Imposing Misery, Jailing Dissidents: Venezuela Repeats Standard Socialist Patterns

In February 2014, a article in The Michigan Daily carried the headline, ‘Venezuelan opposition head waits to hear about charges.’ This was merely episode in a long protracted struggle between Venezuela's socialist dictatorship and its freedom-oriented dissidents.

The story, from an AP wire item, explained that an opposition leader was being ‘held at a military jail’ for his opposition to ‘15 years of socialist rule.’

This particular leader was named Leopoldo Lopez, and the dictator who put him in jail was Nicolas Maduro, but the general pattern of a liberty-seeking dissident being jailed by a socialist dictator has been the pattern for several decades in Venezuela.

The net impact of socialism in Venezuela follows a standard pattern which was clear in the various Soviet-bloc countries until 1990. The planned economy with high taxes and extreme regulation of all aspects of business, along with state ownership of almost all assets, leads to declining standards of living and brutal repression of civil rights and human rights.

These symptoms lingered and intensified both during the decade of rule by dictator Hugo Chavez, and during the reign of his successor, Nicolas Maduro.

The declining standards of living led to outright poverty, with shortages in basic goods, like food and toilet paper. Medical care deteriorated, and the average lifespan among Venezuela citizens’s shortened considerably.

By 2018, the condition of the nation was desperate, with many citizens near starvation. These sad developments were, however, reliably predictable twenty years earlier: such is the pattern of socialist governments.

Toward a New Global Balance of Power: China and Russia Pose Threats to Small Independent Nations

The world’s geopolitical equilibrium during the first two decades of the twenty-first century was shaped by several factors. Russia discovered or invented its post-Soviet identity. China relapsed into autocracy after its flirtation with a less personality-driven power structures. Condoleezza Rice’s firm hand on Putin was replaced by Hillary Clinton’s and John Kerry’s ambiguous and indecisive approach to Russia. The world in general moved away from its now irrelevant Cold War configurations and wondered how to respond to Islamic terrorism.

By 2018, it had become clear that the new, post-Soviet Russia was not a clear friend or ally to Europe, to NATO, or to the United States. Robert Maginnis writes:

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin seems immune if not somewhat irritated by Western sanctions over his seizure of Crimea in 2014 and his ongoing misadventure in eastern Ukraine, which some label a civil war. Putin responded to Western sanctions with disinformation campaigns against Western elections, significant saber-rattling along Russia’s Western border with former satellite states, and increased harassment of NATO and US military vessels and aircraft across the world.

Parallel to Putin is China’s leader, Xi Jinping. While Russia had a readymade substantial military establishment leftover from the Cold War, China was still in a phase of military ascendancy. While China had nuclear weapons since 1964, it lacked an army, navy, and air force of global stature.

In the early twenty-first century, China, in contrast to both Russia and the United States, has gone on a diligent and focused building spree, developing world-class capabilities to strike anywhere.

China’s ability to intimidate militarily works in conjunction with its financial and political influence. It has been able to advance toward its goal of controlling shipping in and around the South China Sea, marginalizing the other nation-states in the area - Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, etc. - and having at its mercy a disproportionately large percentage of the world’s shipping.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is an autocrat as well with a great vision for a modern, global armed forces and an economic arm reaching broadly, thus pushing China’s influence abroad seeking to dominate the globe’s democratic regions, a view shared by China experts in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “The Chinese Communist Party is engaged in a total, protracted struggle for regional and global supremacy,” said retired Navy Captain Jim Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence chief who testified in May 2018. “This supremacy is the heart of the ‘China Dream.’ China’s arsenal in this campaign for supremacy includes economic, informational, political and military warfare.” Rick Fisher, a China expert with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, testified that this poses “grave challenges” for American security and warned the US has “about a decade” to take action to counter the threat.

The Chinese Navy’s hold on the South China Sea, as well as the construction, arming, and weaponizing of artificial islands there, is one early step in a larger plan.

Although China and Russia do not have, at this time, an explicit alliance, observers like Robert Maginnis see some form of cooperation as both likely and dangerous. Militarily, Putin could continue bullying eastern Europe, and Xi Jinping would bully the Pacific. Economically, Russia exerts its influence by means of energy supplied to Europe, while China is poised to have even more economic influence than Russia by means of its manufacturing and cyber-technology assets.

A global balance of power dominated by China and Russia would not bode well for smaller nations hoping to retain their sovereignty and enjoy some measure of personal freedom and political liberty. If the United States fails to strengthen itself to the degree at which it represents a credible counterbalance to China and Russia, the notion of a free society governed by freely-elected representatives could become a rare thing on the planet.