Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

According to various media reports, the U.S. is considering launching airstrikes against Venezuela,

after a series of raids on alleged drug smugglers, and hints from the Trump administration that regime change is needed.

Now, whatever immediate warrants there are for an attack, the crisis in Venezuela has been growing

for decades now. According to a 60 Minutes report last week, and I quote,

freedom isn't the only thing in short supply in Venezuela. Hunger, chronic blackout,

scarcity of essential medicines, all plague Venezuela.

Today, more than 70% of residents live in poverty, a stunning reversal of fortune for a nation that

was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world, end quote. The reason it was so wealthy is that

Venezuela sits on the world's largest oil reserves with an estimated

302 billion barrels. As a comparison, that's 10% more than Saudi Arabia and significantly more

than the capacity of the U.S., which is about 43 billion barrels. In other words, Venezuela should be

swimming in wealth as it was not that long ago. Today, it's on the edge of

economic collapse. Now, at least part of the problem is that Venezuela has become a petro state,

a nation with so much profit-making petroleum, they felt little need to diversify their economy,

and instead became dependent just on oil. Petro-states are highly susceptible to market swings

and disruptions in the supply chain.

Even more importantly, the governments of petro states tend to ignore their citizens. In 1999,

after time in jail for a failed military coup, Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela.

He promised liberation, earned the praise of left-leaning people in Hollywood and elsewhere.

But the rhetoric never lined up with the reality.

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