Is it less clear whether that violence will ignite a civil war, trigger a coup, or simply drive Venezuela further down the road towards an impoverished failed state and chaos. Two prominent opposition leaders were taken from their homes by intelligence agents last week. “Should such events recur, Venezuela’s political conflict could morph into a low-intensity civil war,” said Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. The army has a track record in Venezuela, with abortive putsches in 1992 and 2002. In the absent of a decisive rupture of war or coup, the present trajectory takes Venezuela deeper into economic crisis, gang violence, institutional collapse and an outward flow of refugees.

Source: The Guardian August 05, 2017 19:52 UTC