The Functional Erosion of Liberal Governance and the Exhaustion of the Hegemonic Model in Washington

  

 

By: Dr. Kelly J. Pottella G.

The fate of María Corina Machado in the halls of Washington is no longer governed by the rhetoric of liberal values, but by the physics of power and the urgency of resources. In the current order of fragmented forces, where control over energy flows prevails over the narrative of liberty, Machado has transitioned from being a geopolitical asset to an obstacle for imperial pragmatism. The naked truth is that the United States does not seek to "liberate" the nation, but to manage it as a strategic asset under custody. The BOLIVAR Act of 2024, originally designed to financially suffocate the Venezuelan government, has been neutralized through a mechanism of "national interest shielding," coldly executed from the Oval Office itself.

The contradiction is as flagrant as it is cynical. While sectors of the Capitol instrumentalize Machado’s image to capture electoral quotas, the White House has implemented Executive Order 14373 of January 9, 2026, which represents the death certificate of the opposition’s political autonomy. This order institutionalizes the Foreign Government Deposit Funds, a mechanism where all income from the commercialization of hydrocarbons is redirected to accounts under the absolute control of the U.S. Treasury. With this modification, Washington strips the opposition of any real management capacity: they are allowed to maintain a symbolic title, while the U.S. retains financial governance through a "custodial nature," treating the nation as a technical protectorate.

The "Legal Shield" of OFAC licenses has turned civilian actors into decorative figures. The American Executive has understood that it can secure its crude oil quotas—agreed upon this January between 30 and 50 million barrels—through direct transactions with the real power, invoking "National Security" to waive legal prohibitions. In this board, the Essequibo Territory emerges not as a territory in dispute, but as the critical resource node that Washington aspires to manage under its own industrial and digital control. The message is brutal: the empire has no allies, only interests; and if the national interest demands ignoring civilian actors to ensure the energy supply that keeps the American economy afloat, it will do so without blinking.

The recent reception at the Capitol is not a real backing, but the ultimate expression of political hypocrisy; a symbolic "consolation prize" while the same administration that receives her publishes its "365 victories," where it boasts about the revocation of TPS for 500,000 Venezuelans. The North American model of domination is implacable: it rewards victors and discards those who only accumulate defeats. Today, Machado only holds a crystal trophy that attempts to hide a chain of failures and an international interest that has also foundered. It is the epilogue of a political scam that promised a "freedom" that was, in reality, a handover of the keys to the highest bidder.

It is revealing to observe how the sectors of the radical opposition that promoted internal destruction ended up exporting their own darkness. Those "guarimberos" who yesterday burned people in the streets under the guise of civil protest are today the same faces that Washington classifies as "worst criminals" and members of the "Tren de Aragua" in its deportation decrees. That non-conventional violence did not dissolve at the border; it simply changed scenery, and today the empire utilizes the Alien Enemies Act to expel those it previously funded as "freedom fighters." The thuggery that once besieged Chavista communities is now a transnational delinquency that shames the honest and hardworking Venezuelan people who were already established abroad with dignity.

While that diaspora of resentment seeks new victims, true national unity has been forged on the soil they despised. Those of us who stayed understood that freedom is a daily and heroic construction of those who raised the country amidst criminal sanctions and attacks that sought the breakdown of our family structure. We, who resisted creatively, are the true decent people, those of us dedicated to building upon the ashes that extremism left behind.

The final message from Washington is one of mathematical coldness: the system prefers a constant flow of crude oil under Treasury custody over the risk of a sovereign democracy that decides its own allies. Machado thus remains trapped in her own paradox: she is the leader of a hope that the empire has already exchanged for 50 million barrels of energy security, while the real country follows its course, ignoring the consolation prizes of those who bet on collapse and ended up becoming the migratory waste of their own sponsors.