While in the first weeks of 2026 the international headlines are filled with anti-imperialist rhetoric against US manoeuvres in Caracas, there is an intellectual hypocrisy that ignores the facts of the last fifteen years. Screaming at the ‘oil snatching’ by the US is a convenient, but profoundly false narrative: Venezuela does not need to be conquered to be exploited. It has already been sold out, piece by piece, by Nicolás Maduro’s regime to its real geopolitical masters: China and Russia.

The chronicle of an economic suicide: from nationalisations to the abyss

The Venezuelan collapse is not the child of fate, but of a sequence of deliberate political decisions. The chronicle of the Maduro regime (and its predecessor Chávez) is a manual on how to destroy the richest nation on the continent.

• 2003-2010: The purge of competence. It all began with the mass dismissal of more than 18,000 technicians and managers of PDVSA (the state oil company) guilty of not being politically aligned. In their place were inserted military and loyalists with no experience in the energy sector. This is where the oil reserves stopped being a resource and became a trough.
• 2013-2016: The era of expropriations. With the rise of Maduro, the state began requisitioning thousands of private businesses, from food industries to logistics companies. Result? National production is reduced to zero, turning Venezuela into a country that has to import everything, even the petrol it is supposed to produce.
• 2017: The militarisation of resources. Faced with falling oil prices, Maduro entrusted the management of PDVSA directly to the top brass of the Armed Forces. Not for efficiency, but to guarantee the generals a piece of the pie and secure their loyalty. During this period, corruption ceased to be a side effect and became the operating system of the state.
• 2018-2022: Hyperinflation and illegal gold. As the bolívar lost zeros (reaching record inflations of 1,000,000%), the regime shifted its gaze south, creating the Arco Minero. This was the beginning of the predatory plundering of gold to finance paramilitary groups and bypass international circuits.

While the domestic chronicle tells of infrastructures marching towards rust, the official rhetoric continues to speak of sanctions as the sole cause of evil. But the truth is written in the numbers…

The myth of sovereignty and the reality of debt

Sanctions are often spoken of as the sole cause of evil, but the truth is written in the production numbers. Venezuela sits on an incalculable treasure trove: some 303 billion barrels of oil, the largest proven reserve on the planet, greater even than that of Saudi Arabia. Yet, at the beginning of 2026, production is hovering around 1.1 million barrels per day, a far cry from the 3 million reached before the Maduro era.

Where has this river of wealth gone?

Not into the pockets of Venezuelans, but into those of eastern creditors. Beijing has injected over 60 billion dollars into the country, not out of a spirit of socialist solidarity, but through a cynical ‘loan-for-oil’ scheme. For years, millions of barrels have been shipped to Asia for the sole purpose of repaying the interest on debts incurred by a corrupt regime. Venezuela today is not ‘free’: it is an energy mortgage in the hands of China.

Gas and gold: the regime’s ATM

The paradox extends to natural gas. With some 200 trillion cubic feet of reserves (the seventh largest in the world), Venezuela could be a key player in the global energy chessboard. Instead, while the regime accuses the West of stealing resources, it has allowed Russian giants like Rosneft to take strategic control of the fields, reducing the flagship company PDVSA to an empty box run by Moscow for its own geopolitical ends.

Even more obscure is the gold chapter. The Central Bank’s official reserves, reduced to around 140-150 tonnes, have been used as an emergency cash machine to bypass international financial circuits. But the real havoc is being wreaked in theOrinoco Arc Minero. In this huge area of 112,000 km^2, the regime has authorised an unprecedented ecocide: illegal mines run by gangs and paramilitaries extract gold, poisoning the rivers with mercury and destroying the Amazon forest. Who today is pointing the finger at Washington, where has he been while the regime turned the world’s green lung into a dump of mud and blood to finance its own survival?

Corruption as a true weapon of destruction

Venezuela’s collapse did not begin with the 2019 sanctions, but much earlier, when the so-called ‘Bolibourgeoisie’ started draining billions of dollars to offshore accounts, leaving the oil infrastructure to rot for lack of maintenance. The current tense situation with the US is certainly a complex geopolitical event, but painting it as the ‘first act of exploitation’ is a historical distortion.

Venezuela has been starved by those who, in the name of the people, have handed over the keys to the coffers to foreign powers and local mafias. The real question is not whether the US wants Venezuelan oil, but how much is left after the systematic looting by the regime and its international accomplices.

What is at stake: from survival to reconstruction

But what would actually change for the ordinary citizen if this haemorrhaging of resources were finally stopped? The difference between current looting and transparent management is not a matter of economic theory, but of everyday dignity. If the proceeds of the country’s immense reserves were no longer used to replenish the accounts of hierarchs or to pay debts to Beijing, Venezuela could finance an unprecedented reconstruction.

It would mean restoring a collapsing electricity grid, guaranteeing drinking water and, above all, stopping the galloping inflation that has pulverised a nation’s savings. A return to legal and transparent control, backed by monitored international investment, would transform oil and gold from ‘curses’ to feed regimes into engines of social welfare.

Only then would the Venezuelan stop being a refugee sitting on a gold mine and return to being the rightful owner of a future that was snatched from him, with the complicity of those who, even today, pretend not to see the real culprits.

Read also:

Venezuela, the end of a regime: has Maria Machado’s time come?– D.D’Andrea- L’Europeista

A European contingent in Greenland: the only concrete answer to Trump’s appetites- P.Falasca- L’Europeista