On 3 January 2026, a surprising US-led military operation extracted Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro despite his careful and secret security measures and the protection of his Cuban team of bodyguards.
This indisputable breach of international law has sparked intense international debates about Venezuela in progressive and academic spaces often around a single, powerful word: sovereignty. When the United States signals interventionist intent or frames Venezuela primarily through its oil interests, many well-meaning commentators rush to defend Venezuelan self-determination. That reflex can be principled and legally grounded.
Yet it becomes ethically and analytically fragile when the same voices have remained largely silent about other foreign actors whose sustained involvement has shaped Venezuela’s security apparatus, economic survival strategies, and access to oil revenues over the past two decades.
This selectivity matters. Sovereignty is not a slogan or a geopolitical team badge; it is meant to protect people from domination and violence, regardless of the source. When it is invoked only against a disfavoured Western power, while overlooking non-Western actors whose support has helped sustain a lethal dictatorship extract rents from national resources, this recent outcry about sovereignty risks appearing less a matter of principle and more a rhetorical prop.
A rights-based starting point
A development and human-rights perspective should always begin with the lived experience of the Venezuelan people. United Nations investigations and leading human-rights organisations have documented persistent patterns of State-led repression, including arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment, persecution of political opponents, and widespread impunity. The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela concluded that these violations were not isolated excesses but part of coordinated state practices, implemented through intelligence and security agencies operating with political direction at the highest levels.
The human cost is visible far beyond Venezuela’s borders. According to UNHCR, nearly 7.9 million Venezuelans now live as refugees or migrants abroad, making this one of the largest displacement crises in the world. UN humanitarian coordination documents underline that this displacement is driven by political repression, economic collapse, and institutional failure, with neighbouring countries absorbing the bulk of the burden.
Sovereignty debates that overlook these outcomes risk losing sight of what sovereignty is meant to safeguard: human dignity and collective self-determination.
Condemning coercion — consistently
It is entirely legitimate to criticise unlawful external coercion. UN special procedures mandate-holders have condemned recent United States measures, including maritime actions meant to put pressure on the Venezuelan regime, as incompatible with fundamental principles of international law.
The problem is not that sovereignty is defended, but how selectively it is defended. If sovereignty is treated as sacrosanct only when Washington appears in the story, but becomes oddly negotiable when other foreign actors embed themselves deeply in Venezuela’s governance and resource economy, then the concept is being applied asymmetrically.
Cuba and the security architecture of repression
Among Venezuela’s foreign relationships, the Cuban role stands out for its proximity to the state’s coercive core. Investigative reporting has documented long-standing agreements granting Cuban advisers extensive access to Venezuelan military and intelligence institutions, including counter-intelligence and internal surveillance functions. These services are repaid largely in oil shipments that are given to the (also) authoritarian government of Cuba, creating a symbiotic relationship between both regimes that has done nothing to improve the living standards of Venezuelans and much to increase the social intelligence data gathering methods that keep Venezuelans terrified of speaking up against the Venezuelan government lest they are jailed or worse.
Placed alongside UN findings that these same agencies were central to arbitrary detention, torture, and political persecution, this relationship raises uncomfortable questions for any sovereignty-based defence of the status quo. External security assistance that strengthens institutions credibly accused of grave human-rights violations cannot be treated as neutral cooperation.
Iran and dependency through energy survival
Iran’s engagement with Venezuela illustrates a different dimension of compromised autonomy: dependency created through opaque energy arrangements. Authoritative reporting describes oil and fuel swap agreements, refinery inputs, and the deployment of Iranian technicians to attempt to keep the ailing Venezuelan energy infrastructure functioning, with sub-par results and notable industrial accidents that claimed lives.
While such cooperation may alleviate short-term fuel shortages, it also entrenches reliance on another sanctioned state’s logistical and technical capacity, often under conditions of limited transparency. Reports about Venezuelan passports being granted to Iranian agents and the use of Iranian tankers to circumvent sanctions and transport weapons to strengthen the Venezuelan repressive army should be as concerning as any US intervention in Venezuelan soil. From a development perspective, this raises questions about who ultimately benefits from Venezuela’s oil and whether these arrangements advance population welfare or primarily stabilise an embattled governing elite.
Russia, China, and the political economy of oil rents
China and Russia occupy different positions in Venezuela’s political economy, but both complicate simplistic sovereignty narratives. China has been a major creditor and oil buyer, with significant volumes of Venezuelan crude linked to oil-for-debt repayment mechanisms and indirect shipment channels that reduce transparency over revenues. China has also been a key provider of digital surveillance technology for the Venezuelan regime.
Russia’s involvement has centred on oil trading and joint ventures that sustained export capacity even as sanctions reshaped ownership structures. In both cases, foreign state-linked actors continue to play a decisive role in monetising Venezuela’s primary national resource. In addition, the presence of mercenaries of Russian origin (including private militias) has reinforced the Venezuelan army capacities and facilitated trade in weapons.
The issue here is not moral ranking among external powers. It is analytical symmetry. Foreign entanglement is foreign entanglement when it materially shapes who controls resources and how political authority is financed. Large swathes of Venezuelan territory along the Mining Belt (a vast mineral-rich area in the south of the country) is managed by foreign actors from the countries mentioned above as well as ‘regular’ criminal gangs. To claim that the Venezuelan regime actually controls the whole of the Venezuelan territory has been an obsolete idea for a couple of decades, so the US actions of 3 January are viewed by Venezuelans within this framework: as one more foreign intervention.
Why selectivity undermines solidarity
The hypocrisy perceived by many Venezuelans stems from watching international observers invoke sovereignty passionately in one context while downplaying or ignoring other foreign relationships that, in practice, have helped entrench authoritarian rule and limit democratic control over resources.
A coherent development-oriented position can hold two ideas simultaneously. First, unlawful external coercion should be opposed on principled grounds. Second, sovereignty cannot be credibly defended as a moral shield for a state apparatus that UN investigators have found responsible for systematic and grave human-rights violations.
Venezuela’s crisis is not best understood as a story of heroic resistance to one empire, but as a tragedy of captured institutions, distorted resource governance, and external alliances that prioritise regime survival over citizen welfare.
Re-centring Venezuelans — their rights, livelihoods, and capacity for democratic self-determination — offers a more honest foundation for solidarity than selective invocations of sovereignty ever could. As Venezuelans, we urge our well-meaning international supporters to review their biases and to refrain from explaining the notion of sovereignty to us just after 3 January. In fact, please refrain from explaining our country to us and just support us in putting pressure for the transition to democracy to take place, as we don’t have any trust in foreign powers per se, but we also know we will need all the foreign support we can muster to finally dislodge the remains (still strong) of the regime that has been oppressing us.
This is just week one. The world is finally paying attention to our situation. If you want to support Venezuelans, help us keep the transition leaders accountable to their plan.
