Volume: 4 Issue: 2 (2026) Serial Number: 6

Venezuela conducted the most ambitious military modernization in Latin America of the early twenty-first century, absorbing approximately 11 billion US dollars of Russian defense articles between 2001 and 2013 and becoming the largest buyer of Russian weapons in the West- ern Hemisphere. The aim of this article is to explain why an armament program of this magnitude proved strategically unsustainable, and to measure that unsustainability in a replicable way. The research applies a mixed methodological approach combining longitudinal analysis of arms-trans- fer data (SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, IISS Military Balance), comparative analysis of the pre- Maduro (2005–2013) and Maduro (2013–2025) periods, and a structured case study of Russian and Chinese transfer channels. The original contribution of the article is the Transferred-Capa- bility Sustainability Index (TCSI), a five-dimension composite metric (financing continuity, maintenance autonomy, technology absorption, human capital retention, supplier commitment) that quantifies the degree to which an import-based modernization survives the interruption of its enabling conditions. Applied to Venezuela, the TCSI falls from 7.0/10 in the 2005–2013 pe- riod to 3.0/10 in the 2014–2025 period, a 57% decline. Key findings: deliveries of major conven- tional weapons collapsed to near zero after 2016; Venezuela's GDP contracted by more than 80% between 2013 and 2020, removing the fiscal basis of sustainment; by 2019 Russian specialist personnel had to be deployed to Venezuela simply to keep previously delivered equipment oper- ational. The article concludes that the Venezuelan case demonstrates a generalizable proposition: arms-transfer-based modernization without absorption of maintenance, production, and training capacity produces capability that is rented rather than owned, and decays at the speed of the political relationship that financed it.

On 3 January 2026, United States forces struck targets in and around Caracas, seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and flew them to New York to stand trial on narco-terrorism charges. Washington presented the raid not as a use of force against Venezuela but as a law enforcement operation facilitated by the military. This article examines two linked questions: whether that framing has any footing in the jus ad bellum, and whether the reaction of other states was strong enough to protect the prohibition of force laid down in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Doctrinal analysis of the five justificatory strands advanced by the United States (law enforcement, implicit self-defence, non-recognition of Maduro, the Noriega analogy and the narco-terrorism designation) shows that none satisfies a recognised exception and that their combination functions to avoid any single, testable legal claim. The original contribution of the article is the Normative Response Index (NRI), a five-point coding scale (from -2, explicit legal condemnation, to +2, explicit endorsement) applied to all 27 states that addressed the Se- curity Council at its 10085th meeting on 5 January 2026. The mean NRI is -1.00 (SD = 1.18); only 11 of 27 states (40.7%) characterised the operation as unlawful, 13 (48.1%) voiced concern or equivocated, and 3 (11.1%) welcomed it. No Western European and Others Group speaker described the operation as illegal. Sensitivity analysis keeps the mean between -0.89 and -1.11 under every alternative coding, which places the case in the category of contested rejection rather than clear rejection. Compared with Panama in 1989, when the General Assembly condemned the intervention by 75 votes to 20, the institutional response in 2026 stopped at debate. The findings indicate that the discursive validity of Article 2(4) survives, but its institutional enforce- ment layer has thinned, and that hybrid justification exploits precisely this gap.

This article asks a question that the sanctions literature has posed for many target states but not yet answered for Venezuela in quantitative terms: as Washington tightened unilateral coercive measures between 2014 and 2025, did the resulting pressure push the country toward genuine import-substituting reindustrialization, or did it merely reroute the existing oil complex toward new buyers while domestic industry kept contracting? Drawing on a mixed-method de- sign that couples a transparently coded Sanctions Intensity Index (SII) with two outcome series, the Eastward Reorientation Share (ERS) of crude exports and a manufacturing value-added in- dex, I test three hypotheses on the substitution and diversion effects of sanctions. The central empirical finding is novel for this case. Sanctions intensity is strongly and positively associated with the eastward diversion of Venezuelan crude toward China (Pearson r = 0.905), yet that diversion is sharply decoupled from any domestic industrial recovery: the correlation between the reorientation share and manufacturing value added is strongly negative (r = -0.893), and sanctions intensity tracks the collapse of manufacturing almost one-to-one (r = -0.952). In plain terms, what occurred was external buyer-substitution, not internal productive substitution. The pe- trostate adapted at the level of who buys its oil, not at the level of what it makes. These results qualify the optimistic reading of sanctions as a spur to industrial self-reliance and specify the mechanism, asymmetric resource dependence under coercion, through which diversion crowds out reindustrialization. The contribution is one verifiable, replicable relationship, built from pub- lic data and a documented coding rubric, that future work can extend with proprietary cargo- tracking series.

The Paraguaná Refining Center, the union of the Amuay and Cardón refineries on Venezuela's Paraguaná peninsula and historically among the largest refining complexes in the world, has undergone a reliability collapse without precedent in the modern downstream industry, culminating in events such as the 2012 Amuay vapor cloud explosion — more than fifty fatalities, damage exceeding one billion US dollars, and an origin traced to a hydrocarbon leak following a pump-related containment failure (Sajid et al., 2021). The aim of this article is to explain and quantify how the systematic absence of preventive maintenance of pump and compressor sys- tems translates into the degradation of refining reliability. The research applies a mixed method- ological approach: a structured synthesis of the failure-mode and condition-monitoring literature for refinery rotating equipment; a documentary reconstruction of the maintenance-deprivation context of Venezuelan refining after 2013; and a model-based reliability simulation of a repre- sentative Paraguaná-scale rotating-equipment population, whose parameters are anchored to published failure data — bearing-dominated pump failure distributions of approximately 38%, Weibull characteristic lives of 510–657 operating days, and valve-dominated compressor failure structures of approximately 36% (Silva et al., 2023; Lv et al., 2021). The original contribution of the article is the Cumulative Maintenance Deficit Index (CMDI) — a criticality-weighted measure of unexecuted scheduled maintenance accumulated over time — together with an empirically fitted exponential degradation law, λ(t) = λ0·exp(κ·CMDI), which on the simulated dataset yields κ = 2.14 (95% CI: 1.87–2.41) with R2 = 0.93, implying that each 0.32 increment of maintenance deficit approximately doubles the failure intensity of the rotating-equipment population. Key findings: reliability decline under maintenance deprivation is strongly nonlinear; the failure-mode structure shifts from wear-out of monitored components toward systemic lubrication, sealing, and auxiliary failures; and workforce emigration acts as an independent degradation channel that spare-parts availability alone cannot offset (Garcia Zea, 2020; Gonyora & Ventura-Medina, 2024). All simulation outputs are explicitly model-generated and are intended as a transferable analytical template to be repopulated with plant data.

Between 2014 and 2026 Venezuela combined the deepest peacetime economic collapse in the modern history of the Western Hemisphere with one of its most intensive deployments of state coercion: income poverty reached 73.2% of households and informality approximately half of all employment (UCAB, 2025), while a United Nations fact-finding mission documented se- curity-force conduct amounting, in its assessment, to crimes against humanity — with the Boli- varian National Guard (GNB) responsible for the largest number of politically motivated deten- tions and for indiscriminate firing on protesters across the 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2024 protest cycles (UN Human Rights Council, 2020; OHCHR, 2025). The aim of this review article is to synthesize the fragmented scholarship on Venezuelan coercion, poverty, and informality into a single analytical account of the GNB's role. The research applies a structured review methodol- ogy: a corpus of 53 peer-reviewed studies published 2019–2026, assembled through systematic database searches and verified item by item, is coded by the state function each study documents, and triangulated against United Nations, survey, and observatory sources. The original contribu- tion of the article is the concept of coercive poverty governance and its operationalization as a three-function typology of GNB activity — protest suppression, regulation of the informal sur- vival economy, and enforcement of extractive rents — which reorganizes a literature convention- ally split between “repression” and “informality” studies into a single governance logic. Key find- ings: the reviewed literature's center of gravity shifts after 2019 from protest suppression toward economic and extractive coercion, tracking the regime's own reallocation of the GNB; repression functions not as a response to poverty's disorders but as the principal instrument by which an insolvent state manages a population it can no longer pay; and lethal escalation produced exit rather than voice — mass emigration of 7.9 million — consistent with cross-national repression theory (Congressional Research Service, 2025; Curtice & Behlendorf, 2021; Weitzman & Huss, 2024). The typology is transferable to other cases where security forces govern survival econo- mies under fiscal collapse.

Serbia and Venezuela maintain one of the oldest formally established relationships between Southeast Europe and Latin America — dating, by the Serbian foreign ministry's own record, to 13 April 1882 — yet no dedicated peer-reviewed study of the dyad exists in any lan- guage, a gap this review both documents and begins to fill (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, 2026; Simić, 2024). The aim of the article is to reconstruct the diplomatic, economic, military, and Non-Aligned-Movement-mediated history of the relationship across 1950–2026 and to explain its paradoxical structure: a bilateral trade of only 594,000 euros in 2025 coexisting with high-visibility political alignment — Venezuela's steadfast non-recognition of Ko- sovo, Belgrade's continued dealings with the Maduro government through the 2019 dual-presi- dency crisis, and a Venezuelan ministerial presence at the movement's sixtieth-anniversary com- memoration hosted by Serbia in October 2021 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, 2026; Visoka, 2024; Government of the Republic of Serbia, 2021). The research applies a structured review methodology: a corpus of 60 peer-reviewed studies published 2019–2026, ver- ified item by item, is synthesized with a documentary base of treaties, declarations, and archival records, and organized through a five-channel periodization of the relationship. The original con- tribution of the article is the concept of legacy-mediated alignment — an interstate alignment sustained by inherited multilateral capital and reciprocal sovereignty norms rather than by mate- rial exchange — operationalized in a five-period, five-channel Bilateral Alignment Matrix whose every cell is documentarily anchored. Key findings: the relationship's intensity peaks coincide exclusively with Non-Aligned institutional moments — 1961, 1976, 1989, and 2021 — rather than with bilateral economic or military interest; the economic and military channels never devel- oped beyond framework agreements, with no major-conventional-weapons transfers registered in either direction across the entire window (SIPRI, 2025); and the post-2008 alignment rests on a reciprocal non-recognition exchange — Kosovo for the Venezuelan opposition's interim pres- idency — that functions as mutual sovereignty insurance between two states contesting external verdicts on their statehood questions (Newman & Visoka, 2023; Ahlborn, 2025). The framework is transferable to other post-socialist–Global South dyads sustained by non-aligned memory.

Between 2004 and 2013 Venezuela authored more regional architecture than any Latin American state of its size in history — ALBA in 2004, PetroCaribe in 2005 with concessional terms the IMF valued at no less than 0.7% of members' GDP, and a leading role in UNASUR and CELAC — while after 2013 it became the object around which the hemisphere's institutions reorganized: suspended from Mercosur in 2016 and 2017, self-expelled from the OAS between 2017 and 2019, the cause of the Lima Group's creation in 2017 and of PROSUR's in 2019, and the subject of the largest coordinated recognition-of-government action of the modern era in 2019 (Jardón et al., 2020; Palestini, 2021; Ribeiro Hoffmann, 2019; Nolte, 2021; Hasar, 2025). The aim of this review article is to synthesize the fragmented scholarship on Venezuelan foreign policy, Latin American regionalism, extra-regional patronage, and recognition politics into a sin- gle account of this transformation. The research applies a structured review methodology: a cor- pus of 76 peer-reviewed studies published 2019–2026, verified item by item, is synthesized with institutional and documentary sources and organized through a three-period, four-arena recon- struction of Venezuela's institutional standing. The original contribution of the article is the con- cept of hub inversion — the transformation of a state from author of regional institutions into the object around which rival institutions organize — operationalized in a Hemispheric Position Matrix whose every cell is documentarily anchored. Key findings: the exclusion cascade of 2014– 2019 was executed almost entirely through institutions Venezuela had once shaped or joined, making the isolation a mirror image of the earlier activism; extra-regional deepening with Russia, China, and Cuba compensated the lost hemispheric position only in regime-survival terms, not in positional terms (Gratius, 2022; Kosevich, 2023; Bull & Rosales, 2026); and the isolation proved sticky through mechanism change — the recognition coalition of 2019 collapsed by 2023, yet non-recognition of the 2024 election, the escalation of the Essequibo dispute before the In- ternational Court of Justice, and exclusion from every functioning hemispheric body reproduced the isolated position by new means (Mijares, 2025; Pomson, 2025; Legler, 2020). The concept and matrix are transferable to other cases of institutional authorship reversed, from interwar re- visionists to contemporary Nicaragua.

The removal of Nicolás Maduro by US forces on 3 January 2026 is usually analysed as a problem of international law. This article treats it as a problem of military strategy. It asks how the United States built the campaign that ended with the seizure of a sitting head of state, and why a tactically successful decapitation produced neither the collapse of the Venezuelan regime nor a protracted war, but a rapid alignment of the successor government with Washington. Using process tracing across four phases of the campaign between September 2025 and January 2026, and following the outcomes through September 2026, the article finds that the operation was the final rung of a graduated coercion ladder that moved from lethal maritime interdiction, through a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers and a limited strike on port facilities, to a single-night raid on Caracas. The law enforcement framing of the raid was not only legal rhetoric; it worked as an escalation-control device that signalled limited aims to the Venezuelan armed forces and the chavista elite, and it shaped a small-footprint design consistent with the theory of special opera- tions. The original contribution of the article is the concept and model of custodial decapitation: a mode of leadership removal in which a state leader is seized alive and transferred to the captor's jurisdiction while the state apparatus is deliberately left intact, so that decapitation operates as compellence against the successor elite rather than as foreign-imposed regime change. Three mechanisms drive the model: demonstrated reach, custody as continuing leverage, and a pre- served apparatus able to deliver concessions. The Venezuelan sequence that followed, from the January opening of the oil sector to the 25-year energy agreement announced in August 2026, fits the model closely. The findings suggest that custodial decapitation lowers the costs that histori- cally made overt regime change rare, which makes it an attractive and destabilising template for great power coercion.

This research article analyzes the U.S. military operation “Absolute Resolve” on Janu- ary 3, 2026, which resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife by Delta Force units supported by air and naval assets. Employing a qualitative interpretive case- study design, the study examines the event through five analytical levels: civilizational, geopoliti- cal, international relations, political philosophy, and military. The findings show that the inter- vention reflects persistent imperial logic, thalassocratic geopolitical imperatives, a shift toward offensive realism, institutional transition from republican to extractive models, and mature net- work-centric warfare doctrine. Two novel concepts are introduced: Monroe Doctrine 2.0 (an updated regional exclusion policy targeting extra-hemispheric revisionists such as China, Russia, and Iran) and hybrid imperial contraction (strategic refocus on hemispheric consolidation to en- able future global objectives). These concepts frame the operation as defensive consolidation of regional hegemony and preparation for continued power projection. The event is symptomatic of a status quo hegemon defending dominance through preemptive action, realist assertiveness, institutional adaptation, and doctrinal refinement. Implications include regional instability in Latin America, deepened geopolitical divides, and potential erosion of U.S. republican institu- tions. Limitations stem from reliance on secondary sources and the event’s recency. Future re- search should explore long-term outcomes and comparative cases.