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By James Petras
To understand the opportunities and constraints which the government faces, it is essential to outline not only the positive strengths of the government but the complex and difficult structural features of ‘transiting’ in an essentially ‘rentier economy and society’ based on extractive enclaves, essentially a petrol economy. The socialist project faces an external environment with contradictory features, which include a highly globalized economy offering trade and investment opportunities and expanding economic partnerships via regional and global organizations ( OPEC, MERCOSUR, UNASUR, PETROCARIBE, ALBA) and political and military threats from its proximity to the North American imperial heartland.
While the institutional foundations and foreign policy initiatives of President Chavez have created a veritable ‘fire wall’ against any direct or proxy US or NATO military intervention – at least in the present conjuncture – similar to what has taken place in Iraq, Libya and Syria, the internal , especially socio-economic and political structures, are more problematical. And for that reason, Washington has refocused and is concentrating on exploiting the structural and political vulnerabilities of the Chavez regime to question and subvert his mandate. This ‘readjustment’ in US imperial strategy ‘toward the inside’ calls for an equally “strategic turn” for the Chavez government: to concentrate on consolidating changes realized and to move toward forms of socialist organization and practice.