General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I just cracked the DU analysis code [View all]Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)They follow whatever line Russia takes.
Pretty sure this is a coincidence. The real basis is that they think they're standing up for the "Global South". Mostly that diaphanous concept encompasses countries that are, to one degree or another, commodity exporters and therefore held back by the old resource curse.
It just so happens that Russia shares this trait with those countries and therefore shares their interests. That these poor countries can only advance by shedding the resource curse and getting economies that do more than ship raw materials and energy to the industrialized world never actually penetrates the bubble these folks live in, even though there is one outstanding example of how to do it correctly smack in the middle of Latin America: Brazil.
Of course Brazil has problems too, but it works them out. Maduro does actually realize this to some extent, as he correctly, in a speech of his, id'd his 1% as a bunch of rentiers, whereas what Venezuela needs are real entrepreneurs. But to get to where he has some of the latter he would need to first rein in the galloping corruption his country swims in, which of course is a direct consequence of the resource curse. It's hard, but everything in life is hard. Patronization by first world radicals won't get him where he wants to be. Patronization is easy. Getting rid of corruption is the hard work that has to be done, there and elsewhere in Latin America, and of course in Russia as well, which is a real poster boy for how the resource curse works. The head of Gazprom, their energy giant, sold all his shares in that company right before Russia went into Crimea. That defines a country ruled by its rentiers.