The British intelligence community, in a rare public warning, has sounded the alarm: Venezuela’s disintegration is no longer a regional crisis but a global oil shock in waiting. As aftershocks leave thousands stranded, the parallels to the fall of Rome’s grain fleets or the Suez debacle are unavoidable. We are witnessing the decay of a petro-state, hollowed out by decades of socialist mismanagement and now rattling the foundations of energy security.
The Victorians understood that empire required order; they would recognise the chaos in Caracas as the price of forgetting that principle. The question is whether Whitehall’s warning will be heeded or dismissed as another Cassandra cry. History suggests the latter.
