Venezuela is worse than the Soviet Union was: Lt. Col. Peters

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters said Wednesday the economic and civil unrest in socialist Venezuela is worse than conditions were in the Soviet Union.

“For years now, people haven’t been able to walk into a grocery store and buy eggs or milk or even toilet paper,” Peters told FOX Business’ Kennedy. “I saw the Soviet Union back before the walls came down—Venezuela right now is worse. The Soviet Union did a better job of feeding its people.”

While the crisis in the South American country has been escalating for months, Peters said he doesn’t expect it to spread to other nations in the region.

“Socialism’s passed its high-water mark in Latin America, but the problem is its implosion and what can happen,” he explained.

Peters also said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the country’s military are hindering its return to normalcy.

“The army is basically a corporation now—they’ve been bought off, they own so much of the country—the generals and the senior colonels,” he said. “They’re all that’s standing in the way of a real return of democracy while President Maduro, who’s sort of this big, lumpy Bernie Sanders with a beret and a pistol belt, he’s hanging on. He’s not the man that [Hugo] Chavez, his predecessor, was. He doesn’t have the charisma, doesn’t have the vision.”