Implications, Paths Forward and Humanitarian Concerns in a Post-Maduro Venezuela

By Charles Petrik, January 26, 2026

The United State’s recent forced extradition of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, as a part of “Operation Southern Spear,” was justified by US authorities on the basis of their alleged involvement in the Cartel de Las Soles. They now face charges related to drug trafficking  in the US. This operation has precipitated a sudden leadership transition in Venezuela and reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to projecting a renewed Monroe Doctrine-style power in the Western Hemisphere, including ongoing attacks on boats accused of smuggling drugs and the seizure of five oil tankers as a part of their ongoing maritime blockade.

Whether Maduro and Flores ultimately face imprisonment or exile is expected to be determined over the course of 2026; however, their return to Venezuela is widely regarded as politically impossible. In response to the operation, adversaries, the UN, and several members of the EU have all been critical, arguing that the operation constituted a violation of international law. These legal challenges are likely to unfold over a long period of time and remain in tension with Maduro’s establishment and its well-documented human rights violations, which continue to affect the country.

Since the operation, the US has shifted its focus toward “fixing” and profiting from Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, straying away from explicit promises to promote democracy or provide humanitarian aid. While this demonstration of American military power and continued economic pressure represents a major flashpoint in the region, it is unlikely to reduce drug deaths in the US, produce a democratic transition in Venezuela, or generate substantial economic returns for Washington. Nevertheless, it does present an opportunity for the US to embrace values-based persuasion, reengage with regional partners and build stability that will exist past the Trump administration. 

US Goals Are Unlikely to be Accomplished

Maduro’s regime represents a continuation of the Chavez-era political order, where political repression and economic patrimonialism dominated the country. These dynamics have contributed to the mass migration and persistent human rights violations. Colonel Mark F. Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) argued that the United States currently faces “two competing goals: U.S. reimbursement and Venezuela’s well-being” which are largely incompatible as long as Maduro’s establishment remains in power.

The Interim President and Maduro loyalist, Delcy Rodríguez recently expressed her desire to work with the US in order to maintain “balance” while previously exclaiming that “Venezuela would not be ‘a colony of an empire’.” Often described as ideologically rigid and politically savvy, Rodríguez is likely to prioritise deterring further external intervention and maintain stability in the country. Doing so is predicated on managing a complex web of state armed forces, the civilian colectivo militias, the FARC and the ELN, which threaten to fill a potential power vacuum.

Governance

Prevailing opinion suggests that the US has no intentions to pursue an immediate pro-democratic transition, rejecting the opportunity to work through the opposition in the short term. The next National Assembly elections are scheduled for 2031, while presidential term limits remain effectively unconstrained. In the meantime, the country will be run by Rodríguez, her brother Jorge Rodríguez, who is the renewed president of the National Assembly, and Vladimir Padrino López, the Minister of Defence, who has served since 2014. With the Maduro regime entrenched, US-Venezuela relations are likely to be shaped by a mutual accommodation of interests: economic payoff for the US and preservation of power for the establishment in Venezuela.  

Above all, the fundamental structure of the Venezuelan state will remain the same without elections that facilitate a democratic transition. Recently, there have been reports of citizens being arrested for celebrating Maduro’s capture under a new decree that allows the arrest of "any person involved in promoting or supporting the armed attack by the United States of America against the territory of the Republic.” As the ruling establishment perceives itself to be increasingly threatened, the risk of expanded state control, repression of dissent, and restrictions on free expression is likely to intensify.

Drugs and Oil

Although the US administration justified their recent operation as an attempt to limit the activities of the Cartel de Las Soles, designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), the removal of Maduro is unlikely to produce a measurable reduction in drug consumption or deaths in the United States. Venezuela functions primarily as a  transit country, and the majority of the fentanyl entering the US comes through Mexico. Additionally, the motive to reintroduce US investment into the country’s oil resources is a much longer, dangerous and conditional process than suggested by the Trump administration.

Venezuela has the world’s largest known crude oil reserves; however, sanctions, corruption and instability have reduced its exports by two-thirds in the past two decades. Oil accounts for most of the country’s national revenue, with 80% of recent exports directed toward China, largely as debt repayment for $10 billion accrued by Venezuela during Chavez’s rule. While the US blockade has restricted shipments globally, the absence of a clear mechanism through which Washington could compel sustainable market control leaves the repayment of China’s interests uncertain.

While market speculation in Venezuela’s oil industry has increased following the incursion, major firms such as Exxon recently signalled that the political and security situation in the country must improve for there to be any profitable enterprise. Defiance from Venezuelan officials, the presence and capabilities of internal opposition groups, and lack of security and economic guarantees significantly constrain the prospects for productive and safe investment. The hopes for extraction on the US’s terms are low in the near future and risks further conflict without a dedicated security force and humanitarian attention to support bottom-up development. In fact, with the opening of this volatile and instable market, it may encourage less-qualified investment and operations that further threaten sustainable and ethical extraction of oil in Venezuela, furthering humanitarian and ecological risk.

Potential Paths Forward and Implications

More productive routes moving forward would include a range of multilateral partnerships, potentially including Colombia and Brazil that could help mediate a democratic transition or future elections. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signalled that need for cooperation in his recent NYT op-ed, where, despite the stifled tone, he rebuked the US’s operations. The current US strategy was recently outlined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. The initial phase, stabilisation, is said to involve the quarantining of tankers and seizure of sanctioned oil, up to 50 million barrels. The US plans to sell this seized oil and use the revenue to support the Venezuelan people, broadly defined. However, this “revenue” would come from frozen Venezuelan assets rather than directly from newly generated income. The subsequent stage would focus on recovery, meaning to advance American interests in resource extraction, free political prisoners and restructure civil society. Secretary Rubio then proposed a final transition stage that would seek structural or democratic reform in the future. However, these proposals remain under-specified and lack credible implementation mechanisms.

With recent threats toward the sovereignty of Greenland and a new conflict brewing with Iran, the United States has demonstrated a willingness to use military action at the global scale, and on multiple different fronts as a tactic of coercion, as opposed to values-based persuasion. In Venezuela, this approach risks provoking or alienating other great powers, including Russia and China, which are unlikely to directly act out, but may see their growing influence in South America threatened by a neo-Monrovian United States. Russia has formally condemned the operation while China characterised it as a “typical act of bullying, a serious violation of international law, a severe infringement upon Venezuela's sovereignty, and a grave damage to the rights of the Venezuelan people." Although only 4% of China’s oil imports coming from Venezuela, continued US pressure may generate broader normative and geopolitical repercussions in relation to their interests. In reaction to the incursion, China has positioned itself as a moral voice in the UN Security Council despite economic and military coercion of their own, while Vladamir Putin could be further emboldened to draw out the war in Ukraine.

Embracing an “America First,” unilateral approach to establishing foreign interest and power, the US risks further isolating allies in South America, diluting its influence in other strategic theatres, and marginalising humanitarian and legal precedents that are essential to any sustainable relationship with Venezuela. However, Washington retains the capacity to protect its interests by reengaging in a persuasive, not coercive logic, that values working with regional partners to multiply political and economic leverage while rebuilding regional capacities in the process. Persuading a democratic transition is the most direct way forward to a safer, humanitarian Venezuela, but is a long-term, tactful pursuit, considering the multiple nodes of power currently operating in Maduro’s state structure.

Any positive intervention in Venezuela must therefore involve a carefully sequenced transition of power which engages multi-lateral pressure with a coordinated diplomatic approach. This would prioritise short-term relief and an internalisation of democratic norms to help promote eventual stability and “rule-consistent behaviour” in the country. Relaxing sanctions for humanitarian relief is potentially the path of least resistance for the US, if seeking long-term stability and mutual benefit. No matter what, any effective transition in Venezuela will be prolonged and fragile. Ultimately, sustainable democracy depends on oversight by actors without short-term extractive interests; otherwise, US methods will continue to undermine its own goals for regional engagement.

Hostage to Russian Oil: The Half-Binding Trap

By Vanesa Valcheva

On November 12, 2025, Professor Krzysztof Pelc delivered the inaugural Lester B. Pearson Lecture at Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations, centred around a provocative thesis about the nature of sovereignty and power in international relations. Pelc argued that states counterintuitively enhance their bargaining position by constraining their own future actions through international commitments. Like Odysseus binding himself to the mast to resist the Sirens' call, states that credibly tie their own hands through treaties and institutional memberships gain strategic advantages that more than compensate for the loss of short-term flexibility. When other actors recognise that a state genuinely cannot reverse course, they recalibrate their expectations and behaviour, generating trust among allies and credibility with adversaries. But Pelc emphasised a crucial caveat that effective self-binding requires "optimal imperfection," including verifiable escape clauses for genuinely unforeseeable circumstances, because without these pressure valves, commitments become brittle.

Just days before Pelc's lecture, Bulgaria and Romania, two NATO and EU member states, were frantically working to undermine the very sanctions regime their memberships ostensibly committed them to support. Bulgaria and Romania were racing against a November 21 US sanctions deadline to secure exemptions for Russian-owned Lukoil refineries that provide 80% and 20% of their respective fuel supplies. The Trump administration's late October 2025 restrictions on entities transacting with Rosneft and Lukoil suddenly imperilled these facilities, forcing what European capitals had avoided confronting for years. What makes Bulgaria and Romania particularly instructive is that both countries performed every ritual of Euro-Atlantic integration while quietly exempting the one dependency that rendered those commitments hollow.

The November scramble signals a deeper problem. Incomplete or selective self-binding creates vulnerabilities that are demonstrably worse than maintaining full flexibility. The half-bound state finds itself trapped between competing commitments, unable to credibly fulfil either one.

The Architecture of Incomplete Commitment

Romania and Bulgaria bound themselves extensively to Euro-Atlantic institutions between 2004 and 2007, with both joining NATO in March 2004 and the European Union in January 2007. The commitments were comprehensive, the sovereignty costs substantial. NATO membership subordinated their judgement about when to go to war to Article 5’s collective defence logic; EU membership required absorbing tens of thousands of pages of community law, accepting the supremacy of European jurisprudence in specified domains, and submitting to monitoring mechanisms that could compel compliance through infringement procedures. Both states spent years seemingly restructuring domestic institutions, harmonising legal frameworks, building capabilities that consumed enormous political and financial resources. They bound their hands tightly and deliberately in pursuit of security and prosperity.

Yet throughout this entire process, both countries left untouched the energy infrastructure that contradicted everything else they were building. Bulgaria’s Burgas refinery, under Lukoil ownership since 1999, expanded to process approximately 190,000 barrels per day—one of the largest facilities in the Balkans. The PETROTEL-LUKOIL refinery in Ploiești, privatised to Russian control in 1998, handles 2.4 million tons annually. For more than 15 years after accession, Sofia and Bucharest handed Moscow-linked entities carte blanche over the refineries that power their economies and armed forces.

Pelc's framework illuminates why the arrangement was always unsustainable. Binding generates credibility only when it changes how other actors perceive your future actions. When you promise to defend allies against Russian aggression while depending on Russian infrastructure, you have made commitments that cannot simultaneously hold. The defence pledge rings hollow if Moscow can shut down refineries when its strategic interest requires it. Rather than enhancing bargaining position through strategic self-binding, this configuration creates a structural vulnerability that both adversaries and allies can exploit, signalling unreliability to both camps. How can collective defence function when the adversary controls the fuel that powers the defence? This outcome is demonstrably worse than the flexibility that might come from maintaining genuine neutrality, because these states have accepted the costs and constraints of institutional membership without securing the benefits that credible alignment is meant to provide.

The Hungarian Counterfactual

Hungary offers an illuminating counterpoint. Viktor Orbán's government has maintained nominal EU and NATO membership while explicitly refusing to bind itself on energy policy or Russia sanctions. Budapest has blocked, delayed, or diluted multiple rounds of EU sanctions against Russia since 2022, and when the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russian energy assets in November 2025, Hungary successfully extracted a comprehensive exemption during Orbán's November 7 meeting with President Trump. Orbán's strategy works precisely because most other allies did self-bind on Russia policy, creating a collective commitment structure that Hungary can exploit without contributing fully to its maintenance—the classic free-rider problem.

Bulgaria and Romania, by contrast, chose a middle path that proved worse than either full commitment or full flexibility. Unlike Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania attempted to maintain the appearance of full alignment with Euro-Atlantic institutions, accepting both the formal sovereignty constraints and the informal expectation of policy coordination that membership entails. Unlike the Baltic states—which systematically eliminated Russian energy dependencies through LNG terminals, pipeline interconnectors, and alternative supply arrangements—Sofia and Bucharest never completed their strategic reorientation. They occupied a precarious middle ground, too aligned to maintain Hungary's room for manoeuvre, yet too dependent to match Baltic coherence.

Beyond Bulgaria and Romania

The Bulgarian and Romanian predicament exposes a vulnerability that extends far beyond two relatively small EU member states scrambling for sanctions exemptions. When member states reveal that their binding is incomplete across policy domains, they undermine the entire epistemic basis on which other actors form expectations about future behaviour, which is the currency that makes institutional membership valuable in the first place.

The dependency matters less for what Bulgaria and Romania import than for who controls the infrastructure doing the importing. Russian entities physically operate critical refineries on NATO territory during an active war between Russia and a neighbouring state the alliance supports. The refineries themselves become a form of leverage embedded in allied territory, creating vulnerabilities that extend beyond energy supply to questions of sovereignty and strategic coherence.

Of course, Bulgaria and Romania are not unique. Multiple EU member states maintain varying degrees of dependence on Russian energy infrastructure, banking relationships, or commercial ties that create analogous vulnerabilities. The November 2025 scramble signals to every other state with Russian exposure that incomplete commitment is not only tolerable but negotiable. Bulgaria's state seizure of the Burgas refinery and subsequent US wind-down extension until April 2026, combined with Romania's facilitation of private sale negotiations, establish a precedent that invites replication from member states facing structurally equivalent pressures. Each accommodation appears defensible in isolation—unique circumstances requiring flexible response, pragmatic adjustment to complex realities. But aggregated across multiple member states and policy domains, these accommodations transform the nature of commitment itself. The issue is not whether sanctions are the correct policy instrument, it is that states claiming collective alignment while negotiating individual carve-outs signal unreliability across every domain where coordination matters.

For non-European observers, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, this spectacle provides invaluable intelligence about how European security institutions function under duress. If NATO and EU members cannot maintain basic coherence on energy policy when facing an active territorial war, what does it mean for Taiwan or South Korea to invest in partnerships with European states that prove unable to sever dependencies with adversarial powers even when their own security architecture is directly threatened? The credibility deficit compounds globally, not just regionally.

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The Bulgarian and Romanian scramble demonstrates that partial strategic commitment generates liabilities worse than neutrality itself. By binding themselves extensively to Euro-Atlantic institutions while maintaining dependencies that directly contradict those commitments, both states accept sovereignty costs without securing credibility benefits. The result is a strategic posture that signals unreliability to allies and vulnerability to adversaries simultaneously.

Professor Pelc argued that states gain power by tying their own hands. Bulgaria and Romania discovered that tying only one hand while leaving the other in Moscow's grip generates exploitable incoherence. Pelc's Odysseus bound himself completely to the mast. Bulgaria and Romania bound themselves just enough to restrict their freedom without securing their safety, hostage not to Russian oil alone but to the institutional fiction that commitment and dependency could indefinitely coexist.

Book Review - Undoing a Revolution: Sudan and the Politics of Debt

Cross, Harry. Undoing a Revolution: Sudan and the Politics of Debt. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2025.

A longer version of this review will be published in a future issue of Sudan Studies by the Sudan Studies Society (UK) - sssuk.org 

by James Morton

This important book challenges the way the West undid Sudan’s 2019 revolution by imposing IMF economic adjustment policies on the civilian-led Transitional Government.  To set the scene, Cross traces the history of Sudan’s economic dealings with the West in two phases.  For the first three decades, from Independence in 1956 to the coup of 1989 which brought the National Islamic Front to power, western lenders led by the IMF and aid donors kept the Sudanese economy afloat in return for Sudan’s acceptance of the West’s policies on the Middle East, Israel in particular.  The Islamic coup put an end to that deal.  For the next three decades Sudan had to do without western support and came under ever stronger western sanctions.  It proved surprisingly resilient, so much so that Omar Al Bashir’s Salvation regime outlasted all its predecessors.  The heart of the book is its analysis of what happened after his overthrow in 2019.  How the West returned immediately to business as usual, offering minimal economic support in return for maximum and immediate acceptance of western policies.  This offer was made to a Transitional Government which had no mandate beyond a precarious compromise between military and paramilitary forces and disparate civil society groups.  To cap it all, economic support was conditional on the usual stringent IMF package of fiscal adjustment policies.   The book ends by showing how this undid Sudan’s popular revolution and buried its progressive hopes, arguing that the International Community must find a better way to support to popular revolutions, a way that escapes the orthodoxy of fiscal adjustment and debt repayment.

Almost since independence, Sudan’s need for external financing has dominated domestic politics.  In 1958 the political parties’ inability to agree on a proposed US loan of $30 million led to General Abboud’s coup.  Egypt’s Jamal Abd al Nasser commented at the time that the US was using aid and soft loans to replace British imperialism.  It is difficult not to agree.  For the next 30 years the West’s support for Sudan’s finances was conditional on Sudanese support for western, especially US policies.    As Cross describes it, international creditors ‘weaponised’ aid and credit to impose their politics on Sudan.  They had to recognise, however, that it could not pay its debts without that aid and credit.  Which made ‘insolvency a bargaining chip in the hands of the debtor.’ 

Sudan had to play the insolvency card many times.  As long as it accepted western political demands the card always took its trick.  In 1984, when it defaulted on external loans totalling $1.9 billion the country was insolvent again.  From then on, a pattern of ‘extend and pretend’ allowed Sudan to negotiate a series of refinancing agreements with the IMF; each agreement required devaluation, budgetary control and the elimination of subsidies.  Government never met these conditions and the adjustment policies clearly did not work.  That did not matter.  Sudan was the only Arab nation to support Egypt’s recognition of Israel, so Western governments continued to provide aid “on a ‘drip feed’ of liquidity that purchased political influence and loyalty in Khartoum.”

High on the list of western requirements was an end to the civil war in South Sudan which had been set off by President Numeiri’s introduction of Islamic Shari’a law.  Four years after his overthrow, the democratic government’s attempt to end the war by softening the Shari’a laws set off Sudan’s third military coup.  This time, however, the officers leading it were not socialist or Nasserist.  They were Islamist and they went on to rule for 30 years, well over three times longer than any previous regime. 

In response “western aid fell off a cliff and Sudan’s external accounts collapsed” while sanctions on Sudan grew ever stronger.  In 1993 the US designated it as a State Sponsor of Terrorism; putting Sudan off limits for any company with business in the US and cutting it off from international financial networks.  Fatally, the Sudanese Government justified the designation by harbouring the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and by its involvement in the EIJ’s 1995 attempt to assassinate Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa.  Expelling the EIJ and Osama Bin Laden and handing Carlos the Jackal over to the French was not enough to recover the position.  Sudan was still blamed for EIJ’s 1998 attack on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam and, in 2000, for the bombing of USS Cole.  As punishment for the first, Bill Clinton bombed the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum on the grounds that it was making weapons of mass destruction; grounds later admitted to be false.  Of the alleged masterminds of the attack on USS Cole, two were Saudi and three were Yemeni.  No matter.  In 2008 US law was amended with retrospective effect to allow American judges to order Sudan to pay $8 million in compensation to the victims. 

Cross’ speculation “that the 1995 assassination attempt was deliberately leveraged to exert sanctions and diplomatic pressure against the regime” was made explicit in 1997 when Madeleine Albright called for regime change in Sudan.  Partly in response to that pressure, Al Bashir split with the National Islamic Front but any chance of international rehabilitation disappeared with the destruction of the World Trade Centre and the start of the Global War on Terror. Sudan would have to find other ways to support its economy.  Over the next 20 years Sudan’s National Congress Party government did just that, demonstrating “innovation and resourcefulness as it reoriented the economy under a state of siege.”  It drew in investment from the Arab Gulf states and most importantly China. It by-passed financial sanctions through banking networks in the Gulf.  With Chinese investment it was finally able to realise its oil resources.

Islamic finance played a key part in the rise of the National Islamic Front.  This was not just patronage for NIF supporters.  From 1989 onwards credit to small businesses and low-income households resulted in an “economic democratisation (which) consolidated a new business class who identified with the regime and who operated within national supply chains capable of resisting economic sanctions.”  This was at the expense of the commercial classes which supported Sudan’s traditional political parties.  Devaluations during the 1990s were “another means of economic democratisation and a means of redistributing wealth from the supporters of former regimes to a new Islamist guard.”  These are large and over-simplified claims.  Nevertheless, the point stands.  Under onerous sanctions the National Congress Party government managed positive developments in Sudanese society and built a genuine constituency for Islamic rule. 

The Forces for Freedom and Change, the civil society grouping which dominated the transition after Al Bashir’s fall, had little contact with this constituency and no wish to represent it.  Islamist groups were excluded from the transition process and elections were held back for three years for fear that the voters might give the wrong, Islamist answer.  The most influential civilian voices in the transition, many of them anglophone and some in the diaspora, were more attuned to western ideas of root and branch regime change.  In a re-run of the de-Baathification error which threw Iraq into chaos they sought to eliminate Islamists from every level of government and the military.  In this light the Sudan Armed Forces’ participation in the 2021 coup was at least partly defensive, as was Islamist support for that coup.   

The civilian government appointed by the Transitional Sovereignty Council was equally out of touch with the grass roots.  The Prime Minister, Abdallah Hamdok, and Ibrahim El Badawi, his Minister of Finance, were economists who had been working overseas in various international agencies since the 1990s.  They were primed to accept the economic policies proposed by the IMF. 

In his book When Peace Kills Politics, Srinivasan argues that western dominance of Sudan’s peace processes has created a political class focussed on international actors and out of touch with their national constituencies; what he describes as the ‘extroversion and withering of civil politics.’  Cross argues the point more forcefully.  With elections delayed and diaspora technicians in key positions, this offered “a rare opportunity for Sudan’s Anglophone elite with links in the West and with international institutions to reform the country in their image, with the influence of both the military and the religious, regional and sectarian constituencies of the provinces temporarily checked.”  Another very strong claim, but it is difficult to disagree when reading that the Transitional Government had time to appease western tastes by overturning the law banning alcohol in Sudan.  As a mark of disrespect to Sudan’s religious community from a government with no democratic mandate it could not have been bettered.

However, it was the Transitional Government’s compliance with the West’s economic demands which played the biggest part in undoing Sudan’s revolution: demands for an extreme form of austerity which led to public expenditure being cut by 24%, an 85% devaluation and fuel prices increased by 400%.  For developing countries, the West’s economic policy is simple: ‘Never forgive and never forget.’  Sudan defaulted on its debts in 1984 but those dating as far back as the 1970s remained on its balance sheet, still gathering interest and charges.  Because of sanctions, Sudan was one of only two countries not to benefit from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative to settle its debts with the IMF and World Bank and write down its other debts.  To qualify for HIPC the IMF’s conditions had to be met.  On top of this Sudan had to get the US to remove its designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism by recognising Israel and paying $335 million compensation for its alleged involvement in attacks on US embassies.  That was around a third of Sudan’s foreign exchange reserves.  No reverse compensation was offered for bombing the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory.

One can disagree with several points in the book.  Most significant is the way Cross seeks to “resist explanations that point to the ‘corruption’ or ‘mismanagement’ of Sudanese politicians, as such explanations typically lack precision and overlook structural factors leading to large debt overhangs.”  This is far too easy.  There is ample evidence that corruption and mismanagement, without inverted commas, are deeply rooted in Sudanese governance and politics.  In places it is just naive: the suggestion, for example, that the Sudanese Armed Forces abdicated their responsibility for security in Darfur because “it was unfamiliar to most senior officers and [its] heavy military vehicles were ill-adapted to the semi-arid terrain…”  Darfur is no more arid than any other part of Sudan and the SAF had had half a century to learn how to operate in the region.  Since the Numeiri era, however, the military leadership concentrated on defending its economic and political interests in Khartoum.  It never provided the material, financial and above all human resources necessary to do its job properly in Darfur.  And Sudanese politicians never held the SAF to account for this failure. 

None of this detracts from the book’s central point.  That the West, in particular the US, repeatedly moved the goalposts to ensure that the National Congress Party government could never escape sanctions.  And when it finally got the regime change it wanted it moved the goalposts again and set the Transitional Government up to fail by attempting to force the Sudan to settle 50 years of financial accounts before it could draw breath.  The case Cross makes for a new approach seems proven beyond any reasonable doubt.  Such an approach would include unconditional short-term assistance for any new government installed with popular support and a form of sovereign bankruptcy which would allow highly indebted countries to escape the cycle of adjustment and insolvency tied to political compliance.

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James Morton the reviewer was Mid Career Fellow at St Antony’s in 1991/92. Before that he worked for two years in the Yemen Arab Republic and six years in Darfur. With a degree in Arabic and a PhD in Economics he has published widely on development economics:https://ssrn.com/author=1666442

Semiconductors and Transitional Justice: Reassessing Taiwan’s Place in the East Asian Order

SARAH CAO

Introduction

On 6 November, the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies hosted Professors Chung-min Tsai and Yen-pin Su from National Chengchi University for a seminar exploring the changing dimensions of Taiwan’s global role. Professor Tsai’s presentation, “From Power Politics to Norms: Theoretical Reflections on Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry and East Asian Security,” examined how Taiwan’s chip industry reflects a broader evolution in international relations. Professor Su’s talk, “Democratic Support and Public Attitudes Toward Transitional Justice Policies in Taiwan,” analyzed how public opinion and democratic values shape the pursuit of justice in post-authoritarian societies.

Together, their research portrayed Taiwan at two interlocking frontiers: the high-tech economy that anchors regional stability and the moral framework that sustains its democratic legitimacy. While their topics appear distinct, both examined how Taiwan’s institutions and ideas reinforce each other in shaping the East Asian order.

The Geopolitics of Semiconductors

Professor Tsai began by framing Taiwan’s semiconductor industry as a “testing ground” for international relations theories. Through a realist lens, he noted that chips are strategic commodities whose control confers geopolitical leverage. Taiwan’s technological dominance, anchored by TSMC’s dominant market share in advanced chip manufacturing, creates a form of strategic dependence for major powers.

From a neoliberal perspective, Tsai argued that the semiconductor supply chain exemplifies how cross-border cooperation matters. Companies such as ASML, NVIDIA, and TSMC participate in an intricate global network of design, equipment, manufacturing, and advanced packaging. The CHIPS and Science Act and the proposed CHIP 4 Alliance reflect the US’s effort to institutionalize supply chain security. Tsai described this as a “new form of collective security,” one that redefines national defense through economic interdependence and industrial policy rather than troop deployments or military alliances.

Constructivist theory, he explained, offers a third lens. Taiwan’s reputation as a reliable chip producer has become tied to its democratic identity. It conveys moral leverage, allowing Taiwan to frame itself as a responsible global stakeholder rather than merely a pawn in great-power competition.

Yet, Tsai cautioned against overreliance on this metaphor. For Beijing, he observed, “the Taiwan issue is about sovereignty, not about economic development.” Economic deterrence can delay conflict but cannot displace deeply rooted political imperatives. He argued that although the likelihood of war in the short term remains low, strategic uncertainty persists because Taiwan’s economic centrality also makes it a potential pressure point.

Tsai situated these theories within the political economy of semiconductors, a global industry valued at 610 billion USD in 2023. Taiwan’s central role within this system is anchored by TSMC, which holds more than 50 percent of the market for advanced chips and continues to lead in manufacturing and advanced testing and packaging.

Despite its success, this concentration carries risk. “Global demand for trusted chips enhances deeper partnerships for Taiwan,” Tsai explained, “but strategic overdependence invites coercion.” Diversification is theoretically desirable, but replicating Taiwan’s cluster of technical expertise, industrial coordination, and governance capacity is empirically difficult. Tsai cited TSMC’s global expansion plan—with new sites in Germany, Japan, the United States, and Taiwan—as an attempt to balance resilience with continued efficiency. While Taiwan dominates advanced manufacturing, its dependence on raw material imports and energy stability remains a structural vulnerability.

Democracy and the Politics of Memory

While Professor Tsai examined Taiwan’s external security, Professor Yen-pin Su turned inward to analyze its democratic foundations. His research investigates how citizens’ democratic values shape support for transitional justice (TJ) measures.

Taiwan presents a unique case among late democratizers. Although its transition from authoritarianism occurred in the late 1980s, comprehensive transitional justice efforts were not institutionalized until the Transitional Justice Commission was established in 2018. Su argued that this time lag provides a valuable lens for understanding how democracies mature after consolidation, when memories of repression are more distant and public attention shifts to new political and economic concerns.

Drawing on data from the 2022 Taiwan Democratic Value and Governance Survey (N=1,264), Su examined how individuals with stronger democratic support respond to different transitional justice policies. He defined “democratic support” as a diffuse commitment to regime-level principles such as rule of law, political equality, and government accountability, rather than short-term satisfaction with incumbents. Using an ordered probit model with sample selection, Su found a consistent and positive relationship between democratic support and endorsement of transitional justice measures. Citizens who expressed stronger belief in democracy were more likely to support truth investigations, prosecution of perpetrators, and the removal of authoritarian symbols from public spaces.

Interestingly, support for victim compensation showed no statistically significant relationship. Su explained that this may be because compensation policies were introduced as early as 1995, meaning the public now views them as routine rather than transformative. By contrast, newer measures such as the settlement of ill-gotten party assets and the removal of statues and symbols associated with authoritarian rule remain politically salient. Su’s analysis also revealed that factors such as partisanship, national identity, and attitudes toward unification or independence influence both willingness to respond and degree of support. He emphasized that future research on transitional justice must account for these contextual variables, which shape how societies interpret accountability, fairness, and reconciliation.

Ultimately, Su argued that transitional justice is more than a backward-looking exercise. It is a measure of democratic endurance. Policies that promote truth, recognition, and accountability sustain civic trust and reinforce collective memory. They ensure that democracy in Taiwan is not only procedural but also moral. 

A Complicated Landscape

Tsai described East Asia as a “complicated geopolitical landscape” shaped by intersecting alliances and domestic politics. The United States, he said, acts as “the most important outside insider.” Taiwan, in turn, remains “one leg in and one leg out,” balancing its security partnerships and informal diplomatic networks. China and North Korea, he noted, behave as strategic partners, though not formal allies. Regional actors such as Japan and South Korea face similar balancing challenges as they navigate U.S. security guarantees and economic ties with China.

Professor Su’s research adds an important domestic dimension to this regional picture. While Tsai traced how states balance power externally, Su demonstrated how societies sustain legitimacy internally. His analysis of transitional justice policies showed that Taiwan’s democratic resilience depends on citizens’ continued support for accountability, truth-seeking, and the removal of authoritarian symbols. Just as East Asian governments balance alliances and autonomy, Taiwanese citizens engage in their own form of political balancing of reconciling historical memory with democratic consolidation. Su’s findings suggest that Taiwan’s capacity to navigate external complexity is inseparable from the stability of its civic norms and collective trust at home.

In the Q&A discussion, a participant referenced Graham Allison’s “Destined for War”, asking whether technological rivalry could generate unintended escalation. While Tsai concluded that the likelihood of war is low, he noted that the tech war is reshaping regional alignments. Japan’s and South Korea’s efforts to balance alliance commitments with economic interests exemplify this dynamic. Tsai underscored the importance of distinguishing between geo-economics and geopolitics, noting that policy decisions increasingly determine resource allocation “instead of what the market wants.” Increased interdependence has not produced deeper cooperation. Instead, national industrial policies have become the primary instruments shaping regional order. The semiconductor industry thus represents a convergence of power, institutions, and norms.

Taken together, Tsai’s and Su’s analyses situate Taiwan within a wider transformation of the East Asian order. In Tsai’s account, Taiwan demonstrates how power, institutions, and norms intersect in the global economy. The semiconductor industry illustrates how industrial policy and cross-border interdependence are now key to understanding regional interaction. Examining Su’s research, Taiwan’s transitional justice experience reveals how democratic commitment sustains the credibility of political institutions long after formal democratization.

These perspectives complement one another. Taiwan’s material contributions to the region’s technology networks are inseparable from the political values that underpin its domestic governance. Reassessing Taiwan’s place in East Asia requires understanding how the endurance of its democratic values and the reach of its technological innovation together shape the region’s evolving order.

The seminar was hosted by Dr. Bo-jiun Jing, Senior Research Fellow and Programme Manager in Taiwan Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. It forms part of the Oxford Taiwan Studies Seminar Series and this recap was produced in partnership between the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme and St Antony’s International Review (STAIR).

The Taiwan Test: Assessing Societal Resilience Using COVID Governance Experience

Noah Smith In conversation with Dr. Wei-ting yen

Introduction 

On 19 June, the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) hosted Dr. Wei-ting Yen to discuss her research surrounding Taiwan’s COVID experience and the lessons it offers on societal resilience. Dr. Yen is currently an assistant research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica. She also serves as Associate Editor for Asian Politics & Policy and is a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations. Dr. Yen’s research mainly focuses on democratic governance, comparative political economy, and welfare state development in Asia. Her recent work has examined pandemic politics from a comparative perspective. 

Before delving into her research, Dr. Yen shared her inspirations. Given Taiwan’s longstanding geopolitical isolation, foreign media tend to focus narrowly on issues of security and cross-Strait relations—especially the question of Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against China. What is often ignored, however, is Taiwan’s lived experience. Dr. Yen noted the media silence on Taiwan’s COVID governance performance, despite its proximity to China and perceived vulnerability.  

Building on this, Dr. Yen observed that while discourse often centers on the prospect of war with China, the societal will of the Taiwanese people is largely overlooked.  She argued that assessing the resilience of Taiwan’s civil society is equally, if not more, critical.. The people’s ability to function during crises, maintaining daily life and duties without panic, is a vital component of national defense. This brings us to the main focus of Dr. Yen’s seminar: What lessons might Taiwan’s COVID governance experience tell us about its societal resilience under wartime conditions? 

Explaining Taiwan’s COVID Management Success 

When COVID first broke out, Johns Hopkins University estimated that Taiwan would be among the top three countries to suffer the most from the virus. In reality, Taiwan did not have its first COVID outbreak until May 2021, remaining relatively COVID-free for 18 months. Furthermore, Dr. Yen’s data, obtained from the University of Oxford and covering the period from January 2020 to January 2022, showed that Taiwan’s cumulative confirmed COVID cases and deaths per million people were much lower compared to South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and the United States. These statistics illustrate  Taiwan’s success in containing  COVID.  

The first major conclusion of Dr. Yen’s research was that Taiwan’s success was in part due to the quick securitisation of the virus. Taiwan’s government succeeded in turning COVID into a national security issue, which forced more internal cohesion. Within three days of the Wuhan lockdown, then-president Tsai Ing-wen convened a high-level national security meeting. During this meeting, and despite the very small number of cases in Taiwan, Tsai compared fighting COVID to fighting a war. Other government officials echoed this tone, creating a unified consensus on the nature of the crisis. The government also put out daily COVID press conferences, maintaining constant dialogue with the people. Dr. Yen noted that wartime rhetoric surrounding COVID was not unique to Taiwan, but Taiwan was particularly successful in securitizing the virus due to the “self-help” mentality that has stemmed from international isolation and the fact that the virus came from China. This successful securitisation increased cohesion, minimising the collective action problem. This made businesses and people in Taiwan more willing to voluntarily support spread-containment and tracking policies, as well as border-related containment policies. 

Dr. Yen’s second conclusion was that Taiwan’s pre-crisis industry-level coordination capacity explains its success in mobilising resources to produce face masks, but not vaccines and testing kits. Crisis response requires coordinated mobilisation: identifying resources and key personnel, and deploying them effectively. During the pandemic, Taiwan’s acting Premier immediately declared face masks “crucial war reserve stocks,” imposed an export ban, and centralised distribution. Taiwan managed to multiply its mask production from 1.8 million per day to 16 million per day in just three months, thanks to companies’ cooperation in production and machinery retooling. Dr. Yen connected this successful coordination to Taiwan’s history as a developmental state. Taiwan’s developmental state model prioritised flexible Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which facilitated coordination, communication, and retooling during the mask production surge. 

However, the same developmental state model contributed to Taiwan’s lag in vaccine and testing kit production. The flexibility of the SMEs model did not provide the capital-intensive infrastructure required to produce large-scale medical resources. As a result, Taiwan was unable to produce its own vaccines and limited in its production of testing kits. Dr. Yen contrasted this with South Korea’s model, which revolved around chaebols—large, family-owned conglomerates with diversified branches. These companies already possessed biotech industries and the financial depth to create and produce testing kits at scale. The South Korean government collaborated with the chaebols to fast-track approval and production. 

The last conclusion was that the politicisation of vaccines crippled effective governance and amplified misinformation. As previously mentioned, Taiwan’s first COVID outbreak only occurred in May 2021, introducing a level of uncertainty and panic that had previously been avoided. The outbreak also triggered a wave of disinformation from China and coincided with a domestic vaccine shortage, as its home-grown vaccine was still under development. At this point,  the securitization of pandemic response started to falter, and political parties began to politicize vaccine procurement and distribution issues. In response to public panic and disinformation, the government launched an additional daily press conference dedicated to rebutting disinformation. This top-down approach, however, only led to more distrust. The resulting political crisis overshadowed the government’s prior achievements in managing the pandemic. Public dissatisfaction was only mitigated through strategic international support, especially vaccine aid from Japan and the United States. 

Three Lessons for Crisis Management

Dr. Yen offered three lessons based on her assessments of Taiwan’s experience. The first is that while securitising an issue can be effective, it requires a consensus on the nature of the crisis. Many other countries failed to agree on the nature of the COVID crisis. Taiwan’s success in securitisation comes from its clear definition and continued use of wartime rhetoric. By contrast, Taiwan’s response to China’s increasing use of gray zone tactics in the Taiwan Strait is hampered by a lack of consensus. The ambiguous nature of gray zone tactics makes it challenging to clearly define when conflict begins or what form it takes.  Without a unified societal consensus on the nature of the threat,  effective governance is hindered, and public  panic becomes more likely. Dr. Yen stressed the importance of developing a clear framework to understand China’s types of aggression and to anticipate what a potential conflict with China might look like. 

The second lesson is that Taiwan’s industrial base has strong coordination capacity in traditional manufacturing, but limited capability in other strategic sectorsDr. Yen emphasised the need to cultivate strategic manufacturing capacity now, during peacetime. As demonstrated by the rapid mobilization of mask production, building this capacity in advance would allow Taiwan to accelerate manufacturing efforts during war or future conflict.  

The third lesson is that panic and political crisis must be prevented. As seen in Taiwan’s COVID experience, effective governance was crippled when the virus was politicised and disinformation rampant. Dr. Yen proposed that the government cannot allow politics to hinder effective governance. She also suggested that Taiwan should enhance bottom-up public awareness of information warfare. By increasing media literacy, Taiwan’s social fabric can be strengthened.  

Conclusions 

By examining Taiwan’s COVID governance experience, Dr. Yen showed that Taiwanese civil society has the capacity to maintain resilience under wartime conditions. When there is a coherent national crisis, securitisation can unite Taiwanese society against a common threat. As seen in mask mobilisation, Taiwan has the capacity to ramp up production of key resources. However, politicization, information warfare, and lack of cohesion could threaten Taiwan’s societal resilience. What Taiwan can do now is focus on creating a common threat perception, strengthening manufacturing in strategic sectors, and improving media literacy.  

The seminar was organised by Dr Bo-jiun Jing, Senior Research Fellow in Taiwan Studies at OSGA, as part of the Oxford Taiwan Studies Seminar Series. This recap was produced in partnership between the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme and St Antony’s International Review.