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Robert Robb, The Arizona Republic Opinion Published 6:00 a.m. ET Aug. 11, 2017 | Updated 7:55 a.m. ET Aug. 11, 2017

In Caracas, Venezuela(Photo: Ronaldo Schemidt)

Venezuela offers an excellent illustration of how the U.S. compulsion tointervene in all the worlds trouble spotsoften strategically backfires.

The country is providing a timely lesson about how socialism wrecks an economy and how true socialism has a tendency to suffocate democracy as well.

These truths were masked during Hugo Chvezs time by sky-high oil prices. The state-owned oil company Petrleos de Venezuela or PDVSA spun off sufficient revenue to pay for his domestic infrastructure and welfare programs.

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But politicization of PDVSAs management has resulted in a sharp reduction in oil production. And the deep drop in oil prices has robbed his successor, Nicols Maduro, of the lucre to maintain the mask.

Under Maduro, the state has taken over increasing portions of the economy. Today, the army has become the nations grocer.

The country has suffered hyperinflation, currently estimated at 700%annually, for several years now.

The government has racked up sovereign debt it cannot repay. A default is imminent.

The people of Venezuela have clearly had enough. An opposition Congress was elected. But a regime-controlled court emasculated it. Maduroorchestrated a facade of an electionfor a Constituent Assembly to usurp it. The Constituent Assembly is looking like the worst of the French Revolution, without the beheadings.

But there are jailings and shootings of political opponents. The Constituent Assembly dutifully voted to sack the countrys attorney general, a devoutchavistawho couldnt stomach Maduros debauching of the countrys democratic processes. She escaped a hostile cordon on the back of a motorbike.

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The claim by Maduro and the security forces of thechavistaregime is that all the countrys woes are the result of sabotage by the United States.

That, of course, is preposterous. Yet the United States keeps doing things that give the claim some semblance of credibility.

In 2014, Congress passed a bill permitting sanctions to be imposed, supposedly in defense of Venezuelan human rights and civil society. In 2015, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on a handful of government officials. Their U.S. assets, to the extent they had any, were frozen. They were forbidden from traveling to the United States, and U.S. persons were forbidden to do business with them.

The Trump administrationextended the sanctionsto another handful, including Maduro himself.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has muttered about the desirability of regime change, which plays directly into Maduros domestic playbook.

And, in the usual neoconservative circles, there are calls for the U.S. to do even more to put pressure on the Maduro government. The big gun supposedly would be banning PDVSAs oil imports into the United States. The Trump administration is reportedly mulling the big gun.

Roughly 40%of PDVSAs exports are to the United States. While other buyers could probably be found, the disruption would be, it is claimed, a staggering blow that might topple the Maduro government and neuter thechavistasecurity forces that prop it up.

Now, Venezuela isof little direct security interestto the United States. Other than having to endure bombastic speeches by Chvez at the United Nations, the turmoil in Venezuela hasnt significantly affected us. Nor will it.

What happens next in Venezuela is impossible to project. But the notion that the United States can steer events in a productive direction by high-minded pronouncements or carefully calibrated sanctions is hubris.

All we can do for sure is get in the way and blur the lessons for the people of Venezuela and around the world. If the United States tries to punish or topple the Maduro government, then it cannot cleanly be proclaimed that it failed of its own accord. The inability of true socialism to produce economic wellbeing, and the threat it poses to democratic governance, will not be as transparently illustrated.

The United States does have a general strategic interest in the establishment and maintenance of democratic capitalism in Latin America. And the American people have a heart for the suffering of the people of Venezuela.

Individuals can act on that heart bycontributing to relief efforts. The United States government, however, serves best by trying to stay out of the story.

Robert Robb is a columnist for The Arizona Republic, where this piece wasfirst published.

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