Over the past 25 years, Venezuela's gone through severe economic and political
turbulence that seen it become a pariah on the international stage.
Starting under its charismatic socialist president, Hugo Chavez, and accelerating
under its current leader, Nicolas Maduro, whose presidency is widely unrecognised,
the country's gone from being one of the richest and most democratic states
in South America to an impoverished, authoritarian and isolated outsider.
However, things suddenly seem to be changing.
Venezuela appears to be regaining International acceptance.
So, just why is the country been accepted back into the international fold.
Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and
here I take an informed look at international relations, conflict, security and statehood.
One of the most interesting aspects of modern international politics is the way in which
countries with considerable natural wealth - such as oil, gas and other minerals - will
often experience worse developmental outcomes, including low economic progress and greater
political instability, than countries that haven't been blessed with as much.
Known as the resource curse, the effect has been widely noted around the world.
A particularly good example is Venezuela.
Despite having the world's largest oil deposits - even more than Saudi Arabia - in recent years it
has economically collapsed and descended into what many have openly called a dictatorship.
This in turn has seen it shunned by much of the West and by many of its neighbours.
And yet, even though the political and economic situation remains dire,
things seem to be changing.
This was highlighted at the start of November 2022, when Venezuela's
leader Nicholas Maduro attended the COP27 environment summits in Egypt.
There he had a short but highly public conversation with French President Macron.
While France had previously refused to recognise Maduro,
in an exceptionally friendly exchange Macron now referred to him as president.
On top of this, there are now signs that other countries may be changing
their position towards Venezuela as well - including the United States.
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela lies in the northern part of South America.
With the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean running
along its North Coast, to its East is Guyana.
Brazil runs along its Southern border and to its west is Colombia.
At around 920,000 square kilometres,
or 350,000 square miles, it's the 32nd largest member of the United Nations.
Its population currently stands at around 29 million.
Venezuela has a long, fascinating and surprisingly complicated history.
With a record of human settlements stretching back thousands of years,
the modern origins of the country began in 1499 when the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci landed
in the area and named it Little Venice after the stilt houses built by the native inhabitants.
By the mid-16th century it had been colonised by Spain,
becoming a part of the Viceroyalty of Peru - the main Spanish imperial territory in South America.
This lasted until the 18th century, when it was incorporated in to a new Viceroyalty of
Granada, alongside present-day Colombia, Panama and Ecuador.
Later it assumed a distinct political identity when it became a captaincy general,
the highest subdivision within the viceroyalty.
Although there was an uprising against Spanish rule at the end of the 18th century,
the movement for independence really gained Pace at the start
of the 19th century with the onset of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe.
Occupied by France, Spain's hold on its Empire weakened and a series of rebellions erupted.
Under the leadership of the revolutionary hero, Simon Bolivar,
the Viceroyalty of Granada would go on to become the Republic of Colombia, in 1821.
Less than a decade later, Venezuela and Ecuador would break away and
become independent states in their own right.
Almost from the start,
Venezuela fell into factionalism and a succession of military dictatorships.
Struggling under poor administration, it became increasingly indebted.
However, everything would change at the start of the 20th century,
when oil was discovered in the west of the country.
Over the decades that followed, Venezuela profited massively from
the worldwide surge in demand for fossil fuels.
By the 1950s Venezuela had emerged as the world's largest petroleum exporter,
including becoming a key supplier to the United States.
This in turn drove economic development in a range of other areas.
On top of this, and in contrast to many of its neighbours, the country had also left
behind its long tradition of military rule and had transitioned to democratic control.
However, serious economic problems emerged in the late 1980s.
As international oil prices fell dramatically between 1981 and 1986,
the country suddenly found itself facing a debt crisis.
As inflation surged and unemployment grew, the country descended into political instability.
In 1989, major riots broke out in the country's capital, Caracas.
This led to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths as security forces opened fire on the protesters.
In 1992, a young left-wing military officer
called Hugo Chavez launched a coup against the government.
While the uprising failed, and Chavez was sent to jail,
he was pardoned just a couple of years later.
Setting up his own political party, the Fifth Republic Movement, in 1998 he
contested and won the country's presidential election, winning 56 percent of the vote.
Once in power, Chavez launched a radical agenda of economic social and political change.
Buoyed by renewed oil price rises, he began increasing public spending on healthcare,
education and launched ambitious public infrastructure projects.
Crucially, as well as nationalising parts of the economy, he began to
insert inexperienced political allies into key sectors, including the country's oil industry.
But while his popularity continued to grow amongst the poor, all this
led to increasing opposition from the country's middle classes and the wealthy.
This came to a head in April 2002, when Chavez was forced from power by a military coup.
However, his supporters quickly mobilised and the uprising soon collapsed.
Within 48 Hours, Chavez was back in power.
Undaunted, he continued with his radical domestic agenda.
At the same time, he became increasingly high profile on the international stage.
Aside from being an outspoken voice for the developing world, he openly criticised the
United States; which he accused of having been behind the attempt to overthrow him.
And as tensions began to grow between Washington and Moscow,
Chavez strengthened his relations with Russia.
However, deeper problems were starting to set in.
Although international oil prices remained high, the country's increasingly poorly run
oil industry was suffering the effects of low investment and poor maintenance.
Production now declined and revenues slowed.
In March 2013, Chavez died after a long illness and was immediately
succeeded by Nicolas Maduro, the vice president.
Firmly committed to following his predecessor's policies, a month
later he narrowly won a special presidential election against the centre-right opponent.
But it was the following year that problems really set in.
Venezuela's growing economic difficulties became a full-blown crisis when global oil
prices again began to drop sharply - falling from almost $110 a barrel
in June 2014 to just $29 a barrel by January 2016.
The effects of this on Venezuela were catastrophic.
As the economy collapsed and standards of living dropped sharply, forcing hundreds
of thousands of people to leave the country in search of work, popular protests erupted.
Attempting to hold on to power, Maduro now clamped down on civil liberties and democratic freedoms.
As well as introducing rule by decree, he also imposed media restrictions.
Most controversially, as protests continued to grow he appeared to
authorise the use of lethal force against demonstrators.
By now, international concern was growing.
Although Venezuela was still one of the largest oil suppliers to the United States,
Washington began to impose sanctions on the Venezuelan regime for its human rights violations.
Likewise, starting November 2017, the European Union also began to
impose targeted sanctions against those involved with the crackdown.
However, the key moment came in May 2018 when Venezuela held new presidential elections.
Following a vote that was widely condemned as being neither free nor fair, Maduro claimed
an overwhelming victory and was sworn into office for a second term on 10 January 2019.
But the result was widely rejected.
As well as the two defeated candidates, the outcome was
also dismissed by the National Assembly, which was then under opposition control.
Instead, it named the President of the Assembly, Juan Guaidó, as the country's interim president.
Meanwhile, international opinion was also deeply divided over the issue.
While many countries - including Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia and South
Africa - accepted Maduro as the president, the West refused to recognise the result.
As well as the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia,
and Japan all chose to recognise Guaido as the interim president.
So too did many South American States, including Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.
Meanwhile, in the face of widespread protests in the country, and with over a million Venezuelans
now having fled the disastrous economic collapse, the matter even came before the Security Council.
But while no action was taken given the divisions amongst the permanent members, many
countries - not least of all the United States - now began openly calling Maduro a dictator.
It's against this backdrop that the meeting between Macron and Maduro is so important.
Having been one of the countries that refused to recognise Maduro,
and having previously accused him of establishing a dictatorship, the French president's decision to
meet so publicly with the Venezuelan leader obviously appears to mark a major change.
But this is far from the only signal that something is changing.
From the European Union, he also met with the Portuguese prime minister at COP27.
But more importantly, Washington is also starting to shift its thinking.
Of course, all this raises the question as to what may have changed.
In truth, the move isn't perhaps as sudden as it may seem.
There has in fact been a steady shift in position over the past year or so.
For example, in January 2021, the EU stopped recognising Guaidó as the interim president.
But the current apparent change of approach seems
in fact to have been driven by two distinct factors.
The first centres on political changes in South America.
The election of Gustavo Petro in neighbouring Colombia has
seen an important thawing of relations.
Indeed, on 1 November,
he became the first Latin American leader to visit Maduro since the 2019 elections.
Likewise, the rise of the political left elsewhere in the region may also have an effect.
The focus of attention now is on Brazil, where recent
elections were won by the left-wing candidate, Luis Inácio Lula de Silva.
Despite having called for fresh elections in Venezuela just a few months ago,
many wonder whether he too will decide to engage with Maduro once in office.
But most importantly, a combination of pragmatism and realism has hit the West.
Hopes that Maduro would quickly be forced from power given the
disastrous economic situation have come to little.
But while this would usually be the reason to maintain a distance from the Venezuelan leader,
wider geopolitical factors have, of course, changed those calculations.
Russia's war against Ukraine, which has closed off energy supplies,
have forced the worldwide hunt for other oil producers.
Venezuela, with the world's largest reserves, simply couldn't be ignored.
In this sense, Maduro, despite the brutal and authoritarian
regime he continues to run, has been lucky.
He's been outshone by a far more dangerous international pariah.
Venezuela's rehabilitation therefore doesn't stem
from having overcome its resource curse by re-establishing democracy.
Instead, it's driven by the fact that the rest of the world still
suffers from the resource curse of being overly reliant on fossil fuels.
But, of course,Venezuela isn't the only pariah state on the international stage.
Here's a selection of videos looking at some of the world's
other difficult and troubled countries.