Threats, threats, and more threats.

Venezuela’s President dictator, Nicolás Maduro, has been beside himself lately, blustering on about his neighbor on the southeast side, the tiny sliver of a country called Guyana.

Now, it’s not like Maduro doesn’t have anything to keep him occupied with his own country. He and predecessor Hugo Chávez managed to take the potential for one of the richest countries in the world, and squander it so completely, that the currency is in shambles…

Did you know this is happening in Venezuela?

Due to hyperinflation, people are moving over to Colombia and making art pieces using the worthless currency.

🔊 …. 🚨🤯🚨 pic.twitter.com/ix9Fsz7clG

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) December 12, 2023

…Venezuelans are illegally flooding into the United States, and the lifeblood of the Maduro regime – exporting Venezuela’s oil – has dried up to a trickle.

Have you ever heard of the resource curse?

It’s a real thing.

The resource curse is a phenomenon in which many of the most resource-endowed countries in the world are significantly less economically stable or developed than their peers.

— Latinometrics 📊 (@LatamData) December 13, 2023

It’s the petro-state curse.

Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves, is a case study in the perils of becoming a petrostate. Since it was discovered in the country in the 1920s, oil has taken Venezuela on an exhilarating but dangerous boom-and-bust ride that offers lessons for other resource-rich states. Decades of poor governance have driven what was once one of Latin America’s most prosperous countries to economic and political ruin.

Venezuela has suffered economic collapse in recent years, with output shrinking by three-quarters and rampant hyperinflation contributing to a scarcity of basic goods. Meanwhile, government mismanagement and U.S. sanctions have led to a drastic decline in oil production and severe underinvestment in the sector. But Caracas hopes that Washington’s 2022 decision to allow U.S. oil giant Chevron to resume operations in the country could signal a potential détente.

As miserable as things are in Venezuela, Maduro has somehow always made them worse, having a penchant for absolutely the wrong move at any given time, and having an overwhelming inferiority complex that feeds the continuous, aggressive bombast aimed at the world in general. The only thing preventing him from being a real threat – now that he has every seat of the Venezuelan government firmly in his control – is the fact that he’s such a miserable head of state. Finishing what Hugo Chávez started, Maduro’s reduced a formerly cosmopolitan and prosperous 20th century country to a state of penury and feudalism, and there’s no money to back up any plans he might have, at least for any length of time.

Even with the Biden administration loosening sanctions on Venezuelan oil in the aftermath of the Ukraine-Russia War, and allowing Chevron to begin operations in the country once again, it will be some time before the industry there can rise from the ashes.

…Among Chevron’s first tasks are to make repairs to broken equipment, stop power outages and fix problems with pipelines, rehire hundreds of workers despite an exodus of talent from Venezuela’s oil industry, and deal with physical security threats including gasoline thefts, analysts said.

“The amount of money needed to invest in Venezuela to recover the lost production is tremendous,” said José Chalhoub, a political risk and oil analyst in Venezuela who previously worked in the country’s oil industry.

Mr. Chalhoub estimated the investments needed to restore Venezuela’s lost oil production could come to as much as $50 billion. Over the next six months or so, he said, Chevron might increase output by some 20,000 to 30,000 barrels a day, too little to make any difference to the global market.

Which is probably why, when word came of the discovery of massive oil reserves – 11B bbls so far – beneath the jungle and offshore of neighboring Guyana? Maduro’s eye lit up like a slot machine with nothing but cherries across the windows.

He jumped on the news just that fast – literally jumped.

“Congratulations,” he told the Guyanans in the area.

YOU’RE ALL VENEZUELANS NOW

…Desperate to win re-election next year, Venezuela’s Cuba-trained president dredged up this fall a 200-year-old border dispute with Guyana. Acting on the results of a poorly attended referendum, Mr. Maduro declared last week that two-thirds of Guyana is now a Venezuelan state — Guayana Esequiba.

Mr. Maduro decreed that the area’s 125,000 residents — largely English-speaking Amerindians — are now Venezuelan citizens. He ordered Venezuela’s state oil and mining companies to enter the area. A swath of Amazon jungle almost half the size of New York State, the Essequibo is largely known to Americans as the location of Jonestown, the American cult that ended with the suicide of 918 members in 1978.

The place where Maduro has spent what money he had on turns out to be the classic toys an authoritarian dictator needs to stay in power, and he has cultivated the usual roster of seedy enablers doing so. This gives him an edge on the bullying side of the house. The Russians are Maduro’s biggest boosters, and there’s nothing they love more than being able to pose as if they were sticking a proverbial finger in an American eye on our home turf themselves. They are more than happy to crow over their proxies doing it..

…The Venezuelan leader’s threats are backed by a civilian population that is 35 times larger than Guyana’s 800,000 inhabitants, and by security forces that outnumber Guyana’s by almost 100 to one. Russia’s largest arms buyer in Latin America for decades, Venezuela has bought almost $20 billion of Russian arms: tanks, attack helicopters, and Sukhoi SU-301 fighter jets.

“Venezuela is annexing its 24th state, Guayana-Essequibo,” Russian parliamentary faction leader Sergei Mironov taunted Americans last week on X. “This is happening right under the nose of the once great hegemon USA. All that’s left is for Mexico to take back Texas and the rest. It’s time for Americans to think about their future, and also about Alaska.”

Along with his declaration of their newly rejiggered citizenships, Maduro has given all the oil producers working in the region – like ExxonMobile, Hess and others – 90 days to clear on out or else.

…Venezuela has given ExxonMobil and other offshore oil producers 90 days to stop operations in disputed waters off the coast of Guyana.

The threat, part of President Nicholas Maduro’s effort to seize western Guyana’s Essequibo province that has been in dispute for more than a century, follows a stepped up Venezuelan military presence on the border. Maduro this week also named Venezuelan army major general Alexis Rodriguez as head of the region, published a new map featuring Guayana Esequiba as a new Venezuelan state, and plans to print Venezuelan identification cards for current residents there.

Guyana officials have described Maduro’s threats as an attempt to distract from a wide range of domestic challenges in Venezuela, saying its oil sector investors “have nothing to fear” from its neighbor.

What to do, what to do.

Guyana, for its sake, isn’t taking the threats lying down, and neither is Brazil. They don’t want any part of a regional conflict, especially with someone as unstable as Maduro aided by his Russian buddies.

…Yet Guyana has its own diplomatic backers. In a signal to Caracas, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, sent armored personnel carriers to two Amazon towns on Brazil’s 1,000-mile long forest border with Guyana. Brazil’s border with the Essequibo is about as long as Venezuela’s. But Brazil has had no territorial claims on its northern neighbor since 1904.

As a former British colony and the only English-speaking nation in South America, Guyana enjoys the backing of Britain, a backing that dates back to British success in 1899 winning an international arbitration in favor of what was then British Guiana.

Many countries in the global South do not want to see colonial-era border disputes reopened. Sympathy for Guyana is strong in the 56-nation, London-based Commonwealth of Nations. Similar support comes from the 32-member Organization of American States and the 15-nation Caribbean Community. Known as Caricom, this group is headquartered at Georgetown. Finally, as an Indo-Guyanese and as the only Muslim leader in the Americas, Mr. Ali enjoys sympathy of not only India, but of many Muslim nations.

Snapback sanctions on Venezuela were supposed to be imposed two weeks ago.

In the meantime, Maduro has accelerated his attacks on the opposition and aggressive posture against Guyana.

Every day that this continues, the US is damaging its credibility. Snapback sanctions now. pic.twitter.com/WBsQC2NRfl

— Kareem Rifai 🌐 (@KareemRifai) December 13, 2023

The absence of strong American leadership is tangible.

So I just started reading up on Venezuela potentially invading Guyana and annexing part of it.

If that happens, we'd have a land war in Europe, in the Middle East, and in South America.

Good grief. What a mess.

— Caleb Jordan Schulz (@Based_Jedi) December 6, 2023

On Thursday, with a nudge from neighbors, the two sides will meet to try to hash things out before coming to actual blows.

The government of Guyana, under pressure from neighboring Brazil and a Caribbean trading bloc, agreed Sunday to join bilateral talks with Venezuela over an escalating territorial dispute.

The century-old dispute between the two South American nations recently reignited with the discovery of masses of oil in Guyana. The government of Nicolás Maduro, through a referendum last week, has claimed sovereignty over the Essequibo territory, which accounts for two-thirds of Guyana and lies near big offshore oil deposits.

Even as troops mass on both sides of the shared Venezuela-Guyana border, Guyana President Irfaan Ali said Sunday that his country will meet on the Eastern Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent on Thursday to discuss where border lines between the two nations are drawn.

But any agreement is likely to be hard won with flaring tensions on both sides.

“I have made it very clear that on the issue of the border controversy, Guyana’s position is non-negotiable,” Ali said in a national broadcast.

That’s a perfectly reasonable stance, but there are sincere fears that, with so many Venezuelans migrating out of the flailing country to places like Guyana and beyond, Maduro will use those expats as an excuse to take the territory in addition to the 200 year old boundary brouhaha.

Important context regarding the Guyana situation.
The U.S. tried to use carrots with Venezuela by loosening sanctions 2 months ago.
The Biden Administration must understand: against revisionist states, never use carrots, only sticks.https://t.co/zos7VqiWWo

— Edward Hunter Christie (@EHunterChristie) December 13, 2023

It’s a pity no one from the administration can be in St. Vincent for the meeting on Thursday. Then again, if they could, would we really want them there?

God forbid what they’d do or suggest.

Again, what a shame we have no adults in charge.