Seeker Blog

Chavez’ policies will work as well for Venezuela as Robert Mugabe’s policies worked for Zimbabwe. The Venezuelan people are falling further and further behind their global competitors. How much longer before the people eject this thug?

How long will it take for the Vietnamese people to get even with their contemporaries who had the advantage of economic freedom? Remember that Vietnam lost 50 years in the global competitiveness race — during which time the South Koreans went from poor to rich.

In 1981, Argentine inflation topped 130%, and by the early months of 1982 the situation was rapidly deteriorating. A web of price controls designed to compensate for monetary mischief at the central bank only made things worse. Confidence had collapsed and civil unrest was growing.

The military government’s decision to lay claim to Britain’s South Georgia Island on March 19, 1982, and later the Falklands, was dictator Leopoldo Galtieri’s last-ditch effort to boost the nation’s sense of strength, and to distract it from the reality that it was caught in an economic maelstrom.

Fast forward to 2008 and Venezuela, where the parallels cannot be ignored. The military government of President Hugo Chávez is engaging in provocations against a foreign power that would seem to have little purpose other than getting news of the crumbling economy off the front pages and ginning up nationalism.

In a speech before the national assembly last month, Mr. Chávez dropped a bombshell, proclaiming that Venezuela now recognizes the Colombian rebel group known as the FARC as a legitimate political actor. He went on to ask that European and South American governments remove the group from their terrorist lists. A day earlier his special envoy for FARC relations went public with his own fondness for the Colombian rebels, and with the news that the Venezuelan government stands ready to help them.

This was more than Mr. Chávez playing footsie with the FARC, which he has long been doing. This was a statement of official support for a band of outlaws who seek the destruction of the Colombian democracy. The news shook both nations. It suggested that Colombia is not only at war with the rebels, but also with a neighboring state.

…Hubris aside, Mr. Chávez had to know that his defense of the FARC was a long shot. But desperate times call for desperate measures. As the deterioration of the Venezuelan economy accelerates, Mr. Chávez is fast becoming a desperado with no better idea of how to get out of his jam than did Galtieri.

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