The recommendation, evident in the prior article title, continues to make more sense with each passing day.
The U.S. has considerable untapped leverage to employ against Venezuela, not the other way around, as Mr. Chavez aggressively promotes. He clearly and fully understands, embraces and now perfected the concept of "the best defense being a good offense". The Analyst would further accentuate that by prefacing "offense" with "abrasive".
Contrary to what most think, and Mr. Chavez would have others believe, oil is not Mr. Chavez' pillar of strength. Rather, it's his vulnerable soft underbelly, his Achilles heel, shielded by a veneer of bombastic boasting blather. Again, the signature Chavez "abrasive offense" defense. Time has come however, for the U.S. to follow Exxon’s lead and once and for all, show the world the Venezuelan Emperor has no clothes.
That noted U.S. leverage in the form of being Venezuela's primary crude oil customer - for the moment. While the U.S. has yet to wake up and realize its own relative oil relationship strength with Venezuela, it’s been discernibly recognized by Venezuela. As a result, that leverage is rapidly disappearing as Venezuela scrambles to expedite re-direction of those U.S. destined "heavy crude" oil exports to "Commulist China" and other countries such as India too.
All before the U.S. finally awakens to the fact it can promptly flip the “abuse paradigm” with a single stroke of the pen. In fact, dish it out rather than take it. The time then to stand up and address this relentless, obnoxious, provocative bully attitude is now, not never…..and before the window of opportunity disappears.
Therefore, the Analyst’s (time sensitive) recommendation to the U.S. government remains (per the article above):
Call Mr. Chavez’ relentless bluff once and for all, and “Accept” his increasingly provocative challenge, and terminate/ban all Venezuela crude oil imports/contracts - TODAY.
Note: The short term incurred costs/penalties from this action are dwarfed by the long term boost to U.S. national security.
The other compounding piece of Mr. Chavez's latest tantrum is his threat, if not already happening, to nationalize (is expropriation on the horizon?) the milk processing assets of Nestle and Parmalat (are there plans for others?).
Here then is a more encompassing, broader recommendation in response to “Mr. Chavez’” broader inherent foreign asset nationalization challenge:
In addition to terminating all oil import contracts with Venezuela, the U.S., WEAST (U.S. WEst and eAST allies), and their respective private sector companies, might consider promptly ceasing exports of all goods and services to Venezuela, and write off any assets in country as a (very) bad business decision - for the moment.
In other words, mothball all Venezuelan business assets, activities and relationships, until better days arrive, either with or without Mr. Chavez at the helm.
His overt, fundamental message to the U.S. and WEAST is “I don’t like you”. It’s therefore time to stop politely asking “why”, and simply say “OK”, and aggressively move on to greener pastures, like Brazil.
Mr. Chávez highlighted his leadership challenge after his recent Referendum defeat when he called for a year of “Revision, Rectification and Relaunching”.
Fair to say, no one, including the Venezuelan majority that voted no the first time, wants to see an inevitable “Relaunch” of the President for Life campaign, and only he knows what “Revision” and “Rectification” mean. “Rectifying” voters who voted no? Sounds nasty.
Instead, by implementing the two recommendations above in response to “his overt challenge”, and barring a still desired overnight transformation in Mr. Chavez’ attitude and behavior for the better toward the U.S. and WEAST, the U.S. and WEAST have within their grasp the ability to transform Mr. Chavez’s 3 R’s, as the Analyst will refer to them, into more constructive meanings. In fact, a completely different “3R’s” that make good constructive sense to both the Venezuelan people and the international community, and coined by the Analyst as:
(Voluntarily) Resign……. Replace (with a newly, democratically elected, stable/concerned/rational leadership team)…….and Restore (Democracy).
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