![Nicolas Maduro [image via hugpshi/Wikimedia Commons]](https://staticr1.blastingcdn.com/media/photogallery/2017/9/27/660x290/b_502x220x82/nicolas-maduro-image-courtesy-of-hugpshi-wikimedia-commons_1596699.jpg "Nicolas Maduro [image via hugpshi/Wikimedia Commons]")
When Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro called on his country’s military to prepare for war against the United States, he was pulling a classic ploy that tyrants employ to try to distract his people from the effects of his misrule. There is almost zero chance that the United States Marines are going to land at Caracas to overthrow Maduro and his socialist horror. The United States does not, as a rule, knock over a foreign government just because it is oppressing and starving its own people. War only becomes a possibility if a country becomes a military threat, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un would be secure until the end of time if he would just dismantle his nuclear arsenal and stop threatening everyone.
Venezuela is the end stage of socialism
It has been said before but bears mentioning again. Venezuela is the end stage of socialism, much like North Korea is. Desperately starving people are breaking into zoos to kill and butcher wild animals for dinner. Maduro’s government is actually advising its people to trap rabbits to supplement their diets, Shortages of everything from toilet paper to medicine exist in the formally prosperous country.
What to do about a problem like Maduro?
American options for dealing with the Venezuelan mess are limited. Landing Marines would be too much like Yankee intervention in Latin American affairs that took place in the early 20th Century. A coalition of Organization of American States might be useful if countries like Colombia and Brazil had the stomach for paying the price that the liberation of Venezuela would entail.
Russia, as Hot Air notes, is now supporting Maduro, complicating a military option.
One way the United States might troll Maduro would be to send transport planes, escorted by fighter jets, and airdrop parcels of food and medicine in various parts of Venezuela. The gesture would be little more than symbolic since the country has 31 million people.
However, the propaganda value of having boxes of food and medicine, with the American flag on them, floating down to eager crowds of Venezuelans would be invaluable. At the very least, even die-hard Maduro supporters will wonder why the imperialist Yankees are trying to help them when their own government seems to be indifferent.
Sadly, absent an enterprising general getting a whiff of patriotism and putting a bullet in Maduro’s head, not much hope exists for the long-suffering people of Venezuela. The country serves as a warning against the socialism temptation. This is what from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs look like.
