Gunboat Resource Diplomacy Returns to the Caribbean

Gunboat Resource Diplomacy Returns to the Caribbean

OPINION BY: Staff Writer August 2026

The reported United States–Venezuela oil arrangement raises a question far larger than the commercial value of 65 billion barrels of petroleum: can military power, political coercion and external pressure be converted into a claim over another country’s natural resources?

If the essential reports are accurate, Washington’s proposed control over major Venezuelan oil fields would mark a disturbing return to gunboat resource diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere. It would signal that a powerful state can use blockades, threats, regime pressure and security intervention not merely to pursue strategic objectives, but to secure long-term access to the wealth beneath another nation’s soil.

That is not a precedent the Caribbean or Latin America should accept lightly.

Venezuela’s petroleum sector has suffered from years of mismanagement, corruption, underinvestment, sanctions and institutional decay. Its people urgently need jobs, functioning public services, investment, and an oil industry that can once again generate broad public benefit. None of that, however, gives a foreign power the moral or legal right to dictate terms over Venezuela’s most important national asset.

A nation may seek foreign capital, technical support and commercial partners. It may enter production-sharing agreements, service contracts, joint ventures or other lawful arrangements. But there is an immense difference between voluntary investment negotiated by a government accountable to its people and an agreement reached under the shadow of foreign military pressure and political dependence.

The distinction matters because sovereignty over natural resources is not ceremonial language. It is a core principle of international law and post-colonial statehood. Venezuela’s oil belongs to Venezuela. Past disputes over expropriation, compensation or the nationalisation of foreign companies do not create a permanent US entitlement to Venezuelan oil reserves. Corporate claims can be litigated, arbitrated or settled. They cannot become an open-ended licence for a foreign government to assert ownership over a country’s underground wealth.

Claims that the United States has “taken back” Venezuelan oil are therefore especially alarming. They echo an older and uglier doctrine: that the resources of weaker states can become the spoils of geopolitical victory.

The language matters. So does the method.

For much of the Caribbean and Latin America, the history of foreign intervention is not an academic subject. The region remembers occupations, blockades, political interventions, covert destabilisation, unequal concessions and commercial arrangements negotiated when local governments had little practical ability to refuse. The old gunboat did not always arrive solely to seize territory. Often, it arrived to secure trade routes, debt repayments, plantations, mining rights and oil concessions.

Today’s tools may look different: sanctions, asset freezes, naval deployments, security operations, diplomatic recognition and control over banking channels, but the central danger remains the same. A weaker state may be formally sovereign while being denied the conditions required to exercise meaningful choice.

That is why transparency is essential. If there is indeed an agreement involving Venezuelan fields and long-term US control, its full terms must be published. The Venezuelan people should know who controls the fields, what share of production and profits will remain in the country, what taxes and royalties will be paid, what environmental standards will apply, and whether future elected governments will have the right to review or renegotiate the deal.

The question is not whether Venezuela needs investment. It plainly does. The question is whether reconstruction will be carried out through transparent, lawful and mutually beneficial arrangements—or through a formula in which political survival is exchanged for control of national resources.

A Warning for Guyana

Guyana’s circumstances are different. Its oil sector is governed by its own constitutional order, petroleum laws and contracts with private operators. Its territorial controversy with Venezuela is before international legal processes, and Guyana’s sovereign rights over petroleum activities in its maritime areas must be respected.

Still, Guyana cannot afford to regard this regional development with indifference.

As an emerging oil producer located beside a larger neighbour with a long-running territorial claim, Guyana knows better than most that natural resources can intensify geopolitical pressure. The country’s security, its maritime rights and the integrity of its oil operations depend not only on military preparedness and diplomatic partnerships, but also on an unwavering regional commitment to law over force.

Guyana has every right to welcome international investment and security cooperation. But it must be careful never to endorse principles that could later be turned against small states: that power creates entitlement, that oil can be claimed through coercion, or that strategic resources belong to whoever has the means to impose terms.

The strongest protection for Guyana is not dependence on any one powerful patron. It is a consistent defence of international law, territorial integrity, transparent contracts, multilateral diplomacy and the principle that every people retains sovereignty over its own resources.

The Caribbean Community, too, has a responsibility. CARICOM cannot be silent when the language of “taking” another state’s oil is celebrated as foreign-policy success. Silence risks normalising a doctrine that threatens all small states, irrespective of ideology, geography or alliance.

Venezuela’s recovery should be supported. Its people deserve relief from economic hardship and political instability. But no country’s crisis should become an opportunity for external powers to place a permanent hand on its national patrimony.

The Caribbean has seen this play before. It should not be asked to applaud when the gunboats return under a new name.