Venezuela's Future: Where do we go from here?

About the Lecture: The collapse of Venezuela is no longer an internal or domestic problem; its migrant exodus has made it a hemispheric crisis. Most impacted is key US ally Colombia, where they are swelling the ranks of the ELN terrorist group. Maduro will reach the end of his presidential term in January 2019, but, with deepening repression and escalating brutality, shows no signs of leaving office democratically or indeed peaceably. The traditional opposition is fractured, conflicted and increasingly racked by corruption scandals. Yet the region's leaders are increasingly agreed that the only way to end the crisis is for the Maduro regime to end. With this complex Rubik's cube, what could the future hold for Venezuela?

About the Speaker: Dr. Vanessa Neumann is an authority on Latin American politics and security, as well as on crime-terror pipelines, particularly on stemming illicit trade as a counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency strategy that supports businesses. She is the author of a book on crime-terror pipelines, Blood Profits: How American Consumers Unwittingly Fund Terrorists (St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan). The Brazilian Portuguese edition Lucros de Sangue will be published in late November 2018; the Spanish language edition is currently being negotiated. Dr. Neumann is also the co-author of The Many Criminal Heads of the Golden Hydra (Asymmetrica and Counter-Extremism Project, May 2018), an extensive analysis of illicit trade and corruption in the Tri-Border Area, that has been covered by more than 75 media outlets and forced Paraguayan troop movements.

Dr. Neumann has served four years on the OECD’s Task Force on Countering Illicit Trade (since its inception) and on their Advisory Group. She holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Columbia University, and fellowships at Yale University, Columbia University and the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Her company Asymmetrica is a member of the Global Counter Terrorism Research Network (GCTRN) for the United Nations Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED). Notably, Dr. Neumann was the academic reviewer for USSOCOM’s ARIS Series teaching manual on counterinsurgency (COIN) in Colombia. She is a widely sought speaker to media, academia and governments.