Chapotraphouse

Which is why this kind of action is problematic but also the crux of the issue with their situation.

If you have an actual DoTP you have a chance of enduring, of control, of surviving this situation. If you don't have a DoTP... well put it this way the USSR had a DoTP and thanks to rot, nihilism, etc it was still overthrown through "reforms" that transitioned to something more. China as the poster child for this we must remember was in a situation of extreme danger due to corruption and penetration by western intelligence by the 2000s and so on YET they still had a DoTP, they still had a decades old loyal and ideologically disciplined intelligence and military apparatus and people overwhelmingly supportive of the party in a generalized way and they had a party willing to use someone like Xi to purge this corruption and because of the military and intelligence loyalty there was no ability to coup him which is what would have happened if there was any real split in loyalty or a faction captured by the CIA/liberalism.

I don't know what Venezuela should do. People say struggle is pointless but I'm sure the same was said for the people in Korea and Vietnam and on and on. Should we not struggle, just submit to the empire, let it sink tendrils of infection deep into our veins, poison our people, undermine the revolution, hollow it out until by the time they tire we're too weak to resist them anyway and they brush us aside using compradors in our own midst? Or should we do armed struggle even if it's hard, painful, devastating. Is it worth dying for the revolution just to make the US pay, just to deter it from doing the same to others, just for a chance of owning your future entirely?

So I fear the idea of this strategic retreat will end in the 2030s with someone trying to pull back from it and being immediately assassinated or couped by carefully groomed neo-liberal elements within the political, military, intelligence apparatus that the US had years to prepare. At which point the open reaction begins, murder of socialists and instead of the country fighting under the banner of liberation and self determination the revolution and revolutionaries are extinguished with a whimper in their beds.

Because Democrats aren't going to allow them to pull back so this retreat lasts for as long as the US has the ability to exercise power (which unless you're hoping a third world war hits in the early 2030s and devastates the US it's likely to be able to do to Venezuela for decades yet). Instead of stealing so much for the US Democrats once in power are likely to earmark more funds for "building democracy" by funding CIA NGOs in Venezuela and setting the groundwork for a coup or color revolution. And of course as a condition to continue getting these funds they'll insist these CIA tendrils not be interfered with.

I suppose the problem is as mentioned above Venezuela never had a complete revolution. There are still significant reactionary elements, the population writ large is not ideologically educated, the commanding heights are not entirely under the control of the revolution, the military and police are not ideologically loyal to a sufficient degree so one could argue they don't have the ability to resist, that as a peaceful, democratic socialism this is the only road open to them and anything else leads to invasion and most of the country not standing up to fight the Americans but rolling over.

Iran's leader once talked of swallowing poison in a deal with the US and I feel Venezuela has done a similar thing. They didn't have any good choices. Whether this was the least bad choice or not I don't know.

It just makes me question "what of Cuba" given their even more dire position.