Zacheaus Somorin 
When the U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of a cargo of
Venezuelan crude oil last week, the headlines framed it simply: another
enforcement action against the regime of Nicolás Maduro. The tanker, reportedly
carrying over half a million barrels of oil, was intercepted under U.S. sanctions
intended to cripple Caracas’s primary revenue stream. On the surface, this is a
familiar story of Washington pressuring a socialist government it deems
illegitimate.
But look closer at the cargo’s path and the financial web behind it, and a more
complex, strategic confrontation emerges. The true targets of this seizure may not
reside in Miraflores Palace, but in Moscow and Beijing. Venezuela has become the
chessboard for an indirect, economic war where the United States is challenging its
great-power rivals by cutting off their client state.
The oil in question was not simply sold by Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA to a
random buyer. According to court documents, the shipment was part of a complex
scheme to obfuscate ownership and payment, allegedly involving shell companies
and shadowy intermediaries. Crucially, the ultimate beneficiary and financial
backer of such trades is often Russia or China.
Hence, a case of proxy transaction.
For years, as U.S. sanctions tightened, Russia and China became Venezuela’s
economic lifelines. They provided billions in loans, investment, and technical
support, to be repaid not in cash, but in deeply discounted oil. Chinese state firms
have long been the top recipients of Venezuelan crude under these oil-for-loan
deals. Russian companies like Rosneft have traded, transported, and even marketed
Venezuelan oil globally, providing a critical shield against U.S. financial isolation.
Therefore, seizing this cargo does more than deny Maduro $60-70 million. It
directly intercepts a resource destined to repay a debt to Beijing or a profit to
Moscow. It sends a powerful message: We can and will disrupt your return on
investment. Your foothold in this hemisphere is not secure.
To assert that Maduro is not a target would be false. The primary, stated objective
of U.S. sanctions is to deprive his government of resources, fracture its coalitions,
and force a political transition. He is very much in the crosshairs.
However, the escalation and method of pressure, particularly high-stakes maritime
seizures, reveal a secondary, equally important objective: to contest the
geopolitical influence of Russia and China in America’s backyard. Venezuela is
their most significant strategic and economic beachhead in Latin America.
For Russia, Venezuela is a symbolic ally, a weapons client, and a platform to
project power and nuisance value against the U.S., reminiscent of the Cold War.
Undermining its position there strikes at Russian prestige and its ability to act as a
global spoiler.
For China, the relationship is fundamentally economic and strategic. Venezuela is
a key node in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and a major source of long-term
energy security. Disrupting the oil-for-loan repayment pipeline threatens Chinese
state assets and challenges the reliability of its alternative, sanctions-defying
financial system.
By making it riskier and more costly for Russian and Chinese entities to do
business with Caracas, the U.S. is engaged in a form of "secondary sanctioning."
The action may be against a Venezuelan tanker, but the deterrent signal is aimed at
boardrooms in Shanghai and Moscow: Your dealings here carry extreme financial
and operational risk.
This is not a war of tanks and troops, but of tankers, treasury designations, and
transaction clearances. It is an indirect conflict where the battleground is
Venezuela’s crippled economy and the primary casualties are the economic
strategies of rival powers. An indirect war fought with economic weapons
The seizure of the oil vessel demonstrates a calculated escalation.
It moves beyond freezing assets and denying visas to actively interdicting physical commodities in
transit. This raises the stakes for all parties: For Maduro, it deepens the crisis, but may also rally nationalist sentiment and push him further into the arms of his patrons. For Russia and China, it forces a
recalculation. Do they double down with more covert methods, absorbing greater
losses? Or do they gradually recalibrate their exposure, seeing Venezuela as a
sinking ship? For the U.S., it tests the limits of its "maximum pressure" campaign.
While it weakens adversaries, it also exacerbates humanitarian suffering in
Venezuela, creating a moral and diplomatic backlash. In the end, the question of
whether the target was Maduro, or China and Russia, presents a false dichotomy.
The seizure strategy effectively merges these fronts. By relentlessly attacking the
revenue of the Maduro regime, Washington inherently attacks the interests of those
propping it up.
The seized tanker is a trophy in this indirect war. It represents a tactical victory in
denying resources to a pariah state, and a strategic shot across the bow of
America’s great-power competitors. It declares that the contest for influence in
Venezuela is a zero-sum game, and the United States intends to use its command
of global finance and law enforcement to ensure that its rivals cannot win or profit
on this particular field. The Venezuelan people, caught in the middle of this high-
stakes contest, remain the ultimate pawns in a game that is far larger than their
borders.
