It’s hard to pinpoint when democracy died in Venezuela. It’s been a long, slow, painful – though predictable – slide to authoritarianism. Now, though, that slide is bringing the country to anarchy and potential civil war, risking a black hole of a failed state in South America in an oil-rich nation.

Was democracy’s death knell in 2004 when the then president, Hugo Chávez – the founder of the Bolivarian revolution – expanded the supreme court by 12 seats, from 20 to 32, in order to pack it with loyalists, so undermining the independence of the judicial system?

Was it in 2015 when the democratic opposition won a two-thirds “super” majority in the national legislature, only for the pro-government electoral commission to block three legislators from taking their seats under false claims of elections violations?

Was it in 2016, when President Nicolás Maduro appointed a loyalist Chavista general, Vladimir Padrino López, to occupy the positions of both defence minister and state tsar for food and the economy, and stipulated that all state ministers should report to the general? (Current or former military officers run 11 of Venezuela’s 32 state ministries.)

Or was it in October that year, when the electoral commission indefinitely suspended state and local elections – leaving Venezuelans without locally elected officials – and blocked a constitutional referendum on the government out of fear the governing party would be defeated?

These slow-motion acts eroded the checks and balances of democratic government and accountability and created a military-controlled government, the likes of which the region has not seen since the dark days of juntas and dictatorships in the 1960s and 70s. Worse, with each action the government closed off crucial channels and mediation, competition, choice and accountability – until, in October 2016, it shut down the most fundamental claim to legitimacy: elections.

Anti-government activists set a police station ablaze during a protest in Caracas against the constituent assembly elections last Sunday. Photograph: Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images

Even if it somehow survived all those though, there’s no doubt that Venezuelan democracy was finished off last Sunday: on 30 July, despite popular opposition and international condemnation, the Maduro government ploughed ahead with an election to choose delegates to write a new constitution – violating the constitutional right of citizens to say whether they even wanted a new constitution. And, indeed, a broad majority didn’t. In public opinion surveys, 80% of Venezuelans expressed support for their 18-year-old constitution, and 75% opposed the entire effort.

The exercise was a farce, intended to distract the country from its economic and humanitarian crisis. GDP has contracted more than 20% in three years, inflation is raging at over 1,000%, citizens face severe shortages of food and medicine, and more than 100 people have been killed during four months of popular protests.

How a new constitution would solve those problems was never clear. In fact, what the constitution – under a government that had shown a singular, anarchistic disregard for any type of institution or rule – would look like or accomplish was never clear.

What was clear was that Maduro and his allies intended to use the body to assume total control over the national assembly and the government, and to pursue enemies – including its general prosecutor, Luisa Ortega. She is a former Chavista who has become a vocal opponent. In the days leading up to Sunday’s vote, government officials declared proudly that after the balloting process they would turn to pursuing and prosecuting political opponents.

They wasted no time in doing so. Two days after the vote, police rounded up two leading political opponents: Antonio Ledezma, the former mayor of Caracas; and Leopoldo López, the former mayor of Chacao. They had been under house arrest, but were now returned to military prison.

The international community needs to realise that it’s been played

Efforts by former presidents in the region and the Vatican to mediate a much-needed consensus have permitted the Maduro government to continue its efforts to consolidate power with a fig leaf of legitimacy. The strategy worked. While the region bet on mediation, the Maduro government killed democracy, but for an unknown end – totalitarianism? Chaos? Anomie? It’s not clear that even Maduro knew or knows.

The international community needs to realise that it’s been played. Fortunately, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and the European Union have expressed their displeasure with and their refusal – to varying degrees – to accept the illegal constituent assembly. Now, finally, those countries need to step up. The US has so far avoided the temptation to impose broad economic sanctions on Venezuela, which could have tragic consequences for the population, preferring targeted individual sanctions. The regional community needs to follow that lead and impose sanctions on certifiably corrupt, human-rights-abusing public officials: but also go further by pulling back diplomatic recognition of the government, and tightening the noose around government and corrupt officials’ assets and bank accounts.

Responding to the accelerating downward spiral in Venezuela requires credible but scaled threats. The past has shown that naive exhortation doesn’t work, but nor does the nuclear option of all-out sanctions and an embargo. The US going it alone isn’t enough.

The regional failure to act collectively and decisively to threaten costs and present carrots will accelerate the path that Venezuela is on. It’s time to step up, collectively and selectively.