuelans were still staging hundreds of protests each month. Most of them are local, grass-roots affairs with little political leadership, but they show a people with the will to fight for themselves.

Is that enough to nudge the country away from its current, grim path? Probably not. Hopelessness is driving more and more Venezuelans to fantasize about a Trump-led military intervention, which would offer a fervently desired deus ex machina for a long-suffering people. But this amounts to an ill-advised revenge fantasy, not a serious strategy.

What Venezuelans can do, they argue, is keep protesting. But there is one other thing they can do. They can organize. I am surprised the state of the opposition gets no mention but the point (which I put in bold) about "little political leadership" is a big deal. Scattered protests, even in the hundreds, won't serve as a catalyst without some semblance of unity. What would it take to bring all the disparate opposition groups together? What are the main obstacles to doing so? I don't know the answers but it seems they are the most important to ask right now.