Venezuela Is on the Verge of a Major Humanitarian Tragedy

A distinguished Venezuelan economist is warning that the Trump administration’s decision to impose an oil export embargo via a military blockade could cause “the first famine in the modern history of the Western Hemisphere.” Francisco Rodríguez, who teaches at the University of Denver and is an analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, is also calculating that a U.S. invasion of his home country could produce as many as 2000 American casualties, “with Venezuelan military and civilian casualties in the tens of thousands.” Whatever Trump’s new regime change war is, one thing it will not be is a cakewalk.

Rodríguez is not a partisan who is distorting the truth to defend Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate government. In fact, his comprehensive work, The Collapse of Venezuela, discloses that in the past he had even advised the opposition to Maduro’s controversial predecessor, Hugo Chavez. But his hard-headed realistic views, backed by academic analysis, are more sad proof that the U.S. mainstream media has largely botched its coverage of Venezuela’s crisis, and is now raising the risk of a replay of America’s catastrophic 2003 invasion of Iraq.

These central truths are being unfortunately concealed by pointless distractions, most recently Trump’s dishonest account of America’s history with Venezuela’s oil industry. (Rodríguez, and others, have handily rebutted Trump’s assertions that Venezuela “stole” America’s oil. What’s more, Chevron, an American company, was still legally exporting Venezuelan oil—at least until Trump imposed the blockade.)

Instead, here’s what’s truly important: During Trump’s first term, Rodríguez explains, the U.S. declared economic war against Venezuela. The pressure did not cause the Maduro government to fall, but it did shove Venezuela into what is by far the greatest economic crisis in Latin America’s history, and arguably the most profound crisis anywhere in the world that was not the result of an actual war.

That crisis raised hunger rates, boosted infant mortality to the second-highest figure in Latin America, and left some 82 percent of the population below the poverty line. Understandably, 8 million people fled, one-quarter of the entire population, which also set a new exodus record in Latin America. Emblematic of the old saying, “You break it, you’ve bought it,” nearly 800,000 Venezuelans ended up in the United States.

Rodríguez warns that the Trump administration’s oil blockade, which is already in effect, will cut the foreign exchange earnings that Venezuela uses to pay for imported food. This in turn will lead to “a very deep recession, worse than what Venezuela experienced between 2016-and 2020,” which already set a global record. He also predicts that the refugee surge, which has paused for now, would crank up anew as the unfolding crisis engulfs the country.

The mainstream U.S. media has almost totally missed the prevailing humanitarian disaster inside Venezuela. In fairness, the Maduro regime rarely allows reporters from outside into the country. But we are in the internet age, and it’s not hard to find alternative sources of information. Here’s one suggestion: Elias Ferrer is in Caracas. He manages an online publication called Guacamaya, which is independent and even publishes in English—on top of which he is fluent in English himself. There are others like him, but we rarely see them in The New York Times, and they never appear on CNN.

There was already a recent near-tragedy in the air on December 12 that one would think would be worthy of massive news coverage, in which a commercial Jet Blue flight came close to colliding on December 12 with an American warplane that had turned off its transponder. Venezuela’s navy is supposedly going to escort oil tankers, raising the risk of a clash that could get out of hand. There’s a Latin American saying: “Don’t take the lid off of a hot cooking pot if you don’t want to get burned.”

Meanwhile, the American media continues to be largely oblivious to the heightening risk of conflict. The Sunday New York Times had only one short article on the rising danger, which it buried on page 11. Not a single Venezuelan was quoted. Back in 2003, when the media was mostly cheerleading for the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the Times and the rest of them were stuffed full of coverage, which at least alerted the public that something big was happening.

Perhaps the mainstream press is faltering along familiar lines: Their traditional inability to take Trump seriously. Indeed, one theory making the rounds is that Donald Trump is bluffing—that he is not really planning to launch attacks against Venezuela but rather is hoping that the threat forces Maduro to self-depose. But the giant U.S. armada in the Caribbean raises the risk of an accident that could start a conflict anyway. Maybe then it will garner some news coverage.