Obama Needs to Step Up the Pressure on Venezuela

In yet another stunning anti-democratic maneuver, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has managed to have any recall referendum effectively delayed until next year. In response, President Barack Obama needs to revisit U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere’s most dysfunctional nation. Until even a few years ago, some U.S. “strategic patience” toward Venezuela made sense. High oil prices cushioned the country with the world’s largest reserves from its increasingly harebrained economic policies, and from outside pressure over its political repression, high-level collusion with narco-trafficking, and other bad behavior. And the reflexive anti-Americanism of Chavismo -- the idiosyncratic ideology championed by the late Hugo Chavez -- had sympathizers in influential neighbors such as Argentina and Brazil. More…