STRATEGIC RESOURCES AS DRIVERS OF HYBRID PRESSURE: A GEOPOLITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE VENEZUELAN CRISIS
STRATEGIC RESOURCES AS DRIVERS OF HYBRID PRESSURE: A GEOPOLITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE VENEZUELAN CRISIS

Author(s): Simona-Daniela BORDEA, Niculai-Tudorel LEHACI
Subject(s): Security and defense, Military Sciences
Published by: Carol I National Defence University Publishing House
Keywords: Venezuela; hybrid threats; strategic resources; energy security; critical minerals; great-power competition; multi-domain operations.
Summary/Abstract: This article examines how Venezuela’s oil, gold, and coltan have been transformed from sources of geopolitical relevance into channels of hybrid pressure. It argues that the country’s extractive wealth is shaped not only by rentier dependence and institutional erosion, but also by sanctions, diplomatic contestation, illicit governance, and great-power competition. Using a qualitative case-study design and process-tracing logic, the analysis brings together literature on natural resources and conflict, sanctions and extractive governance, and hybrid threats and multi-domain competition. The findings show that Venezuela’s resource abundance increased its geopolitical salience, but under conditions of weak governance it also generated vulnerability. Sanctions did not create the crisis, but intensified structural weaknesses, while the expansion of mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc reinforced opacity, criminal penetration, and territorial insecurity. The article concludes that Venezuela’s strategic significance derives not only from the scale of its reserves, but from the way those reserves interact with infrastructure, legality, legitimacy, illicit networks, and external alignments. In fragile rentier states, strategic resources may therefore function not only as assets of power, but also as nodes of hybrid pressure.

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