Guest Column by Darrell Dunn, Editor, The Weekly Bean.
I was in Venezuela several times in 2007 for an oil-related project, including one visit that
lasted three consecutive months. It was an amazing experience, to say the least. To suggest that
Venezuela was “different” from Canada would be a massive understatement.
Even with the preliminary research I did beforehand—including reviewing travel-risk
assessments from Canadian Foreign Affairs and the CIA (yes, you can simply Google them)—I
was still unprepared for the punch-in-the-mouth culture shock.
I had travelled abroad a fair bit by then and didn’t consider myself a novice. Still, moving into a
country where the concept of the “rule of law” was fundamentally different—rooted in a
Napoleonic legal system—was jarring. My introduction came quickly. Arriving at Caracas
International Airport, I was greeted by men who looked barely out of their teens, dressed in full
military uniform and carrying ready-to-go FN automatic rifles as they patrolled the corridors. It
was an eye-opener. I soon learned there was no restriction on the visible presence of the military
anywhere in the country.
As it happened, I was there while then-President Hugo Chávez was in the process of expelling
American oil companies and nationalizing their assets into Venezuela’s state oil company,
PDVSA. This executive action did little to endear him to the Americans. Still, with the United
States deeply entangled in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, Washington’s response amounted to
little more than outrage, threats, and lawsuits.
Fast-forward nearly twenty years, and it appears the Americans may have decided they want
their assets back. What I find disconcerting about recent U.S. actions is how closely the rhetoric
and justifications echo those used by Nazi Germany in 1938–39. Hard on the heels of Venezuela
are the musings of Herr Trump about “taking” Greenland—language disturbingly similar to that
employed before the annexation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and ultimately Poland.
History reminds us that once Herr Hitler finished absorbing smaller countries, he turned his
attention to a far larger prize: a continental-sized neighbour rich in resources.
Sleep well.
The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or editorial position of The Border Pulse.
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