Free Republic

January 21, 2022 With inflation at a record high, millions of its citizens fleeing the country, and a political opposition recognized by most Western democracies as the legitimate government of Venezuela, the regime of Nicolás Maduro seemed to be on the brink of collapse in 2019. But Maduro regime survived, thanks to a number of factors — among them the external support it received from malign state actors such as Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing never wavered in their political support of the Venezuelan regime, or of Maduro himself, including by refusing to recognize the constitutionally mandated interim presidency...

South America is teetering on the edge of an armed conflict. #Venezuela argues that the #Esequibo region of #Guyana was unlawfully taken when the border was established over a century ago.

The Chavista regime of Nicolás Maduro is playing with fire and knows it! US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a stern warning yesterday from Guyana: any aggression against this country or ExxonMobil's operations in the Essequibo will have "serious consequences" for Caracas. In a press conference alongside Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, Rubio didn't mince words: "It would be a very bad day for the Venezuelan regime, a very bad week, and it wouldn't end well." The message is clear: the US will not tolerate the bravado of a declining leftist dictator. Maduro, the tyrant who has plunged Venezuela into...

Tensions between neighbors Venezuela and Guyana have ratcheted up in recent weeks over a long-running territorial dispute. At issue is a 160,000-square-km (62,000-square-mile) border territory around the Esequibo river, which is mostly jungle, and an offshore area where massive discoveries of oil and gas have been made.

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is an exuberant dictator, a lover of military salutes who is being investigated for crimes against humanity, but he’s not reckless enough to invade neighboring Guyana, is he? Would the leader of a country in an ever-deepening economic crisis risk starting Latin America’s first interstate war this century? Well, maybe. For a century and a half, Guyana and Venezuela have quarreled over Essequibo, a stretch of the Amazon that both countries claim. Guyana has long governed the territory, but Venezuela also claims sovereignty over it, citing maps drawn in colonial times. Last year, Maduro expressed...

Apparently all of that “anti-imperialist” rhetoric from Caracas was just a farce for public consumption. As Venezuela’s economy implodes amid skyrocketing inflation and crippling shortages of practically everything, Socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro (shown) has a new plan to prop up his imploding regime: annex two thirds of neighboring Guyana’s territory and almost one third of its population. The area eyed by Maduro’s autocracy is especially noteworthy now that potentially lucrative oil deposits have been discovered offshore. Unsurprisingly, a powerful alliance of the region’s socialist strongmen and their allies has sided with the regime in Venezuela. Talk of war is escalating....