Venezuela As A Failed State

Long ago in my student days, my political science professor drew a squiggly map of the world on the blackboard. He elaborated on the topics we would be discussing that year, pointing to various spots the map around the Middle East, Africa, China, Russia and Southeast Asia. He drew lines from North America and Western Europe, adding more details as he went, muttering random thoughts about the Cold War, dictators and international terrorism.

About 15 minutes into the introductory talk, he paused, realized he'd forgotten to draw South America. He hastily drew a clumsy blob in the general vicinity of where it was supposed to be, noting with a shrug that "we wouldn't be focusing on that part of the world too much, anyway. When it comes to international relations, it doesn't really matter." And that was that. So much for the 400 million salsa-dancing non-entities below the Panama Canal.

Even today, Venezuela, like much of South America, gets short shrift when it comes to how North Americans see the world. Venezuelan Dictator (er, President) Hugo Chavez can fulminate on the relative sulphur content of the air at the United Nations and buy up all of the former Soviet Union's garage sale military junk all he likes. The failed states and rogue regimes of the Middle East, Africa and Asia will always grab the lion's share of reporters' ink.

That's a shame. Venezuela is an utterly failed state, comparable to the worst parts of Iraq, Pakistan and Burma. It's a disaster and the only reason people aren't paying more attention is... well, a habit of not paying attention.

The New York Times notes that "in Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000. Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives".

The cops arrest fewer than one in ten of the killers. Meanwhile, police seem to be far more efficient when it comes to locking up dissidents, political opposition leaders and the managers of media outlets.

The Venezuelan economy meanwhile appears to be immune to the public aims and machinations of the "Bolivarian revolution". Chavez' reforms have only cemented class divisions, leaving millions of Venezueland welfare dependent. It's not so much a workers' paradise as a jobless hell.

Instead of investing in its crumbling infrastructure, health clinics, schools or even the creaky state-commandeered oil industry, Chavez orders billions of dollars worth of Russian tanks and helicopter gunships. Instead of promoting trade with his neighbors, he shuts down the border and threatens them with invasion.

So, let's check the list of criteria we would use to verify whether a country is a "failed state". Absence of rule of law? Check. A wrecked economy dealing with hyperinflation? Check. A political leader who uses fear, intimidation and demagoguery to scuttle democracy? Check.

Do we really need to wait until Chavez drives his own people into a bottomless pit of misery before we call a spade a spade?

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist.