And it may be even more telling about the change in global role of the United States. But Venezuela has proved remarkably resistant to the fail-safe mechanisms that usually break the fall of a middle-income country. In the logic of the Castro regime, international pariah status is always preferable to domestic political concessions. Still, Venezuela also tells a story of the eclipse of American leadership. There were no serious economic sanctions, even when Venezuelan generals took to shipping planeloads of cocaine to the United States.

Source: Washington Post April 17, 2017 00:25 UTC