JohnRawls wrote:It depends on what you think as inferior. If you look at HK as an example, sure, British imperealism did a lot of good on top of some bad overall. But it doesn't mean that Western Imperealism can't be as bad or even worse than Venezuela today. There are pretty horrible examples from the 19th century about this. So it heavily depends on how this Western Imperealism manifests itself. If it manifests itself as a HK model of sorts then you are right but if it manifests as Belgian Congo than fuck it.
Not that i consider Guiado a Western imperialist though. He can be described like that in a very loose sense because he is asking help from outside of the country to combat Maduro.
Congo Free State was an exception and was itself under immense pressure that Belgian government had to take it from their ignorant and negligent king.
If what's reported in Wikipedia was true, Belgian Congo also had significant achievement during their last years.
As for Venezuela, IMHO anyone achieving a certain level in politics will have to compromise a lot, so I won't say Guiado is a purely positive figure. Conversely, it is absurd for us to expect politicians, and
leaders in particular, to be dirt free. To me, it's how much of the end can be achieved that the means can be justified.
The biggest mistake of the West in both Syria and Venezuela was that they allowed the situation to drag on too long -- people lose confidence easily when they suffer failures. Conversely the anti-tyranny forces had greater success in North Africa (even Libya, yes)
JohnRawls wrote:On paper Venezuelan system is that. But just on paper. For example Russia also has a constitution, seperation of power, free speech, rule of law etc. But once again, just on paper. The implementation itself is as important as what you write on the paper. If Venezuela actually did live up to its values that are on paper there then I wouldn't see any problems with it. The problem is that it doesn't.
The implementation is exactly what I mean by "maintain". For various reasons, some ethnic groups seem stronger than the others in the implementation.