Embattled nation

Unlike our Cuba policy, America should chart a reasonable course toward Venezuela.

Despite sitting atop the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela has dire shortages of food and medicine; its currency is virtually worthless; its inflation rate is expected to hit 1,660 percent this year, and the country is wracked by political violence.

More than 60 people have died in recent months in violent clashes with police and military troops sent out by President Nicolás Maduro to quell daily protests against his authoritarian Socialist Partyled government.

Unless something changes, it is feared things in Venezuela will worsen, with serious national, regional and international ramifications, including for Houston due to our long history of oil ties with the country.

Venezuela got into this mess because Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez spent too freely when oil prices were high, saddled the country with big debts when they fell and compounded the problem by nationalizing much of the economy.

Now Maduro is trying to keep the Socialist Party and his amigos — some of them suspected of involvement in drug trafficking — in power and to keep up payments on Venezuela’s international debt, which last year cost $10 billion.

The latter has forced dramatic cuts in imports, which is why food and medicine are scarce, but Maduro apparently views the consequences of debt default as politically fatal. He has refused offers of international aid.

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski this week bluntly summed up the dangers in Venezuela by saying that if nothing is done there “we are going to end up with a sea full of blood.”

He said Latin America must take the lead in ending Venezuela’s conflict and the dangers it presents, including intensifying civil strife and the possibility of refugees flooding into neighboring countries.

Kuczynski is right. He and other leaders in the region should urgently pursue Latin American-led talks between Maduro and his opponents. A similar effort, in which Venezuela was a key participant, negotiated an end last year to Colombia’s long war with leftist rebels.

China also could play a big peacemaking role because of its powerful economic ties to Venezuela, but so far no known Chinese effort has surfaced.

In accords signed under Chávez, China gets oil and access to the Venezuelan market while Venezuela gets loans — about $60 billion so far, including $2.7 billion as recently as February.

There is room for U.S. involvement in whatever efforts to establish peace or at least stability may develop, but we hope President Donald Trump’s advisers on Latin America are encouraging him to keep a low profile. U.S.-Venezuela relations have long been prickly and his oftentimes bombastic rhetoric can only make things worse.

We got a preview of how quickly things can sour when Trump last month called Venezuela’s current state “a disgrace to humanity.” In a televised address, an angry Maduro told Trump to “get your pig hands out of here!”

If Maduro will come to the table with the U.S., we would encourage the Trump administration to chart a reasonable course for U.S. policy toward Venezuela, not one that locks us into a failure like our 55-year-old trade embargo against Cuba.

Responding to a large population of wealthy Venezuelans now living in south Florida, Cuban-American political leaders such as U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio are staking out hard-line positions with Venezuela and justifying them with the same overheated rhetoric they use about Cuba.

So far, they haven’t called for a trade embargo, and we can only hope they don’t.

That was flawed foreign policy then, and it would be a flawed move now.