A major economic crisis is unfolding in the United States' backyard as Venezuela's recession stretches into its third year. The South American nation is now in dire straits. The country's oil sector shrank by nearly 13 percent as a share of gross domestic product in 2016 alone, and its immediate future looks grim. The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, meanwhile, is more concerned with staying in power than it is with addressing the catastrophic problems facing its people. Day by day, the country seems to lurch from one milestone of misery to another while foreign analysts struggle to keep up.
Yet the United States probably won't take direct action anytime soon to alleviate the suffering of the Venezuelan population. When viewed through the wider lens of geopolitics, the crisis that appears so singularly urgent in everyday life recedes to the margins of global affairs. Furthermore, pushing President Nicolas Maduro's administration...
