A nation must think before it acts.
Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, and thus the Venezuelan state, is in default. Normally default triggers a crisis for the defaulting government that must undergo major reform and for its creditors who must rearrange payments of their debts. But Venezuela’s default represents a major crisis for Latin American and potentially for the U.S. as well.
Argentina’s President Macri has already urged Washington to ban all Venezuelan oil exports to bring that government to its knees because he recognizes the continental dimensions of Venezuela’s crisis. That dimension is expressed in Moscow’s long-standing and continuing efforts to use Venezuela as a base for subversion of Latin American governments form Mexico to Argentina.
Moscow has long sought to ensconce itself in key Venezuelan energy sectors and provide loans and weapons to the regimes of Hugo Chavez and then Nicolás Maduro so they could use this assistance to destabilize the entire continent.