Hardship Forecasts for Venezuela (1960-2100)

 

According to Google AI (quote above) the Trump II Administration claims to be running Venezuela now after the Jan 3, 2026 invasion. Geopolitical Alignment with the US, however, is not the only option for the future and may (or may not) be the best option.

In this post, I will focus on what Geopolitical Alignment, if any, would be best for the Venezuela people.** The alignments range from none (RW, TECHE, TECHP, and BAU) to alignment with the World System:

• No Geopolitical Alignments One option, that no longer seems practical, is for Venezuela to be left alone to manage it's own economy. This would involve letting the country take Random Walk (RW), simply focus on Business-as-Usual (BAU) or turning the country into a Neoclassical Economic State focusing on Technical Productivity (TECHP) and Technical Efficiency (TECHE). From the time plot above, none of these options is best. Only TECHP results in a reduction in Hardship (HARD1). In any event, in the Long Twentieth Century, Venezuela has shown little ability to manage their own economy.
• Geopolitical Alignment with Latin America The LAC model shows very little reduction in Hardship (HARD1), probably because the Latin American Region (LAC) has it's own problems managing Hardship.
• Geopolitical Alignment with the US If there is a charitable interpretation of the US Invasion it is to rid Venezuela of incompetent Left-Wing governments (Heather Cox Richardson in the video below argues that what is really going on here is the destruction of the Rules-Based World Order) and align the country permanently with the US. Using the USL20 model (US) as input would result in a large reduction in Hardship (HARD1) but would only last until 2080 when there would be a rebound to increasing Hardship.
• Geopolitical Alignment with the World System After 2080, the best  Geopolitical Alignment would be with the WL20 Model (if Venezuela survives the period of US dominance, which is not likely to be peaceful).

No one knows the future, and the future for Venezuela seems quite uncertain. The Trump II Administration will probably loose interest in the country once all the Oil is extracted (if this is even a practical possibility given the country's political uncertainty and deteriorating infrastructure).

If you are interested in understanding more about the US Invasion of Venezuela, here is an explainer from Heather Cox Richardson:

For more of my posts on Venezuela, see the Blog Roll (here).

Notes

** One Geopolitical Alignment I have not presented in the graphic at the beginning of this post is alignment with China. The uncontrolled, exponential increase in Hardship as a result of alignment with China is so great that all the other options look no better than a Random Walk (RW).

Information about data sources and descriptions of how the State Space models were constructed can be found in the Boiler Plate.

VEL20 Hardship Measurement Model

Three components were extracted from the Hardship Indicators: HARD1 = (Overall Growth), HARD1 = (CPI-LU-GINI) and HARD3 = (POV-FAM.WRK-CPI). Definitions of the indicator codes are given below. 

VEL20 Hardship Indicator Codes

The construction of the HARD index involves sixteen indicators drawn from the World Development Indicators (WDI, see Shefner et. al., 2015).

VEL20 Hardship AIC Statistics

Seven Hardship models were estimate** and the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) statistics are presented above (smaller the better). The best short-term model is a Random Walk (RW). The best Attractor Path model is the World System (WL20).