World News

Europe Recognizes Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's Interim President

Editor Jessie Starcher

Recently, many major European nations have recognized Juan Guido as interim president until reelections can be held.

Though initially calling for dialogue and without any real stance on the issue, many European nations, including the UK, Germany, France, and Spain have decided to recognize Guido. This is mainly due to Nicolas Maduro’s failure to hold another election on the EU’s deadline of Sunday.

This is just another crisis within the ever growing Venezuelan Crisis. The Venezuelan Crisis was started by Hugo Chávez, and has continued into Maduro’s presidency. It has been surrounded with mass hunger, emigration, crime, and disease. In fact, well over two million Venezuelans have left their country to live abroad. Ninety percent of the nation lives below the poverty line and just over half cannot make enough income to meet their food needs. This, combined with what many in Venezuela believe to be corruption by Maduro’s government, has lead to the presidential crisis in the country.

In what Maduro calls a “coup” by the United States, the Presidential Crisis began when Maduro’s victory in his reelection was considered invalid. This led to the declaration of Juan Guaidó by the opposition party as interim president. Since then, over fifty nations have recognized him, including the US, most of South America, and now Europe.

However he is not supported by all, and these include China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey. In fact, only recently, Moscow has sent four-hundred military contractors to Venezuela, to defend Maduro’s reign. This shear show of force, many believe, is due to fact that Russia has invested very much into Venezuela, over thirty billion in fact. Russian involvement in the area has been extensive with both Russian oil mining and cyber warfare operations being built in the nation. Russia has even made over eleven billion dollars in weapons sales to the nation. Essentially, if Venezuela, more specifically, the Pro-Moscow government there, falls, then Russia would lose not only a major cash source, but also its most important foothold in the Western Hemisphere.

As of now, both the Venezuelan crisis and presidential crisis have shown no sign of stopping any time soon, as Maduro has shown no sign of budging, with Russia and China on his side. Overall it seems outside intervention has only further complicated things.

In fact, US intervention in the region has actually only helped to further hurt the people of Venezuela. Just days ago, President Trump has imposed more oil sanctions on Venezuela, which has even further strained the people’s plight in the nation. With both Russia and the US showing force in the region, both Maduro and Guiado have slowly become pawns in a much bigger game between the two powers.