Chávez Sacrificed the Economy to Turn Oil Into an Anti-US Weapon
Washington is attempting something remarkable in Venezuela. After spending more than two decades confronting the geopolitical ambitions of chavismo, the US is now helping to rebuild the industry that made those ambitions possible.
Through a combination of military pressure and the promise of renewed oil production, foreign investment, and access to international markets, the Trump administration is seeking to secure the cooperation of Delcy Rodríguez’s interim government. But there is a paradox at the heart of that strategy: if it succeeds, Washington could end up restoring the very instrument of geopolitical power that Hugo Chávez once used against it.
The danger is not that Rodríguez is preparing to revive Chávez’s revolutionary foreign policy tomorrow. It is that the economic recovery of a government does not necessarily entail its political transformation. A regime that cooperates with Washington under military pressure and out of economic necessity may behave quite differently once those constraints diminish.
Understanding this risk requires revisiting a frequently misunderstood aspect of Chávez’s legacy. His oil diplomacy was not simply a collection of expensive ideological adventures, but a part of a coherent grand strategy that achieved much of what it set out to accomplish, even as it undermined the economic foundations of the Venezuelan state.
Revolutionary oil
That is the central argument of Petróleo y revolución: La geopolítica de Venezuela bajo Hugo Chávez y su desafío a Estados Unidos, a new book by Venezuelan political analyst Martín Rodríguez Rodríguez. Drawing on diplomatic documents, petroleum industry intelligence, and historical research, Rodríguez reconstructs how Chávez transformed Venezuela’s oil wealth into the principal instrument of an ambitious strategy to challenge American influence in the hemisphere.
Chávez did not invent petroleum diplomacy. Venezuelan governments had long understood that the country’s position in international energy markets provided diplomatic leverage beyond what its economic or military weight might otherwise suggest. But while previous governments generally employed that leverage to advance Venezuela’s commercial interests and international standing, Chávez subordinated it to the objectives of his revolution.
Rodríguez traces the development of this grand strategy through Chávez’s consolidation of power, the political takeover of PDVSA, the revitalization of OPEC, and the construction of an international network designed to diminish Washington’s influence.
New relationships with China, Russia and Iran allowed Chávez to position himself as a participant in an emerging multipolar order.
The Caracas-Havana alliance formed the backbone of this strategy. Cuba provided political experience, ideological affinity, and a regional partner with its own long history of confrontation with Washington. Venezuela supplied the resources that allowed the relationship to acquire a significance neither country could have achieved on its own. ALBA and Petrocaribe extended that logic across the Caribbean and Central America. By providing oil under preferential financing arrangements, Chávez cultivated governments whose diplomatic support helped complicate American efforts to isolate Caracas, while he established relationships that continued to provide diplomatic support to his successors even as Washington intensified its pressure.
The strategy extended beyond the hemisphere. China offered financing and an alternative market for Venezuelan crude. Russia provided military equipment and diplomatic backing. Iran became an ideologically compatible partner in Chávez’s confrontation with the United States. Together, these relationships allowed Venezuela to position itself as a participant in an emerging multipolar order.
Rodríguez’s contribution is to examine these initiatives not as disconnected episodes of revolutionary diplomacy but as instruments of a larger grand strategy. Chávez understood that control over petroleum resources could compensate, at least partially, for Venezuela’s limited military and economic weight.
Rodríguez documents how repeated threats to interrupt oil shipments to the United States collided with transportation costs, refinery infrastructure, and commercial interdependence. In 2004, roughly two-thirds of Venezuela’s crude exports still went to the American market. Redirecting those shipments was neither as simple nor as economical as Chávez suggested.
Chávez succeeded in expanding the international influence of his revolution while weakening Venezuela’s capacity to sustain that influence.
The relationship with China was similarly contradictory. Diversification reduced Venezuela’s exclusive dependence on the American market, but oil-backed financing arrangements created new obligations and dependencies. In attempting to escape one relationship, Chávez risked exchanging it for another.
More consequentially, the politicization of PDVSA, the deterioration of its technical capacity, and the subordination of commercial decisions to revolutionary priorities progressively undermined the industry that financed the strategy.
Chávez succeeded in expanding the international influence of his revolution while weakening Venezuela’s capacity to sustain that influence. His geopolitical accomplishments were real, even if their durability was limited. The success of a revolutionary project, Rodríguez demonstrates, should not be confused with the success of the state whose resources made it possible.
The 2026 irony
The Trump administration’s approach to Venezuela rests, at least in part, on a plausible proposition: a government facing American military pressure while benefiting from economic cooperation will have strong incentives to preserve its accommodation with Washington. Restoring oil production can create jobs, attract investment, increase revenues, and provide the economic stability necessary for a political transition.
There is nothing inherently misguided about pursuing economic recovery. Venezuela desperately needs to rebuild its petroleum industry, and a recovery that excludes American capital, technology, and markets would be considerably more difficult. Military coercion and economic incentives can secure compliance without necessarily producing lasting political change, but economic cooperation and political transformation are not interchangeable.
The administration is dealing with a government whose leading figures emerged from the same political movement that Chávez built. Delcy Rodríguez is not Chávez. She lacks his charisma, his popular mandate, and the extraordinary international circumstances that made his ambitions possible. Yet the institutions and networks of power through which chavismo governs have not necessarily changed simply because its relationship with Washington has.
The distinction becomes especially important when considering what a successful recovery would accomplish. Increased production would not merely strengthen Venezuela’s economy. It would increase the resources available to the government, expand its international commercial relationships, and potentially reduce its dependence on American support.
A weakened chavismo has good reasons to accommodate Washington. A revitalized chavismo might have more options.
These developments could support a democratic transition. But without corresponding institutional and political changes, they could also strengthen the governing establishment and give it greater room to maneuver. A weakened chavismo has good reasons to accommodate Washington. A revitalized chavismo might have more options.
Of course, the circumstances are not those of the early 2000s. The United States possesses considerable military and economic leverage, as well as influence over Venezuela’s access to investment, technology, financial services, and energy markets. Chávez’s successors also face constraints that he never encountered. A return to his confrontational foreign policy is neither inevitable nor necessarily desirable to the current leadership.
But those differences do not eliminate the underlying question. What political and institutional changes must accompany Venezuela’s economic recovery to ensure that the resources generated by its petroleum industry serve the country rather than the preservation of a particular governing movement?
Chávez’s grand strategy demonstrated that Venezuela’s oil wealth could be used to challenge American influence, even without the economic or military power to confront Washington directly. His successors inherited the alliances, institutions, and political networks that strategy helped establish, although the deterioration of the petroleum industry progressively deprived them of the resources needed to sustain it.
None of this means that a recovered Venezuelan oil industry would inevitably produce a renewed confrontation with the United States. It does mean that Washington should be careful not to mistake cooperation obtained through coercion and economic necessity for a lasting change in the interests of those governing Venezuela.