As I understand it, Venezuela is in this predicament because their president instituted extravagant, far-reaching social programs, all of which were funded by revenues from state-sponsored exports, chiefly oil. So, without attempting to write a lengthy essay here, that setup fell victim to a double whammy of 1) mismanagement of those resources and 2) continuing the social programs. Basically when the bottom fell out of the oil market, their revenue dried up, but the expensive social programs continued. It didn't take long before there was no money for basic services.
Self-professed libertarians and free-market anarchocapitalists use Venezuela as a prime example of social democracy as a failing strategy for governance. I don't find that appropriate because any rational person can see that there should have been a direct and immediate response to scale each program's reach to its per-period fiscal support. However, I do think Venezuela could be used as a case example that however the pathway, you don't want buffoons in charge of your country's most important things. In other words, I don't think that a greedy, short-sighted buffoon in private industry is any better than a greedy, short-sighted buffoon in government.
I wish the US would offer some sort of help to the nation at the moment. Food, water, whatever else needs to be brought over there.
The government collapsing may be good for the people in terms of politics, but chaos and strife is not something the US should allow on its continent.
Pretty sure that anything the U.S. has to offer Venezuela under Maduro will be classified as the opposite of help. This is the upside to the slump in oil prices. This is the pay back for every mosquito bite speech in the UN. It's time to put the Venezuela figurine into the world market capitalism display case.
If it's a military coop be sure that the CIA is holding down the signal intelligence side of things.
I think that the US should be willing to provide food, water, and other assistance regardless of who rules the nation, and regardless of if that ruler wants their people to have the aid from the US.
Regardless of the negative actions of the nation, it's people do not deserve to starve or die of thirst because of political crap and bad structure of government.
Unfortunately, the crisis of lacking basic necessities spurs political change more effectively than anything else.
Edit: I'm not condoning it, but yeah, I can see why the US sits idly by.
The United States has rarely been up to anything good in Latin America.
What's going on now is a quiet echo of the games it used to play in a much more brash and bold style in years gone by.
If it's a military coup Venezuela will be sending officers for U.S. training. These officers will be taught signal intelligence, torture, psy ops and insurgency suppression.
Their economic system will be hammered into a convenient form for foreign direct investment and extraction of resources.
Naomi Cline's "Shock Doctrine" gives a great overview of U.S. policy toward Latin America during the last century.
If you don't feel like digging in so deep Costa-Gavras's film State Of Siege is entertaining and lays out some of the power dynamics in a way that gives at least an emotive understanding of what's going on.
Nice sentiment, too bad it runs against decades of CIA plotting. I doubt that somewhere deep in the bowels of dark ops central they are saying "well..., let's throw away 40 years of dark arts in favor of proping up this socialist asshole who has not only defied the global market order it also had the audacity to nationalize vital US business interest." Pretty fucking sure our tax dollar is hard at work finding new ways to make it worse.
You'll like it much better when it's all over and the World Bank and the IMF offer up a bunch of loans in exchange for restructuring the economy to better align with the world market order.