Last week, Venezuela’s government threatened that if the U.S. did not withdraw its economic sanctions, it might call off the 2018 presidential election. Although such a grossly unconstitutional act would prolong the suffering of the Venezuelan people, it could ironically help limit a turn to the left in Latin America as the region faces one the largest and most significant series of electoral events in recent years.

Macri’s legislative achievements in his first year in office were remarkable. Although his Cambiemos (Change) coalition was a minority in both houses of the Congreso de la Nación Argentina (Argentine National Congress), his government passed approximately ninety laws during the period, working with dissident members of the previously in power Peronist Party and using the national government’s significant financial contribution to provincial budgets as leverage in influencing their senators.

The most important question regarding the unfolding crisis in Venezuela is whether the Venezuelan regime will be able to successfully transition power to a more rationally managed authoritarian government that protects those who have systematically looted the country, while providing a sufficient façade of democratic process and compromise that a weary and distracted international community lends it legitimacy.

The situation in Venezuela is often mistakenly diagnosed as principally a political or economic crisis. It is better understood as a criminal act without precedent in Latin America: the capture and systematic looting of a state, achieved by first capturing its institutions through mass mobilization and bureaucratic machinations, then increasing control of the state through military force, as the criminal nature of the act and its consequences become apparent to the nation’s citizens.

The crisis in Venezuela is a problem for the country and the region that neither international law nor existing multilateral institutions are well equipped to handle. And yet, both the United States and multilateral institutions do have plausible alternatives and may yet have the ability to play a decisive role in managing the consequences of that crisis for the region without direct intervention.