The Geopolitical Dimensions of the US BOLIVAR Act

By Misión Verdad – Nov 28, 2024

Awaiting approval by the US Senate, the bipartisan bill titled “Banning Operations and Leases with the Illegitimate Venezuelan Authoritarian Regime Act,” known by its forced acronym “BOLIVAR Act,” represents a milestone in the institutionalization of illegal sanctions against Venezuela.

This law aims to—under a legislative and bipartisan framework—perpetuating the executive orders that have operated as the core of the economic and financial coercion policy against Venezuela over the past ten years.

Within the law, the definition of the term “person” as a legal object establishes an expansion of the scope of sanctions, covering everything from individuals and private entities to governmental bodies and their extensions, thereby creating a vast catalog of potential targets on an international scale.

PERSON: The term “person” means:

A natural person, corporation, company, business association, partnership, trust, or any other entity, organization, or non-governmental group.
Any governmental entity or its extension.
Any successor, subunit, parent or subsidiary entity of, or any entity under common ownership or control with, any entity described in subparagraph 1 or 2.

Although it does not explicitly mention secondary sanctions, they are implied by including entities under “common ownership or control” with Venezuela.

This introduces a notable geopolitical dimension to the bill, in pursuit of facilitating actions of financial, economic, and international pressure against Venezuela with the aim of affecting both private sector intermediaries and state entities that orbit around the multipolar alliances to which Venezuela subscribes.

A recent example of this is the arrest of a Turkish citizen, accused of facilitating the transportation of Venezuelan oil in an alleged “violation of the sanctions enforcement.” This illustrates how the US institutional framework, including the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Justice, acts as a weapon that combines intimidation, harassment, and covert operations.

The mention of this element is important. The geopolitical orientation of the BOLIVAR Act is also accentuated by the incorporation, in the bill, of intelligence mechanisms under the aegis of the 1947 National Security Act, a decision that justifies the execution of covert operations aimed at regime change.

In fact, according to Venezuela’s Permanent Representative to the UN Samuel Moncada, coercive measures of this kind have a dual component: they are open in their formulation but covert in their execution, using threats and pressures to deter potential international allies of Venezuela.

The act pursues economic as well as geopolitical objectives, which reflects a clear intention to unilaterally condition not only the commercial and energy mechanisms of the Venezuelan state but also its interactions with international factors in a broad sense. It seeks to disrupt the broadening of Venezuela’s ties with the rising multipolar axis.

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Sanctions as a geopolitical tool
Gradualism is an inherent characteristic of the US policy of unilateral sanctions because it is natural for the target country to seek alternative mechanisms of international cooperation while facing increasing pressure.

The economist Agathe Demarais, in her book Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against US Interests (2022), comments that the United States noticed that the sanctions regime on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was insufficient. It hindered the fluidity of Pyongyang’s trade relations with other countries; nevertheless, the DPRK government, based on its legitimate right to self-determination, managed to evade US coercion.

As for Iran, the US initiated a scheme of secondary sanctions that prohibit its oil trade to third countries or companies, a mechanism that it continues to export to other countries.

The experience of sanctions against these countries shows how the United States adapts its coercive policy and shifts from direct measures to secondary sanctions, whose main objective is to erode the target countries’ economies and disrupt their trade dynamics.

However, the notion of gradualism also creates a space for adaptation for the target countries, which develop alternative mechanisms in terms of trade, finance, and geopolitical alliances, as has been the case with Venezuela.

Therefore, after exerting sufficient pressure and not achieving the set objectives, the US government is feeling the strain of applying sanctions. Consequently, it is adjusting its approach to refine its application, as outlined in the BOLIVAR Act, which represents a new push to disrupt Venezuela’s growing prominence in the BRICS axis, resulting in a qualitative leap in the dynamization of Venezuela’s trade relations with key multipolar powers, namely, Russia, China, and Iran.

In the case of Venezuela, the sanctions have fostered a strategic rapprochement with emerging powers and allied countries. An example of this is Venezuela’s recent signing of 17 agreements with Russia during the 18th Meeting of the High-Level Intergovernmental Commission, aiming to increase Venezuelan exports to Russia by 453% and strengthening bilateral trade. In addition, there are advances in agreements with Iran, which include more than 80 approved projects and a dozen new agreements under negotiation. These alliances strengthen a system of cooperation aimed at mitigating the impact of sanctions and diversifying Venezuela’s commercial options.

In addition, last year the bilateral relationship between Venezuela and China reached a new level with the establishment of a “All-Weather strategic partnership,” which consolidates a framework of cooperation that transcends the economic to encompass technological, energy, and geopolitical areas. This strengthening of Sino-Venezuelan ties comes in the backdrop of a regional context where Chinese influence is rapidly growing and filling the gaps left by the United States in Latin America.

The growing presence of China in Latin America, with significant cooperation frameworks and tangible investments such as the Chancay port in Peru or the BYD plant in Brazil, exposes the lack of strategic projects led by Washington that could generate a significant regional impact with concrete geopolitical gains.

The institutionalization of illegal sanctions through the BOLIVAR Act seeks to test not only Venezuela’s resilience but also to disrupt the solidity of emerging alliances that aim to counteract US hegemony.

Venezuela’s strategic relations with the multipolar world have been generating increasingly significant results. In response to this “urgency,” the BOLIVAR Act aims to derail the deepening of these ties before it is too late for the US.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

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