 Now, you've likely heard in recent days that there's a profound economic, political and social crisis playing out in Venezuela, a country located in South America with a population of more than 30 million people and the world's largest known oil reserves. That's because on January 23rd, the United States recognized Juan Guaidó, the leader of the country's national legislature, as the country's rightful president, while they called on Nicolás Maduro, who won elections in 2013 and 2018, to step down. Yesterday, in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and out of respect for Venezuelan democracy, the United States proudly recognized National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela. The time for debate is done. The regime of former president Nicolás Maduro is illegitimate. His regime is morally bankrupt. It's economically incompetent and it is profoundly corrupt. They were quickly followed by the likes of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, a host of other countries across the Western Hemisphere in calling for profound change in Venezuela. The following day, the Europeans, particularly Britain, Spain, France and Germany, while not following the path laid out by Washington, said that they no longer recognized Maduro as the rightful president either. And that, should he not call fresh elections in the following eight days, they too would anoint Guaidó as the country's rightful head of state. The EU strongly calls for the urgent holding of free, transparent and credible presidential elections in accordance with internationally democratic standards and the Venezuelan constitutional order. In the absence of an announcement on the organization of fresh elections with the necessary guarantees over the next days, the EU will take further actions, including on the issue of recognition of the country's leadership in line with article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution. Now, why is the situation in Venezuela so important? Why does it matter? Well, as I've already said, the country has the world's largest known oil reserves, making it a key point in terms of geopolitical and energy interests. Secondly, it's often used as a way of admonishing the left. Even if you're trying to lambast and undermine somebody simply asking for a living wage or remotely social democratic politics, the answer seems to be Venezuela. But I mean, my God, this is another story is a once wealthy country ruined by socialism takes a special kind of socialist incompetence to turn a country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world into one where 90 percent of the population live in poverty. The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. Now, that's the foundational myth that much of the right uses to admonish Venezuela and by extension the left. They say it was once a very wealthy country making the most of its profound and abundant natural resources and that economic mismanagement by socialist government has led it to a path of poverty and degradation. Except that's not quite true because when Hugo Chavez was elected as a result of democratic elections in 1998, the country he inherited was in a parlor situation. In fact, GDP per capita in the country in 1998 was at the same level it had been in 1963. And in fact, it had fallen by a third from the all time high of 1978, 20 years earlier. What's more, the purchasing power of the average salary was one third what it had been 20 years before, meaning that the situation he inherited was in many ways resembling the economy of Venezuela today. Thus, if we want to make sense of the rise of Hugo Chavez and the popularity of what's been called the Bolivarian Revolution, we have to understand the profound economic crisis into which he stepped. He did not assume the mantle of economic prosperity and success. Anything but what's more, the first 12 to 14 years of the Bolivarian Revolution named after Simon de Bolivar, one of the mythical political figures of Latin America in the 19th century was one of growth and economic expansion. GDP per capita grew by a factor of more than three between 1998 and 2014. The economic success of Venezuela over that period meant it pulled away from similar sized countries in the region, such as Colombia, Peru, and it even became wealthier than Argentina on a per head basis for the first time since 1989. So in short, the first decade plus of the Chavez administration was an economic success story for Venezuela, not the socialist failure we're so often told. More importantly, that economic growth redounded the benefit of ordinary people. And there was undoubted progress in terms of expanded welfare provision across the country over the first 15 years of the Chavez administration. By 2012, Venezuela had the lowest levels of inequality in the region, with poverty falling from 70.8% in 1996 to 21% in 2010. By the time of Chavez's death in 2013, more than 6% of GDP was spent on education, with citizens enjoying free daycare nurseries and university degrees. While 21% of the population experienced malnourishment in 1998, by 2012, that figure had fallen to just 5%. Elsewhere, infant mortality halved between 1990 and 2010, while the number of doctors relative to the population tripled between 1998 and 2012. Perhaps it's no surprise then, what with its rising prosperous economy and increasingly far-reaching social welfare programs that just six years ago, Venezuela was determined to be one of the happiest places to live on earth. So what changed? Well, the answer to the question can be explained in a single word. Oil. Oil remains the backbone of the Venezuelan economy, which should come as no surprise given it has, as I've already said, the largest known deposits anywhere in the world. 95% of Venezuelan exports are petroleum and the price of petrol, oil on the world market determines whether or not the Venezuelan economy goes up or down. That's why if we want to understand the perilous state of the economy that Chavez inherited in 1998, we only need to look at the historically low price a barrel of oil commanded in that period. What's more, Chavez was incredibly lucky. He came to power in 1998. And after 2000, the price of petrol on the world market increased pretty much year on year. So when prices started to go down after 2013, Venezuela had a problem on its hands. It had determined it would use the profound wealth created by its oil exports to create an ever larger social welfare state. And yet the very commodity allowing that thing to happen was now getting cheaper. Clearly changes had to be made. But it wasn't just the price of oil or rather it's fall that was the problem. Production of the commodity was also in decline. Falling prices and falling production means one thing and one thing only for the Venezuelan economy. Collapse. Now, many will point to the fact that oil production for the first 10 12 years of the Chavez administration stagnated. But that wasn't because money wasn't being invested into oil production. It was because the price was going up. Chavez in 2000 hosted the first meeting of OPEC, the oil producing countries in years. And he was very keen to emphasize that their collective power in setting the price of oil on the world market was one that shouldn't be understated. He even compared the price of a barrel of oil to that of wine. So that explains why oil production in the country more or less flat lined when the times were good. But clearly when you're commanding a lower price, you might need to sell more if you want to make ends meet. The point is Venezuela has not been able to do that. Why? As this table demonstrates, as recently as early 2017, Venezuela oil production followed the same pattern as that of Colombia. This clearly changed in August, however, when Trump's new sanctions came into force. As you can see, a decline in production was initially driven by the price of oil hitting its lowest point in about a decade at the start of 2016. But in August 2017, when Trump's sanctions made it illegal for the Venezuelan government to obtain financing from US institutions or individuals, it's clear and apparent that a major shift occurred. This had two major consequences. The first related to the fact that all the Venezuelan governments that standing foreign currency bonds was subject to New York State law. The second was that because one of the country's major assets, the state owned Citgo corporation, was based in Texas, it could no longer send profits and dividends back to Caracas. These had been averaging around $1 billion a year since 2015. So what's the cost of those sanctions been? Well, according to one study, they've cost Venezuela around $6 billion a year, primarily as a result of reduced oil production. $6 billion a year might not sound that much for an American or a Brit. After all, these are multi-trillion dollar economies. But in Venezuela, it's a lot of money. In fact, it's 5% of GDP. It covers the country's entire education or health care programs. Then there's hyperinflation, the country's presently experiencing. The rate of inflation in Venezuela last year was meant to have reached 80,000%. There's a major distinction between high inflation, something Venezuela's always suffered from, and hyperinflation. Generally, hyperinflation is anything beyond 50%. The primary cause of this, it appears, is a massive expansion in the country's money supply, which has been done to cover rising budget deficits, themselves a result of pronounced recession and falling government tax receipts. In essence, the government is printing money, although in the 21st century, this is more of a digital undertaking to finance its own spending, rendering the currency close to worthless. So there is an intimate relationship between the country's economic recession, massive deficits and hyperinflation, to a significant extent the depth of each has been profoundly deepened by US sanctions. This is no accident. Indeed, the intention behind them is to starve the country of important goods, and it's all important oil industry, accessing the necessary credit to even maintain present production. The United States has pursued a similar strategy with another major oil producer it cannot easily defeat through military means, Iran. While capacity there has held up better than Venezuela and the economy is more resilient after decades of sanctions, Trump walking away from the nuclear deal last year meant Iranian oil exports fell to a five year low in November. And while Iran is not experiencing hyperinflation, the country's currency, the Rial, experienced an 80% devaluation last year. Indeed, the strength of Washington's sanctions against Venezuela and Iran are reminiscent of those against Nicaragua in the 1980s. Then as now they had the desired effect as the Central American economy went into both recession and hyperinflation, falling GDP, widening budget deficits, declines and living standards. These aren't a side effect. These are a strategic objective for the United States. As President Richard Nixon put it in 1970, shortly before the US imposed sanctions on Chile, he said he wanted to make the country's economy screen. We're seeing that once more in Venezuela. So that's the economics of the situation in Venezuela and why I think socialism isn't to blame for its present plight. But what about politics? What about democracy? Because that's another means by which Maduro's critics can say the regime has no legitimacy. It is an undemocratic government. We are extremely concerned about the situation in Venezuela. It is clear that Nicholas Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. The election on the 20th of May was deeply flawed. Ballot boxes were stuffed. They were counting irregularities, opposition parties banned. And this regime has done untold damage to the people of Venezuela. Okay, so a few things here. Firstly, note how Jeremy Hunt, the UK foreign secretary, only refers to Maduro and last year's elections being a legitimate. This will be important as we go on. Secondly, and this is really important, he says things which are categorically untrue. So he refers, for instance, to ballot box stuffing. There have been no ballot boxes in Venezuela for a decade, Jeremy. It's done electronically. He also says the major opposition party was banned. How are they banned when you're anointing Guaido, who's the leader of the country's legislature? He's obviously contested an election. In terms of presidential election last year, they weren't banned, they boycotted it. And that's part of more broadly a color revolution strategy with help and advice from the US State Department. We'll talk about that in a minute. I don't see how anyone can believe that Maduro should stay in his position after what he's done to his country. And the only basis that anyone says that he should be there is that he won an election. It was a rigged election. It was a fake election. The one Guido is from our sister socialist party. He won an election being recognized by Germany, by France, by Australia, by Canada, by the UK as well. And he should be given a chance to turn around his country. That's got to be in the interest of the people of Venezuela. Well, we've just had elections and it was the most overwhelming victory in elections, which all parties could stand. That's very different from the election of Maduro, where not all parties could stand. So one was an election where you had the range of political parties and the other one, the leader of the opposition party, was not even permitted to stand in those elections. So that was Rachel Reeves, a Labour MP who's not from the left of the party. Perhaps that's quite obvious. She repeated something which Jeremy Hunt said about that being an illegitimate election and the opposition being banned. But they weren't banned. Like I said, they boycotted it. And it is remarkable, isn't it, how the British political establishment and of course people in the US, other countries are saying that every single election in Venezuela is illegitimate, except this one election where this one guy was voted in and he's now, by the way, the president. And Rachel Reeves talks about how he is in a political party, which is in the international umbrella, the same one as the Labour Party. Well, he shouldn't be, because this guy is already making plans in terms of privatising the Venezuelan energy industry. Like I said, it's 50% of Venezuela's GDP, 95% of its exports. He's trying to personally take £1.2 billion worth of Venezuelan wealth from the Bank of England, rather than it going to the Venezuelan Treasury. I mean, isn't that remarkable? He personally wants to take £1.2 billion. How does the international, of which the UK Labour Party is a member feel about that? Is it policy that you start asking for the IMF to come in and ask for advice about how you'll privatise, you know, the world's largest known oil reserves? I'd really hope not. It's very important to be cautious in intervening in someone else's country, but Venezuela is a very, very bad problem. There are millions of refugees moving to neighbouring states. Any Venezuelan system is deeply disturbed. The region is deeply disturbed. We're not pinning this on the United States. This is other Latin American countries. This is countries like Canada. This is Germany. This is France. This is Spain. This is the EU. If Britain cannot ally with those people against Iran, Syria, then we're in really serious troubles. This is about a humanitarian move for free fair elections. That's all this is about. So that's where we stew at MP, the Minister for Prisons, he's a Conservative MP. He says that the only kinds of regime now favouring Maduro against the seemingly overwhelming mass of free democratic countries, the US, the UK, countries in the EU, he says it's really limited to places like Syria and Iran. Now most people listen to that, like Syria and Iran. Venezuela must be bad. But hold on a second, because that isn't correct. Yes, Syria and Iran recognise the legitimacy of the Maduro regime, as does China, as does Russia. Fine, we might not want to call those liberal democracies. How about India, the world's largest democracy, which says that Maduro should still be recognised as the country's president. How about South Africa, says the same thing. Apparently that's meant to be one of the most matured democracies in Africa. Post Mandela is meant to be a poster child for how national reconciliation works. They might know a thing about how these kinds of problems can be solved. How about Mexico, one of the world's 12 largest economies, the new president there, certainly does not favour regime change in Venezuela. Well the thing is, none of those countries are mentioned by Western media in terms of who says Maduro should stay. Even when you look at maps, wherever it is, could be on print or broadcast outlets showing who's for and against Maduro, who's for and against Guaido. They never show India, they never show South Africa, they rarely show Mexico. So what's going on here? Well it's fundamentally about priming you in terms of creating a confirmation bias. So you want to agree with him, you want to agree with a nice British politician and he's saying are the bad people in Syria and Iran. He's not going to say India and South Africa, you know why? Because that fundamentally undermines his argument. Now I get that, he's a politician, he's going to misrepresent things sometimes. But I find it absolutely despicable that the media in supposedly free and fair countries like Britain and the United States don't show the facts in terms of what countries support what politicians. And every right-thinking member of this house should unite in condemning the Maduro regime and calling for his removal. But what's that's happened? We will need significant support for Venezuela in organising free and fair elections. I know the minister has addressed the points earlier but will the UK take a lead in ensuring that all necessary global support is given to Venezuela because it will be one of the biggest challenges face by a country coming out of dictatorship for many, many years. Right Stephanie and the EU on this? Yeah I mean the fact that you see that all the major European countries are coming together and saying the same that Maduro actually has to go and also you have to have to do with it? Well we have to have in mind that actually the crisis in Venezuela started with Hugo Chavez much before. The first person speaking there is Angela Smith she's a Labour Party MP although as you can probably guess she's not from the left of the party. Now there's a subtle difference between what she's saying and what the likes of Rory Stewart, Jeremy Hunt and Rachel Reeves previously said whereas they had solely disputed the integrity of last year's presidential elections she's saying by contrast that Venezuela has experienced unfreedom, an absence of democracy for many, many years. What's more the person who follows a German journalist who writes with DeVelt says something kind of similar. She says that the crisis didn't start with Maduro but with Chavez. What crisis? Because if it's a crisis of declining GDP as a result of falling oil prices and production that definitely doesn't start with Chavez. Chavez dies before oil prices start to fall 2013-2014. Does she mean a crisis of democratic legitimacy because one can only presume that is what she means? And as a result one has to ask where's the evidence of that? Because Hugo Chavez won four elections between 1998 and 2012 and not a single one was disputed by the US State Department, the Organization for American States or the Carter Center, an observatory set up by the former US President Jimmy Carter in assessing the integrity of elections around the world. Now Angela Smith and people like that may not be familiar with the facts they may just be ignorant about the political history of Venezuela. So here are the facts. Hugo Chavez won his first election in 1998. He defeated Enrico Salas Romero by a million votes. That was viewed as a free and fair election at the time and even Roma said quote I will not only accept the victory of my adversary but wish him luck, lots of luck because his luck will be that of Venezuela. Okay Angela Smith if you're watching 1998 Hugo Chavez wins a democratic election. As I've already said the economic conditions which precipitate that aren't that dissimilar to the present moment but importantly everybody recognized that he was the legitimate president of the Venezuelan Republic. Now Hugo Chavez had huge plans for Venezuela including changing the country's constitution and that was his right after all the mandate he received the previous year was one of national renewal. That happened through a series of referendum in 1999 he only wanted to change the country's constitution with the democratic authority of the electorate. Those changes were ratified they went through. They changed the relationship of power between various institutions and inserted new features which one doesn't traditionally consider in democratic constitutions. One is a right of recall which means that if the electorate gets a number of signatures together turned out to be 20 percent there could be a trigger ballot so to speak. I have to emphasize this. Hugo Chavez oversaw constitutional reforms which inserted a right of recall referendum in the presidency itself. That's not really the kind of behavior one would associate with a dictator. Now at this point and bear in mind this is before 9-11 the U.S. State Department doesn't really know what to make of Chavez. It's certainly not saying he's not the legitimate president. All the major observers are saying both the 1998 election and the subsequent year's referendum changing the constitution were entirely legitimate. That begins to change however in the following few years in 2000 because you have a changed constitution he goes back to the polls and says I want to be president again he doesn't view himself as being legitimate given there's been this profound constitutional transformation. He wins his second presidency with an increased majority this time winning 60 percent of the national vote defeating his nearest rival by more than 20 percent. At the time the Organization of American States noted the election campaign was conducted in an overall framework of freedom of expression pluralism and a high degree of public participation fostered by the diversity of candidates party backed independent and by the efforts of campaigners to mobilize the public at the national as well as the state and municipal levels. Now his problems with the United States really begin the following year in 2001 where he says in relation to a forthcoming intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan that you can't defeat terrorism with terrorism. He was talking of course about 9-11 and what he perceived to be a mistaken response by the United States. That alongside an increasingly close relationship between Venezuela and Cuba really got the backup of Washington and perhaps it was no surprise that despite him winning multiple times between 1998 and 2000 there was an attempted coup with US support against him in 2002. Despite that coup Chavez was returned to power within 48 hours. That was the result of overwhelming numbers of Venezuelans taking to the streets and demanding he be restored as the country's president. So he's won elections he's changed the constitution there's been a coup and yet he's come back. In between all of that he inserted as I've said that right to recall. Now this is important because two years later in 2004 more than two million signatures are gathered in the petition 2.4 million was necessary it was slightly more and there is a national referendum about whether or not Hugo Chavez should be recalled in which case there would be a new set of presidential elections. In that vote Hugo Chavez won by 4.9 million votes to 3.5 million more or less the same margin you see is the 2000 presidential elections. Again the results of that referendum as in 1998 as in 1999 and as in 2000 are disputed by next to nobody. 2006 and Hugo Chavez wins his third set of presidential elections this time he wins by a historic margin he wins by the largest margin of votes in Venezuelan history and he wins by the largest percentage since 1947. What's more turnout is massively up at 72 percent the result of a national program of registering poorer Venezuelans to vote. The Carter Center concluded that those elections were fair, transparent and without serious irregularities. Meanwhile Thomas Shannon Jr the United States Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere was quoted in the Spanish newspaper El País as saying the political battle that is unfolding within Venezuela is now conducted through democratic institutions. The following year in 2007 Chavez wants to change the constitution again he wants to do a bunch of things he wants to rename Caracas he wants to bring the voting age down to 16 and he wants to centralize more powers in the presidency. That goes to a popular ballot and he loses. He loses so not only does he insert the right to recall in the 1999 constitution he loses a referendum on changing the constitution once more in 2007. But I thought he was a tyrant who fixed elections. 2012 Hugo Chavez with cancer wins his fourth set of presidential elections he wins by a margin of more than 10 percent. Again no he disputes the integrity of those elections the Carter Center said they were the best in the world. So the reality is with regards to Hugo Chavez he was one of the most successful politicians in Latin American history. Lula in Brazil maybe tops it but given the conditions he faced as well as changing the constitution there was the right of recall there was the coup in 2002 his record is remarkable and between 1998 and 2012 nobody else in national politics could touch him. As we know however he died the following year 2013 which meant the country had to have a fresh set of elections. Now when a president in the United States dies as happened with John F. Kennedy for instance in the 1960s the vice president takes over there are not immediate elections in the UK if the prime minister resigns as was the case with David Cameron or Tony Blair. Again their successor doesn't necessarily have to be elected I have to say however the prime minister in Britain isn't the head of state but clearly they administer significant executive functions and yet in Venezuela a country which has a right to recall in its constitution which persists in changing the constitution only through national referenda you have to have new elections pretty much straight away it's almost like the democratic standards in Venezuela are if anything even higher than they are in Europe and North America so in the elections that follow Nicholas Maduro wins but by a small margin 1.5 percent perhaps that should come as no surprise incumbents tend not to do very well after 15 years in power just think of Gordon Brown in the 2010 general election yes he was his own man yes he was a fresh face but he was heavily associated with Tony Blair had been the prime minister between 1997 and 2007 a similar thing was going on here what's more Maduro for any redeeming qualities he might have as a politician was no Hugo Chavez what's more Maduro won now as I've already said all of the voting in Venezuela is done electronically and there is a way of auditing the vote and the 2013 election was audited 54 percent of the votes were checked and it confirmed the overall result of a narrow Maduro victory now the opposition parties said that that wasn't true it was a legitimate it was a fake election now guess what they say that pretty much every year after 2002 in the failed coup and it has to be mentioned that this opposition is funded to the tune of five million US dollars a year now that's not a conspiracy theory this can be found in the publicly available documents of the US State Department now what's really interesting is that foreign nationals or businesses organizations aren't allowed to fund politicians and political parties in the United States any politician that receives funding knowingly from such actors is actually engaging in criminal activity and yet these wonderful pro-democracy parties in Venezuela being funded to the tune of millions of dollars a year are doing precisely that and when you listen to US media these are supposed to be the beacons of democracy and legitimacy in Venezuelan politics well guess what I don't buy it moving forward to last year's elections when Nicolas Maduro won his second presidency and of course they are the most important elections in judging whether or not Venezuela has a legitimate democratic government the opposition weren't banned they boycotted those elections and as I've already said that represents the continuation of a color revolution strategy after 2013-14 oil prices were going down as I've said this was noted by Washington sanctions imposed from 2015 meant oil production simultaneously went down oil is 50% of Venezuela's GDP at the same time opposition parties as I've already said funded to the tune of 5 million dollars a year began to understand that they couldn't actually defeat the socialist party in free open democratic elections therefore the best strategy available to them was bring into question the entire legitimacy of the regime tell us about the outrage now sparked by this so-called election Shannon some horrible scenes on the street there in Caracas including perhaps the first improvised explosive device that wounded a number of police officers who were on motorcycles part of the outrage is a lot of people felt in Venezuela this wasn't an election at all you couldn't choose to vote no you could only choose from among candidates that the government had picked for you this with the sanctions it was hoped would mean a soft coup in Caracas the only problem with that strategy is that whatever you think of Maduro's popularity in Venezuela the popularity of the opposition parties is even lower if you question the political intelligence of people operating at the highest levels of the Venezuelan government and I don't well guess what the opposition are even worse which is why recent events with Guaido represent really a final throw of the dice we've even now got to the stage where the likes of John Bolton openly admit that the reasons for getting rid of the government in Caracas is about oil and it's about the interests of profit seeking American multinational companies is so if you think of a company like SICO which is owned by Patevesa which is the state-run oil company there in Venezuela we have a lot of those SICO assets right here in the U.S. is that something for example sir that you're looking at? Yeah look we're in conversation with major American companies now that are either in Venezuela or in the case of SICO here in the United States I think we're trying to get to the same end result here you know Venezuela is one of the three countries I call the troika of tyranny it'll make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela it'd be good for the people of Venezuela it'd be good for the people of the United States we both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way now that's the U.S. they fund opposition parties John Bolton talks about you know American oil companies going in there but what about the Europeans? Now I have to admit this has surprised me more than anything perhaps in this whole sorry episode as you can see recent comments by the Prime Minister of Spain are quite clear in denigrating the Maduro government but one has to ask a question here who is the Spanish Prime Minister to question the democratic legitimacy of the Venezuelan government given events going on in Catalonia given the fact that you have a region which has voted in a referendum yes it wasn't nationally binding because the national government denied them that for independence there is then arrest warrants sent out for politicians now in exile you have hundreds of people being arrested and injured in protests for Catalan independence who the hell is Pedro Sanchez and the Spanish political establishment more generally to say that the Venezuelan government is illegitimate you can't even recognize the right to self-determination in one of your own regions maybe before telling other countries what they can and can't do in their democratic process guess what it's not the 16th century anymore and you aren't conquistadors you could solve problems in your own backyard because before talking to Venezuelans about them being denied democracy talk to Catalan's and then there's Emmanuel Macron the most unpopular president in modern French political history at the same time as he was flying over to Egypt to speak alongside President El Sisi who won 95 percent of the popular vote in the last elections in Egypt he said that goings on in Venezuela were problematic and that the Venezuelan people deserved free and fair elections here's the thing Macron doesn't have to endure a right of recall like the president of Venezuela does if he did, dare I say it there would be sufficient signatures for another set of elections in France he has the lowest popularity ratings ever 21 percent what's more the yellow jackets the gilet jaune have been subject to appalling police brutality and violence you've seen tear gas dropped from helicopters on French protesters people have lost eyes people have been really badly hurt incarcerated and these protests have got so bad it's now leading to falls in French GDP so what you're seeing in France is not that different to what you're seeing in Venezuela of course the only difference is they aren't being subject to sanctions by one of the world's largest economies if they were you can absolutely guarantee the economic and constitutional crisis in France would be far bigger than what it is in Venezuela now if this was 20 years ago I would have no doubt that regime change in Venezuela would be coming it already would have happened I don't think it will for several reasons firstly the countries of the global north are wracked by problems of their own these aren't just economic they're also political as I've said there are crises of political legitimacy across the world not just the global south which means these people can't behave like it's the 19th century anymore secondly the Maduro regime the Bolivarian revolution is much more sturdy in Venezuela than foreign observers estimate and if there was to be regime change it would I think inevitably descend into civil war my suspicion is there are enough intelligent people on both sides to ensure that doesn't happen but what you can do whether you're American, British, French, German is speak out and speak to your domestic political class you need to say to them it is not good enough in fact it's shameful for you to be getting behind warmongers like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump Nicolas Maduro is the legitimate president of Venezuela and there is no political solution to this which looks like CIA-backed regime change