“The Venezuela Model” and the New US Doctrine

Istituto Affari Internazionali | Rafael Ramírez

On 3 January 2026, US military forces launched air strikes in Caracas, captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and installed a transitional government led by Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez to assert Washington's strategic and security interests. This unilateral intervention bypassed the United Nations Security Council, establishing a precedent for direct political and economic tutelage.

Decades of severe domestic political and economic weakness left the Venezuelan state with no viable military deterrent, as the national armed forces offered no defensive response to the superior American forces. Under this newly coined "Venezuela model," the White House quickly seized control of the country's vast natural resources, forcing the immediate passage of a new Hydrocarbons Law on 29 January to privatise the oil sector. By April 2026, over 110 million barrels of oil were exported into a US-administered Foreign Government Deposit Fund, demonstrating a neo-colonial "Donroe Doctrine" that threatens to destabilise other sovereign regional states.

Comment

Unilateral resource extraction strategies undermine long-term regional stability. Great powers risk severe local blowback by bypassing established multilateral security frameworks. Such aggressive precedents encourage other global actors to pursue similar coercive territorial policies. Tactical success in weak states rarely translates into sustainable geopolitical influence.

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