In Summary
The US military actions against Venezuelan vessels in international waters cannot be viewed in isolation from the reignited border disputes following the discovery of oil in Guyana.
Through the rhetoric of the war on drugs, hawks such as Marco Rubio see an opportunity to push through a new containment strategy in Venezuela: a Monroe Doctrine 2.0 in the making and a recipe for regime change?
● The Netherlands and the EU must prevent a post-Muammar al-Qadhafi Libyan scenario from unfolding in Venezuela.
Latin America Regional Update | On Tuesday 2 September tensions between the US and Venezuela reached a new peak when US military personnel killed the eleven-strong crew of a Venezuelan vessel in international waters. The justification for the action, according to Trump on his social media channel, was that it involved drug smuggling and was therefore part of the war on drugs. On 15 September, a second boat with three people on board was intercepted. Venezuela’s Maduro has responded to the increased presence of US air and naval forces in the Caribbean in this context by calling on troops and militias. Could further escalation lead to direct conflict?
Historical context
To understand the situation in Venezuela, one quickly comes across the highly distinctive Hugo Chávez, a source of facts and juicy anecdotes at birthday parties. For instance, in 2009, Chávez presented Barack Obama with Eduardo Galeano’s book Las venas abiertas de América Latina – highly recommended for anyone interested in the region. The book criticises the structurally unequal economic and power relations and exploitation from the colonial era through to late US imperialism in the region, and calls for dignity, independence and self-determination for Latin American states.
In another example, in 2007 King Juan Carlos of Spain said to Chávez – who was constantly interrupting the Spanish Prime Minister: “¿Por qué no te callas?” (Why don’t you shut up?). On the weekly live TV programme Aló Presidente, Chávez would sometimes speak for seven to eight hours without interruption on a wide variety of topics, whilst formulating policy and visiting locations across the country, sacking ministers, quoting Marx and insulting the US.
The oil pesos flowed freely and “el Comandante” gave away large quantities of oil to allies out of solidarity. He even launched a programme, running for many years, under which heating oil was provided free of charge or at very heavy discounts to the poor in the US. So there was double the trouble. Praised by many, certainly in Venezuela, for his charisma, the Venezuelan people have long since lost their sense of humour.
Due to the failed economic policies of Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro, the country has plunged into utter ruin, resulting in a major humanitarian crisis with millions of refugees, food and medicine shortages, and an explosion of violence. The country, with the world’s largest known oil reserves – which have been exploited since the early 20th century – was for a long time one of the most prosperous countries in the region. But that very same oil led to significant economic dependence and the neglect of other sectors – the so-called ‘Dutch disease’.
The socialist Chávez squandered virtually all the oil revenues and behaved increasingly like an authoritarian leader. Roughly a year after Chávez died of illness, the economy collapsed due to a combination of falling oil prices and expansionary monetary policy by the Maduro government, leading to unprecedented hyperinflation that persisted for years. With a fall in GDP, this was described as the greatest economic contraction ever seen in peacetime. Meanwhile, Nicolás Maduro became increasingly repressive, and from 2017 onwards Venezuela faced international sanctions and was suspended from the Mercosur customs union until democracy could be restored.
Guyana
The regional dimension makes the situation particularly explosive. In neighbouring Guyana, a consortium led by ExxonMobil, Hess and CNOOC identified more than 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves in 2015. The problem is that a large proportion of these fields lie close to – or, according to Venezuela, even within – the disputed Essequibo border region. Essequibo covers more than two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and has been claimed by Caracas since the 19th century. The origins of the conflict lie in an arbitral award from 1899 which established the border in favour of Guyana’s then coloniser, Great Britain. Venezuela has never fully recognised this award and claims that it was reached under undue pressure.
With the discovery of oil, the issue has once again come to the fore. Caracas maintains that the natural resources in the Essequibo and adjacent coastal waters are, in fact, Venezuelan property. Maduro even organised a controversial referendum in late 2023 in which Venezuelans were allowed to vote on the annexation of the Essequibo – a move officially approved by a large majority. Guyana, on the other hand, invokes international recognition of the borders and has brought the case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Monroe Doctrine 2.0?
Washington regards Guyana’s energy infrastructure as being of strategic importance and is positioning its military presence in the region partly to protect it. The migration flows constitute a second structural factor that amplifies the geopolitical impact of the crisis. Millions of Venezuelans have left the country over the past decade, mainly heading for Colombia and Brazil. These countries bear a heavy socio-economic burden, ranging from pressure on labour markets and public services to tensions in border regions where guerrilla groups and criminal networks are active.
Colombia has long served as a direct partner of the US in the fight against drug networks and guerrilla movements and may use the tensions with Venezuela to justify closer cooperation, although Petro of Colombia and Trump have a difficult history and are ideologically opposed to one another.
These regional areas of tension are exacerbated by the role of international superpowers. Since the 2000s, China has become Caracas’s most important external financier through oil-for-loans deals and continues to provide Venezuela with diplomatic and financial buffers against international isolation, although Beijing is keeping a remarkably low profile in the current crisis. Russia’s presence is much more explicit: it has supplied weapons, security advisers and military support, and views Venezuela as a strategic bridgehead in the Western Hemisphere – a means of directly challenging US influence. Iran and Turkey also play a secondary role,
through oil cooperation, petrol supplies and the gold trade respectively, which help to circumvent sanctions. Cuba, finally, forms a structural pillar in the survival of the Venezuelan regime: since Chávez’s time, there has been a deep mutual dependence, with cheap Venezuelan oil in exchange for Cuban doctors, intelligence services and security advisers who help consolidate Maduro’s power apparatus. For Washington, this Caracas–Havana axis has for decades been seen as a symbol of anti-American presence in the region, meaning that the perception of Venezuela cannot be viewed in isolation from Cuba’s role.
Venezuela’s neighbour Brazil, under Lula, is taking a different approach: multilateral diplomacy, focused on regional dialogue and de-escalation. This creates a tension between countries that welcome direct US security support and those that, on the contrary, fear that the US is implementing a new containment strategy in Latin America – a Monroe Doctrine 2.0.
2 and 15 September
The logic behind the incidents involving the Venezuelan boats must be understood within the broader narrative from Washington, in which criminal networks from Venezuela are portrayed not merely as drug gangs, but as a transnational security threat. The framing of drug gangs as terrorist organisations has long been used to deport
Venezuelans from the US (see update: Deportations). This same framing creates political space for a much greater US military involvement in the region. What initially appears to be an anti-crime operation can, through the narrative of narco-terrorism, develop into a justification for geopolitical confrontation. The window of opportunity this creates offers hawks in the US Senate, such as Marco Rubio, the chance to push through the tougher pressure on Caracas that they have long advocated. In this way, boundaries shift: what begins as the fight against drugs may end in a proxy conflict with regional and global repercussions.
Possible courses of action for the Netherlands and the EU
For the Netherlands, the crisis and a potential conflict are of direct interest, as the Netherlands Antilles will be directly affected by refugees from Venezuela. Aruba lies just 23 kilometres from Venezuela. So what seems far away to many is, in reality, very close by. Furthermore, in The Hague, the International Court of Justice has an important role to play in providing clarity regarding the situation in Guyana.
The Netherlands and the EU will have to make a choice should the conflict escalate further: to support regime change or to pursue a diplomatic route to prevent escalation. In the first scenario, careful consideration must be given to a post-Maduro Venezuela, so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past, with Libya following the fall of Muammar al-Qadhafi perhaps serving as the most comparable example.
In a second, diplomatic scenario, Lula could act as a bridge, thereby ensuring that Europe does not directly challenge the US in ‘its own backyard’.
The EU should also aim for greater legal justification and legitimacy from the US within the framework of international law. The focus should be on a reorientation towards multilateral anti-narcotics networks (including countries such as Colombia and Brazil) under the supervision of neutral organisations.
The crux of the matter is that the September crisis demonstrates how quickly a tactical but legally difficult-to-justify action against drug trafficking can transform into a geopolitical catalyst. The combination of unilateral US decisions, Venezuelan militarisation and regional security concerns means that escalation is drawing ever closer. This is precisely why it is important for the Netherlands and the EU to strengthen diplomatic buffers, utilise multilateral frameworks and increase humanitarian aid to prevent Latin America – long a region of peace – from becoming the theatre of the next protracted proxy war.
This article was translated, find the original here.