The consequential meltdown in Venezuela has manifested itself in the fashion of a gradually unfolding theatrical production…first, brooding then street riots and official crackdowns, debilitating scarcities… and after all of these had changed nothing, a sustained outward procession by Venezuelans to all parts…to Colombia or Guyana or Trinidad and Tobago or Brazil…or wherever the ‘victims’ could find a haven from Trump’s response to Maduro’s ideological brazenness.

Over time, the turning of the screws on Vene-zuela under Maduro has been manifested chiefly in Washington’s sickeningly cumulative pressure, the kind of pressure that causes things to stand still and to atrophy; and it is to that sickening condition that Venezuela’s once colossal petroleum industry has been reduced.

If Trump is showing signs of impatience in Washington’s quest to send Maduro packing the question arises as to whether the US is prepared to push even harder and bring more of Venezuela’s friends, whom Washington would regard not just as unsavory, but unwelcome in its ‘backyard, rushing to Maduro’s rescue.

It doesn’t help, too, that the Bolsonaro government in Brazil appears to have decided that it will back Trump’s unrelenting push to unseat Maduro…so that the Brazilian government not only sent the entire Venezuelan diplomatic retinue in Brasilia packing earlier this year but also bowed to Trump’s wish that Brazil give notice to international shipping companies that once they do business with Venezuela’s oil industry their ships will not be welcome in that country’s waters.

Since the beginning of 2019 Washington and Caracas have shared no diplomatic relations though the Trump administration’s strategic think-tank are sufficiently shrewd not to have the US President cut ties entirely with oil-rich Venezuela, sustaining those through Washington’s links with Juan Guaido, the Leader of the Venezuelan opposition and the man who would be king.

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