Washington did not remove Venezuela’s president merely to change its government; it is now constructing a system of economic control designed to outlast the politicians who created it.
From Regime Change to Resource Control
An extraordinary investigation published by ProPublica on October 20 reveals the terms of an 18-page strategic partnership agreement signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The agreement gives Washington a 35 percent stake in the parent company of North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a private Venezuelan oil company headed by billionaire Alejandro Betancourt. It also grants the United States the right to purchase 20 percent of the company’s production at a discounted price of $30 per barrel, alongside priority purchasing rights over the remaining production for 50 years.
The agreement’s significance extends beyond these commercial privileges. Its governance arrangements appear deliberately structured to protect American interests against future political interference. A majority of the company’s seven-member board must be American citizens, while no provision requires Venezuelan government representation. The initial board will determine how its successors are selected, and removing Betancourt as chief executive requires a supermajority vote.
These provisions reveal something important about the changing character of American imperialism. Washington is not seeking formal territorial annexation. Instead, it is using corporate ownership, contractual privileges, and institutional safeguards to establish influence over another country’s strategic resources.
The distinction matters. Imperialism has never depended exclusively on territorial conquest. Its defining feature has often been the unequal distribution of power between states, particularly the ability of powerful countries to shape the economic choices available to weaker ones.
Venezuela offers an especially revealing example because the agreement follows an American military intervention that fundamentally altered the country’s political leadership. The subsequent oil arrangement raises a question that cannot be answered through commercial calculations alone: can a country exercise meaningful economic sovereignty when an external power has helped determine its political transition and subsequently acquired exceptional privileges over its most valuable resource?
The Corporate Architecture of Imperialism
American economic dominance in Latin America has a long history. From the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to twentieth-century interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, Washington repeatedly treated the hemisphere as a privileged sphere of influence. Venezuela’s new oil agreement recalls this history, but with a distinctive institutional architecture.
The American state is not merely protecting private investors operating abroad. It is becoming an investor itself, acquiring ownership in a foreign company through a structure involving the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital. This creates an unusual convergence of military institutions, commercial interests, and foreign policy.
The arrangement also raises serious questions about accountability. NABEP’s parent company is registered in Barbados, where corporate secrecy rules may shield the identities of some investors. Betancourt has faced money-laundering investigations in several countries, although he has not been criminally charged and denies wrongdoing. Nevertheless, Washington has selected his company as the centerpiece of an arrangement involving potentially enormous economic privileges. Even more revealing is the distribution of enforceable benefits.
According to ProPublica, the agreement contains no explicit contractual guarantee that Venezuela will receive the $200 billion in royalties and taxes projected by the White House. Disputes between Washington and the company must be resolved under American law, with proceedings assigned to a federal court in Texas. This does not eliminate Venezuela’s legal authority over its territory or automatically invalidate its domestic laws. It does, however, place the partnership’s principal contractual relationship within American legal jurisdiction.
The proposed duration of the underlying oil concessions introduces another contradiction. American officials have described concessions lasting 100 years, although the figure does not appear in the strategic partnership agreement itself. These arrangements resemble what political economists describe as informal empire: the exercise of power through economic institutions and unequal relationships rather than direct colonial administration.
The Trump administration offers a different interpretation. It argues that the partnership will attract investment, revive Venezuelan oil production, and generate substantial economic benefits. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez has similarly defended the arrangement, maintaining that Venezuela retains sovereignty over its resources. These claims deserve consideration. Venezuela’s oil industry requires substantial investment, and foreign participation is not inherently incompatible with sovereignty. The relevant distinction is between investment negotiated under conditions of political autonomy and arrangements shaped by extraordinary external coercive power.
Nor is the agreement’s implementation assured. Important documents remain under negotiation, legal questions persist, and expanding production will require years of investment. Yet, these uncertainties do not diminish the significance of the contractual structure. They underscore how much political and economic power is being committed before the promised benefits have materialized.
The Return of the Monroe Doctrine
The Venezuelan agreement also signals a broader geopolitical ambition. In its August 31 announcement, the White House explicitly connected the oil partnership to the revival of the Monroe Doctrine and the displacement of Chinese and Russian influence from the Western Hemisphere.
This admission is consequential. Washington is presenting access to Venezuela’s resources not merely as a commercial opportunity, but as an instrument of geopolitical competition. Oil concessions, corporate governance, and supply agreements become mechanisms through which American power is asserted against rival states.
The implication is that economic sovereignty in Latin America may increasingly depend on whether governments accommodate Washington’s strategic preferences. Countries seeking investment from competing powers could face growing pressure to reorganize their economic relationships around American interests.
Yet, this strategy contains a contradiction. By attempting to insulate economic privileges from future political changes, Washington risks undermining the democratic transition it claims to support. A future elected Venezuelan government could inherit obligations negotiated by interim authorities under exceptional political circumstances, with limited room to reconsider their terms.
This creates the possibility of a new cycle of confrontation. Governments seeking to reclaim control over strategic industries could challenge agreements that Washington considers essential to its national security. Commercial disagreements could consequently become geopolitical crises. The deeper question, therefore, is not whether American companies will profit from Venezuelan oil. It is whether Washington is establishing a precedent in which military intervention becomes a gateway to long-term economic control.
If that precedent survives, the next phase of American imperialism may require fewer occupations and more contracts. Its durability will depend less on the ability to conquer territory than on the ability to make unequal economic arrangements politically and legally difficult to reverse.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs
Follow new articles on our Telegram channel
