Take it from someone who grew up in the Balkans — diversity is not a strength. Like many Latin American countries, Venezuela is a strange contradiction: it is stunningly beautiful, has a wonderful climate, and is rich in natural resources — and yet, it is a Third World slum. The USSR beat the USA in its race to be the first in sending a man into space. That was in 1961. Meanwhile, in 2020, Venezuela is on the brink of collapse. Demographics, per usual, is the elephant in the room. The pure whites found in wealthy, secluded neighborhoods are few and far between, and many of them are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. I never once met a single inarguably white family that was third generation Venezuelan. In contrast to most of its population — which, though friendly, is largely lazy, unambitious, carefree, and uneducated — the whites of Venezuela are hardworking and productive. My own family was a good example of this. We arrived as immigrants speaking no Spanish and only basic English, and with so little money we slept on the beach. Within five years, we owned the biggest supermarket in town.

When the wars in the Balkans finally ended, my family decided to head back. As Serbs, my family went to the new nation of Serbia. That was the whole point of the wars, after all: segregation — Croats got Croatia, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) got Bosnia, Serbs got Serbia, and so on. Ironically, twenty years later the Balkans are a peaceful place — thanks to the collapse of an artificial and diverse country, and the rise of several homogeneous nations in its place. Meanwhile, Western countries seem to want to remake themselves in the image of the former Yugoslavia — illogical polities composed of several different antagonistic and wildly different peoples. Or perhaps their long-term plan is to create new Venezuelas: genetically diverse countries where centuries of miscegenation have created something approaching homogeneity. I’m not sure which is worse.