Today an illegal coup in Venezuela, but where next?
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Monday on the matter with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying the US actions set “a dangerous precedent”.
The direct attack on Venezuela marks an extraordinary, dangerous assertion of unfettered US power and comes in the same week that Donald Trump threatened military strikes against another unpopular anti-western regime: that of Iran.
It follows months of escalating US military, economic and political pressure on Maduro, including lethal maritime attacks on the boats of alleged drug traffickers.
(Human rights law binds states to standards of conduct. It does not license unilateral military seizures by self-appointed global sheriffs. If that were the rule, the world would be in a permanent state of sanctioned chaos.)
"Trump claims to be acting to prevent illegal narcotics flowing into the US via Venezuela and to halt an alleged influx of “criminal” migrants. In an echo of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he is also accused of coveting Venezuela’s huge oil and gas resources – suspicions reinforced by repeated, illegal US seizures of Venezuelan oil tankers," writes Simon Tisdall in 'The Guardian' (London).
But Trump’s primary motives appear to be personal animosity.
The Caracas government has been decapitated, but other senior members of the regime appear still to be in place.
They are urging resistance and, potentially, retaliation against the US. There are unconfirmed reports of civilian casualties. If a power vacuum develops, public order could collapse, sparking civil war or a possible military coup.
And it is unclear whether the latest US military action has ended, or may escalate further.
"Venezuela has many problems, including drug gangs and authoritarian rule, but they hardly justify what Trump has done," goes another article in the same newspaper.
If Venezuela is correct .... what's wrong with Russian action against Ukraine and
** China's possible conflicts with Taiwan
Francisco Rodriguez, former head of the Venezuelan National Assembly’s economic advisory, said that gold and oil reserves are among the country’s main hopes for economic recovery.
“If the US moves to remove the sanctions and clear the hurdles for investors to come back in, you can get the oil output to 2.5 million barrels per day in the scope of three to five years,” he told Al Jazeera, noting that production currently stands at below one million bpd.
Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has been ordered by the constitutional chamber of Venezuela’s Supreme Court to serve as acting president “to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the nation” as a legal framework is devised for the future.
She had also been serving simultaneously as finance minister and oil minister, giving her enormous influence over the nation’s embattled economy and efforts to vitalise the underdeveloped oil sector that produces less than it should as a result of sanctions and mismanagement.
Trump said the US would not occupy Venezuela if Rodriguez “does what we want”. He also declined to endorse the opposition leader, exiled Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado, saying she does not have the approval or “respect” of the people.
Power has displaced law, preference has replaced principle ...
and Force has been presented as virtue.
This is not the defence of the international order.
When a state kidnaps the law to justify kidnapping a leader, it does not uphold order. It advertises contempt for it.
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