Venezuela Needs Solutions, Not Grandstanding
Outsiders who want to help should focus on the facts on the ground, not their political agendas.
Venezuela has once again caught his attention.
Photographer: Ethan Miller/Getty Images North AmericaVenezuela’s travails have become a cause célèbre. For a land inured to international indifference or fly-by celebrities, the sudden wash of attention is odd but welcome. Where else might you see rival camps weaponizing aid meant for the sick and desperate to the tune of dueling concerts planned on opposite sides of the Venezuela-Colombian borders? What’s less clear is how the Western hemisphere’s worst humanitarian disaster in memory will play out once the music stops.
A good deal of the recent commotion over Venezuela has to do with the exhortations of a top partisan barker with an agenda of his own. U.S. President Donald Trump made Venezuela’s crisis the centerpiece of a lengthy speech Monday to Venezuelan exiles in Florida. For a man who for decades saw that country mainly as a stable of beauty pageant contenders, the sudden compassion seemed passing strange -- or worse.