Inept Maduro clings to power - Regime must end to avert catastrophe

It would be mackerel stupid to believe that the international campaign to expel Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait in 1990 was undertaken, at vast expense in lives, treasure, and political-system capital, to defend democracy — or for what then passed, and still does, for democracy in the Middle East. There was other, far more lucrative skin in that game.

Kuwait’s oil reserves make up 8% of the world total. The country is OPEC’s third-largest oil producer, holding approximately 104bn barrels. Solidarity with a nation so spectacularly blessed is always easy for powerful forces — as, conversely, the comparative abandonment of neighbouring Yemen, where a war-generated famine threatens 20m people with starvation, shows.