Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was strongly vocal against the US military intervention in Venezuela and invoked the UN Charter and international in his criticism. The problem with these concerns is that fundamentally, Nicolas Maduro was not the legitimate President of Venezuela while the legitimate executive of the country welcomed the intervention. Maduro himself was illegally occupying the executive role of the country, and legitimate Venezuelan Opposition also supported the intervention. María Corina Machado offered to share her Nobel Peace Prize with President Trump.
It is as if the left wants to impose Venezuelans with a legal playbook approved by the United Nations in how they should achieve their democracy.
There is clearly a very strong partisan current in the left’s invocation of international law in this case, and it’s also being made with the premise that Maduro was the legitimate President. You can see a clip of Jeremy Corbyn below who denies that Maduro was illegitimate.
Just as the Venezuelan journalist Germania Rodriguez Poleo said, we should not let our disdain for Donald Trump misjudge the situation. The case about Venezuela is very different from Greenland‘s case – it is only up to the Venezuelans themselves to make a judgement on the US military intervention in their country. Prime Minister’s Sanchez’s comments are disingenuous and ideologically partisan because they were made with total disregard to the Venezuelans who live in his own country: most of them were out in the streets across towns and cities celebrating the US military intervention with repeated demonstrations.
In fact, Prime Minister Sanchez shows no concern over the more blatant and explicitly belligerent violations of international law by his friends and partners, the Communist Party of China. Had the left been genuinely concerned about international law with regard to sovereignty issues, we would have been discussing the ongoing imperialism by China against the Philippines and its planned invasion of Taiwan.
There is an underlying more sinister issue going on here. The far-left wants to prescribe strict laws to Western national governments on foreign intervention while being greatly permissive towards China’s and Russia’s imperialism: in addition, the far-left is refusing to cooperate with the political mainstream on ongoing European security and defence build-up.
We can present as many legal arguments as we like but, ultimately, most of the left in Europe is pushing us into a fascist dystopia, both as a consequence of its miserable economic and migration policies that are strengthening the far-right, and as well due to its permissiveness and tolerance towards Russian and Chinese imperialism.
Essentially, if the far-left gets its way, we may be bereft of the will and tools needed to secure our borders and our regional security against hostile actors and dictatorial states.
Beware what you wish for.
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Historian and Publisher
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