There is an old lie, endlessly recycled by tyrants and their stenographers: that power justifies itself by functioning. If it “works,” it must be right. If it pays, it must be necessary. The Trump Administration has elevated this vulgarity into doctrine, and nowhere is it more obscenely displayed than in Venezuela, now that Nicolás Maduro has been removed from the stage and replaced by spreadsheets.
We are instructed to cheer. A dictator has fallen. Justice, allegedly, has crossed the Caribbean. But while the cameras linger on the captive villain, the real proceedings take place elsewhere, not in courts of law, but in conference rooms and private ledgers, where legality is treated as a negotiable courtesy rather than a limit.
Maduro will face justice, we are told. Temporarily. History suggests the usual epilogue: exile, protection, a pension disguised as oblivion. This is familiar theater. What is new and far more instructive is what happens to Venezuela’s oil while the script is being finalized.
The Treasury That Went Missing
In a functioning republic, the disposition of billions is a matter of law, appropriation, and public consent. In Trump’s America, it is a matter of executive taste.
The administration is careful to emphasize what the oil money is not. It is not in the U.S. Treasury. It is not in Venezuelan hands. It is not subject to congressional appropriation or public accounting. It exists instead in what officials describe, with practiced vagueness, as “U.S.-controlled accounts at globally recognized private banks.”
This language is not descriptive; it is anesthetic. Controlled but not owned. Held but not possessed. Venezuelan but inaccessible to Venezuelans. American but immune from American democracy.
This is how a republic learns to speak like a shell company.
By routing the money around the Treasury, the administration neatly avoids the constitutional inconvenience known as Congress — that obsolete body to which the Framers, in a lapse of foresight, entrusted the power of the purse. In its place emerges a shadow budget: billions governed by executive discretion alone, sealed off from hearings, votes, or sunlight.
This is not a workaround. It is a declaration of independence from accountability.
Humanitarianism, Monetized
We are next assured, with great solemnity, that this money is “for the Venezuelan people.” Food. Medicine. Power grids. The usual liturgy is recited, as if the repetition of benevolent nouns could alchemize coercion into charity.
Then comes the clause that gives the game away: Venezuela will use this money to purchase only American-made goods.
This is not aid. It is a rebate scheme.
Oil exits Venezuela. Dollars orbit briefly in U.S.-controlled accounts. Those dollars are then funneled back into American corporations, American supply chains, American political constituencies. Venezuela receives whatever Washington deems suitable, whenever Washington approves it, under conditions Washington dictates.
This is not reconstruction. It is a company store with a humanitarian press release.
The starving are fed, provided their hunger can be invoiced.
Power Without Sunset
Defenders of this arrangement insist it is legal. They invoke sanctions law, OFAC licensing, and the absence of a formal declaration of seizure. This is legality in its most degraded form the worship of loopholes as though they were principles.
In practice, the executive branch has granted itself unilateral authority to control foreign resource revenues, decide their use, and dispense them without legislative consent. Republics do not behave this way. Empires do, usually just before insisting they are reluctant ones.
By maintaining the fiction that the money still “belongs” to Venezuela, the administration evades the consequences of theft while enjoying its rewards. Sovereignty is honored in theory and annulled in fact. Ownership is denied, control absolute.
There is no meaningful oversight. No independent audit. No deadline. No return of authority. The arrangement is indefinite, discretionary, and revocable only by those who benefit from it.
Power, in other words, with no expiration date.
The Trumpian Contribution
What distinguishes this episode from earlier American sins abroad is not hypocrisy that is abundant, but intimacy. The barrier between state power and private enrichment has not merely eroded; it has been removed as unnecessary.
Previous administrations at least pretended to separate national interest from personal profit. Trumpism discards the pretense. Public authority and private gain now occupy the same space, share the same vocabulary, and answer to the same impulse.
When critics observe that these arrangements resemble the offshore structures favored by kleptocrats, they are waved off as hysterics. But the resemblance is exact. Control without ownership. Profit without transparency. Power without responsibility.
America, having spent decades lecturing the world about corruption, now offers a practical seminar — complete with lawyers, logos, and a flag.
What the World Learns
Authoritarians everywhere are taking notes. They see that sovereignty is conditional, that resources may be “managed” by foreign powers if the paperwork is clever enough, and that humanitarian language is the most efficient weapon of domination yet devised.
They see, too, that constitutional limits are optional when ambition is sufficiently confident.
And they are correct.
The most dangerous export of this policy is not oil, nor money, but precedent. If the executive branch of the United States can control foreign assets on this scale, outside democratic oversight, in the name of virtue, then the sermon on the “rules-based order” may be permanently retired.
An Indictment Without a Court
Let us abandon euphemism. This is not an emergency measure or a temporary trust. It is a system. And systems reveal intent.
A government that seizes another nation’s revenue, warehouses it beyond scrutiny, dispenses it without consent, and recycles it for its own benefit has crossed a line older than constitutions. It has stopped governing and started managing, in the criminal sense of the word.
This is not only an injury to Venezuela. It is an assault on American self-rule.
For once Congress may be bypassed in the name of moral urgency, it may always be bypassed. Once money may be controlled without appropriation, corruption ceases to be a scandal and becomes a method. We have not destroyed the kleptocrat; we have scaled him.
This is how republics decay: not with coups, but with exceptions; not with jackboots, but with memoranda; not with tyranny declared, but with accountability postponed.
History will not be impressed by the terminology. It will not confuse “U.S.-controlled accounts” with altruism, or “humanitarian discretion” with consent. It will record, plainly, that the United States discovered it could exercise imperial power without naming it and found the arrangement comfortable.
The tragedy is not that Venezuela has been exploited. Poor nations always are. The tragedy is that a republic designed to prevent such abuses decided it had matured beyond its own restraints.
There will be no tribunal. There never is. Crimes of this sort do not end in trials; they end in precedents. They survive by normalization.
Let us be precise about what has not occurred: the Venezuelan people have not regained their resources. The American people have not authorized this power. No independent body oversees it. No sunset limits it. The money moves. The accounts settle. The language reassures.
And democracy is absent.
So the final question is not whether this policy is legal, profitable, or justifiable.
It is whether a people who once governed themselves are content to be ruled by accounts they cannot see, powers they did not grant, and a morality that requires them to avert their eyes.
That is the only verdict that remains outstanding.
Why It Matters
This is not merely a foreign-policy dispute, it is a domestic constitutional crisis disguised as humanitarian management. When executive power controls billions outside congressional oversight, democracy does not weaken gradually; it is functionally suspended. What is normalized abroad becomes precedent at home.
Key Takeaways
- Venezuela’s oil revenue is controlled by the U.S. executive branch outside congressional appropriation
- “Humanitarian aid” is conditioned on purchasing American goods, recycling profits back to U.S. corporations
- Executive authority has replaced democratic consent in managing foreign resources
- No independent audit, sunset clause, or legislative oversight exists
- The precedent enables imperial control without formal annexation or accountability
Further Reading – Bookshop.org
- The New Imperialism – David Harvey. A foundational analysis of how economic control replaces territorial conquest in modern empires. https://civilheresy.com/new imperialism
- Empire – Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri. Explores how global power operates through finance, legality, and managed sovereignty rather than occupation. https://civilheresy.com/Empire
- The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein. Documents how crises are exploited to impose policies that would never survive democratic consent. https://civilheresy.com/the shock doctrine
Power that avoids sunlight is not stewardship—it is theft with better branding.
If this essay sharpened your understanding of how empire disguises itself, support independent dissent: Read more, share freely, and explore the work at www.civilheresy.com
