Venezuela: From Coast Guard to President!

Let me tell you what the author thinks about the traffic in Venezuela. I feel like few people write about it.

I have only played Venezuela once while playing Steel 4. Not very famous in history

It is extremely difficult to write about small countries such as Latin America and the Middle East, which are geographically tied to big countries. There are three roads that block the president, and industrialization is a natural or fatal situation. Writing is limited in every way, which makes it difficult to feel comfortable and realistic. 1. The President of Venezuela essentially has three survival routes, and there is no fourth optimal solution 1. Totally radical anti-American, state-owned resources Relying on oil dividends to win over the bottom class and provide welfare, the United States will immediately usher in full-chain sanctions: freezing overseas assets, blocking oil settlements, and restricting equipment imports. Ninety percent of the country's finances depend on crude oil, aging equipment cannot be maintained, foreign exchange is depleted, there are material shortages, hyperinflation, people's livelihood collapses, the opposition resorts to external forces to launch attacks, and the political power is tense for a long time, which means it is slowly being strangled by the economy. 2. Completely rely on the United States and liberalize resource equity European and American capital controls oil field exploration, refining, and export. The state collects meager resource taxes, and prices and industries are manipulated by foreign capital. The welfare of the people at the bottom of the country has shrunk, the rich and the poor are divided, left-wing voters are opposed on a large scale, the general election has been overturned, the streets are turbulent, and the president cannot hold a stable position. 3. China, Russia and the United States strike a balance in the cracks between China, Russia and the United States Oil is exported to China and Russia in exchange for equipment and food, and it makes periodic concessions to the United States to ease sanctions, and can barely survive by relying on blood transfusions from major powers. However, any party can take control of the bargaining chip at any time. If oil prices and the direction of major-country diplomacy change, the country's economy will immediately be shaken. It can only survive passively all year round, with no room for independent development. To achieve solid and complete industrialization is basically a luxury: 1. A single-resource economy is a legacy of historical colonization. Domestic elites are tied to mineral exports, and vested interest groups resist spending money on heavy chemical industry; 2. South America as a whole lacks high-quality coal, and steel and heavy industries are inherently short of raw materials. Plant construction relies entirely on imported equipment and imported energy. 3. Europe and the United States use trade barriers and financial means to suppress local manufacturing. Local industrial products have high costs and no export competitiveness. They will go bankrupt if they cannot sustain subsidies. Latin America has repeatedly failed in industrialization for half a century. This is a common problem. 2. The same goes for Mexico, Iraq, and Cuba. Writing about small countries is inherently difficult 1. Mexico: It is close to the United States. The manufacturing and agriculture in the north are all tied up in the American industrial chain. High-end industries cannot be retained. Local industries are squeezed by cheap American goods. Radical reforms will lead to economic retaliation from the United States. Compromise will reduce it to a supplier of raw materials and cheap labor. It is a dilemma. 2. Iraq (the homeland of ancient Babylon): It is rich in oil and is located in the center of four wars in the Middle East. There are constant geopolitical conflicts in the surrounding areas. Big powers from outside the region have taken turns to intervene. Regimes have changed frequently. No matter how many resources there are, it cannot save industrial households. Stable development depends on the faces of big powers outside the region. 3. Cuba: It relies on a universal system of universal benefits and high cohesion to withstand the blockade. However, due to its small territory and limited resources, it can only prioritize medical care and education. Large-scale industrialization is restricted by land, resources, and sanctions, and the upper limit is visible to the naked eye. 3. Why do readers tend to feel awkward and feel numb when reading this kind of online articles? The mainstream routine of online articles is that the protagonist travels through time to quickly industrialize, rises as a powerful country in just a few years, and toughens the top powers. However, in reality, there are layers of shackles such as geography, resources, and extraterritorial interference. - Realistic writing: No matter how smart the protagonist is, he cannot escape from the resource curse and the great power game. He can only slowly improve and survive through cracks. There is no exciting point of sweeping the rise, so readers will not like to read it; - Cool writing: Ignoring U. S. Sanctions, resource shortcomings, and domestic class resistance, exploding industry out of thin air, and easily hardening the United States, it seriously violates geographical common sense. Old readers will feel that it is suspended at a glance. This is the core of why it is difficult to write about this kind of national themes: the ceiling of reality locks the upper limit of development, the logic of cool writing naturally conflicts with the laws of reality, it does not attract traffic to the left, and violates historical facts to the right. Summary As a small and medium-sized resource country backed by the influence of a big power, the national destiny is determined by geography and colonial history. All the decisions of the president are trade-offs, and there is no perfect answer. The author must either forcefully change his intelligence and change the realistic logic to write a good article, or realistically slow-paced and unpopular, and he is in a dilemma.

Let's break down the two completely different operations of the United States against Cuba and Venezuela: 1. First, let's talk about the core logic: In ancient times, far-reaching diplomacy and short-term attack were to destroy the country and seize land. In modern times, the United States in turn adopts "near diplomacy and distant attack" Warring States Period: Fighting neighboring countries and forming distant alliances with the aim of annexing territories; The logic of modern American hegemony has changed to close relations and far attacking: the Latin America around us is trying to win over and stabilize the nearby, while the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Far East thousands of miles away are provoking troubles and using force: 1. Try to have good relations with those nearby (Caribbean, Central America) and avoid war: the land/offshore sea are connected. Once the war breaks down, a large number of refugees will flow directly into the southern United States (Florida, Texas) by boat and land, squeezing out employment, welfare, and public security, and directly affecting the votes of the United States. With internal affairs, the price cannot be afforded; 2. Distant countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran) let go of suppression and intervene with force: refugees are separated by oceans and land barriers in many countries, and it is difficult for them to drift to the United States in large numbers. The cost of war spillover is extremely low, and after the war is over, they can still control energy and geographical arteries. 2. Cuba: Close to Florida, it perfectly hits the "no fighting close by" and can only block the war Cuba is only more than 140 kilometers away from the mainland of the United States, across the Strait of Florida, and is a real doorstep: 1. Refugee shackles: Once the US military fully invades, the domestic war will give birth to millions of refugees, who will flood into Florida in a short period of time. Florida is a key swing state in the election. Millions of Cubans have settled here. The refugee flow will completely disrupt local people's livelihood. The president will directly lose key votes, and politicians will never dare to gamble; 2. Historical constraints: The Cuban Missile Crisis US-Soviet Agreement, the United States promised in writing not to invade Cuba with force. The use of force is tantamount to violating a key Cold War treaty and burdening international moral infamy; 3. Low cost-effectiveness of resources: Cuba does not have a huge amount of oil, and it sends troops and occupation to invest huge military expenditures but no resource returns, which is a pure loss-making transaction. That's why the United States has only engaged in economic blockade and sanctions for more than 60 years, and has never started war on the ground. 3. Venezuela: It is geographically separated from the Caribbean Sea and not directly adjacent to it. It falls within the range of the United States that can be suppressed from a distance. It is a special case of close relations and long-distance attacks 1. The key to refugee diversion: 80% of the 7 million outflow refugees from Venezuela go to neighboring Latin American countries such as Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, and only a small part of the influx into the United States. Many countries in South America have taken the lead in buffering refugees, and entering the United States by land and sea requires crossing multiple border crossings. It is difficult to create a flood of refugees that can overwhelm the southern United States in an instant. The United States is not afraid of the refugees brought by civil strife backlashing the mainland; 2. The temptation of resources is full: the world's top oil reserves, controlling Venezuela is equivalent to controlling South America's energy The United States continues to rely on financial sanctions, support for the opposition, and economic strangulation to severely damage its economy without sending troops; 3. Geographical distance buffer: separated by Caribbean island countries and Colombia, the war will not spread to the U. S. Coastline in an instant, and the local risk of armed intervention is much smaller than Cuba. 4. Comparison: Why Venezuela's living environment is not as good as Cuba's 1. Cuba relies on the high cohesion of the people and the complete local industry and medical system. The blockade has not completely collapsed after decades, and the people will not flee on a large scale; 2. Venezuela's economy is highly unitary, with 90% of the finance tied to oil. After the nationalization of oil, foreign investment has withdrawn + year-round sanctions, inflation has collapsed, and materials are scarce. It can only swing between being pro-American and anti-American: being pro-American will be abandoned by the bottom voters, and being anti-American will be hit by sanctions. Small countries have no choice but to survive in the cracks. 5. Falling to the level of online writing Many authors write about Venezuela easily and easily write about it. They ignore the geographical location of refugees + resource binding + the US strategy of near-distance and long-distance attack. They either write one-sidedly as a simple dictatorship seeking death, or blame the whole story on US suppression. They lack the realistic details of the dilemma of a small country in the US backyard, which makes it awkward and numb.

The old Latin American saying "Too far from God, too close to the United States" accurately exposes the root of Venezuela's predicament 1. Geographically locked ceiling, naturally the traditional backyard of the United States Venezuela is stuck on the southern coast of the Caribbean, close to the Panama Canal route. The U. S. Southern Command has designated the Caribbean as its core circle of influence all year round. In the American geological logic of the past century, this region cannot tolerate a regime that is completely separated from the control of the United States. It has the world's largest proven oil reserves, but in its early years its refining system and crude oil sales were highly tied to the U. S. Gulf of Mexico refinery. The resource lifeline was inherently tight, and there was naturally no room for complete independence. Being tough and anti-American will mean facing all-round financial sanctions, freezing overseas assets, and cutting off oil settlements; over-compromise, most of the country's oil profits will be divided up by American capital, and domestic people's livelihood and votes will not be able to hold back, and both ends will be dead ends. 2. There is no perfect choice for the president of a small country. Toughness and softness are all a torment of trade-offs - Toughness across the board (Chavez line): Anti-Americanism and nationalization of oil can win over local people and regain resource sovereignty, but it will immediately result in long-term sanctions, the withdrawal of foreign investment, and the collapse of the industrial chain. The country's industry is inherently single, with 90% of its finances relying on oil. A drop in oil prices will lead to a collapse in inflation, material shortages, and a massive flight of people. The outflow of more than 7 million refugees is the price. - Comprehensive compromise and pro-U. S.: Liberalizing oil and gas access, obeying U. S. Economic and trade rules, sanctions can be lifted in the short term, and foreign investment can enter the market. However, local oil profits are harvested by European and American giants, national welfare shrinks, left-wing voters and the people at the bottom are fiercely opposed, and the foundation of the regime is unstable. In reality, most of them can only swing through the cracks: phased easing in exchange for the easing of sanctions and the import of food and medicine; occasionally taking a tough stance to stabilize the domestic fundamentals. This is also the reason why Venezuela's policies have repeatedly jumped in recent years. 3. The author writes that Venezuela tends to make people uncomfortable, precisely because the public's cognitive blind spots are too heavy Most readers have only heard of its collapse of inflation and the hardship of people's livelihood, and do not understand the threefold contradictions of a single oil economy, geopolitical shackles, and external sanctions left over from centuries of colonization. It is either one-sidedly labeled as a "failed country with a policy that kills people", or one-sidedly simplified as "all suppressed by the United States." The two extreme narratives lack an objective perspective in the middle. It is easy to write online articles that are suspended and distorted, so you will feel numb when reading them. 4. The truth about the survival of small countries: The optimal solution is never to rise and dominate, but to survive steadily Venezuela is inherently limited in terms of size, geography, and resource structure. It is difficult for Venezuela to break out of the American geopolitical framework and achieve leapfrog development. The pragmatic route is to rely on the diversified foreign trade between China, Russia and Brazil to disperse dependence on the United States, slowly divest from the single oil economy, gradually transform the industry, and slowly reduce the degree of strangulation. No matter how radical it is in a short time, it will not be able to break through the geopolitical, energy, and financial constraints of the United States. A brief summary: Sitting on a mountain of gold but trapped in a cage in the backyard, resources are both a gift and a curse. This is Venezuela's unavoidable fate for decades.