The US Armed Forces on December 20 deployed heavily armed personnel by helicopter to take control of a Venezuelan oil tanker off the country’s coast, marking a major escalation in Washington’s ongoing efforts to topple its Caracas government and collapse its economy.
This occurred amid a continuous United States military buildup surrounding Venezuela which began in late August, most recently with the redeployment of the carrier strike group lead by the USS Gerald Ford nearer to the country, and the deployment of U.S. Air Force F-35A fighters and E-3 AWACS to contribute to the forward presence.
US Navy sending Aircraft Carrier from Mediterranean Sea to Venezuela
The operation targeting the tanker occurred exactly ten days after U.S. forces similarly landed personnel on a civilian tanker in International waters on December 10, again appropriating it.
The oil from both Venezuelan tankers is expected to either be sold and the funds appropriated by the USA, or else stored until a Western-aligned government can be installed in the country should the ongoing parallel, military, and political pressure campaigns succeed in toppling the current government.
The practice of targeting civilian shipping remains illegal, with critics of these actions having frequently referred to them as piracy.
The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry itself condemned the appropriation of the second oil tanker as an act of piracy and as theft and hijacking, further slamming the forced disappearance of the crew, the fates of which remain unknown.
It asserted that this was part of a colonialist model intended strip Venezuela of its sovereignty and resource wealth.
The seizure of a second Venezuelan tanker has the potential to bring the country’s oil exports to an almost complete halt, with these military operations expected to be highly complementary to the decades of high intensity economic warfare efforts that have been waged against the country by actors across the Western world.
China expanding footprint in Latin America
Policy experts in the USA have asserted that the three countries in Latin America that are currently outside the Western sphere of influence, namely Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, are all heavily inter-reliant, with the imposition of Western Bloc control over Venezuela expected to leave the remaining two vulnerable.
Venezuela’s tremendous resource wealth remains very largely unexplored, with its close strategic partnership with China in particular expected to potentially yield tremendous benefits for Chinese firms should they, rather than firms from the United States, Europe and Australia, be granted priority access.
The seizure of two Venezuelan tankers is far from an isolated incident, and reflects broader trends towards a growing tendency for Western forces to target civilian cargo in international waters.
U.S. special forces in November boarded a cargo ship in the international waters in the Indian Ocean, securing, removing and destroying civilian goods that were being shipped from China to Iran.
Although cargo was confirmed by officials to have had both military and civilian uses, the widespread characterization of dual use goods has meant that they cover a very wide range of civilian industrial products.
This operation, too, was widely considered by international legal exports to have been carried out entirely outside the bounds of international law, and sets a precedent for the destruction of Chinese industrial exports by Western forces in international waters across much of the world.
The United States has on multiple prior occasions appropriated civilian cargo from adversary states as a means of placing pressure on their economies, with a notable example was the targeting of Iranian oil tankers from the late 2010’s, the oil from which was taken by the US Navy and subsequently sold with no compensation paid to Iran.
Another was the Navy’s seizure of the North Korean cargo ship Wise Honest, its subsequently sale, and the appropriation of the funds by the United States with no compensation paid to the North Korean state which owned the vessel.
The U.S. Naval Institute in 2020 proposed hiring mercenary privateers to target Chinese civilian shipping in a similar way should relations further worsen.
In line with this trend, European states have also frequently been boarded Russian civilian ships international waters, with ships carrying the country’s oil exports being particularly singled out for targeting.
Military Watch Magazine / ABC Flash Point News 2025.
