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Abstract

This article examines the persistent failure of U.S. economic sanctions to catalyze democratic transition in Venezuela, addressing the growing disconnect between the statutory intent of American foreign policy and the resulting humanitarian and geopolitical realities. While the U.S. government shifted from targeted sanctions against corrupt individuals to comprehensive measures against the Venezuelan oil industry, this strategy has failed to dislodge Nicolas Maduro’s oppressive regime. Instead, the article identifies a critical backfire of such policies, where broad economic pressure has inadvertently facilitated the consolidation of authoritarian power and worsened domestic suffering. The article offers two original observations. First, comprehensive oil sanctions created a geopolitical vacuum that has fundamentally realigned Venezuela with powers like Russia, China, and Iran, thereby undermining U.S. security interests in the Western Hemisphere. Second, U.S. economic sanctions have ironically incentivized domestic corruption; by centralizing control over increasingly scarce resources, the regime has leveraged the black market to strengthen its internal networks rather than succumbing to international pressure. Ultimately, the sanctions framework has reached a state of diminishing returns, contributing more to human rights abuses and the decay of private industry than to political reform. The article proposes a necessary pivot toward alternative and supplementary measures that prioritize humanitarian outcomes and domestic oil production to stabilize the population without abandoning the pursuit of accountability for Venezuela’s authoritarian regime.

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