​Blatant foul: On Venezuela and U.S. aggression Politics & News

In line with a series of hostile moves, the U.S. seized a Venezuelan oil tanker, Skipper, on December 10. Venezuela called it the latest example of Washington’s “piracy, kidnapping, theft of private property, extrajudicial executions in international waters”. The tanker was part of Venezuela’s ongoing efforts to support Cuba through subsidised oil shipments, with proceeds from resale to China providing Havana crucial revenue. For decades, Venezuela has sent oil to Cuba at highly subsidised prices, with Cuba sending doctors and security professionals to Venezuela. The seizure represents a troubling escalation in U.S. policy toward Venezuela under President Nicolás Maduro. It is also clear that the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, a major hawk on U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba, has sought to disrupt one of the island nation’s economic lifelines. The overt moves to engineer regime change in Venezuela and other brazen acts mark a new low in U.S. foreign policy, recalling the interventionist era of its Monroe Doctrine in Latin America.

Before the seizure of Skipper, the U.S. had also conducted strikes in Caribbean waters on boats that Washington alleged were used by drug traffickers. These attacks appear to constitute acts of war carried out without clear legislative authorisation. The Trump administration insists that the operations are part of its “war on drugs”, but has not presented credible evidence to link Mr. Maduro to cartels or to drug trafficking networks. To be clear, Mr. Maduro is credibly accused of manipulating the results in the 2024 presidential elections and his government also bears substantial responsibility for Venezuela’s crippling economic collapse. But, acknowledging its failures does nothing to justify the Trump administration’s hostile approach. Be it the disproportionate economic sanctions that hurt Venezuela’s ability to sell its crude oil, covert actions to take down the Maduro presidency, the ill-conceived recognition of an opposition politician, Juan Guaidó, as President, or the extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and the seizure of the oil tanker, these actions are tantamount to flouting the rules of the international order that the U.S. purports to uphold. The parallel with U.S. policy towards Cuba since the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s is instructive. The U.S. has maintained an embargo on trade to force regime change in the island nation. The world must condemn these moves, even while maintaining the critique of the Venezuelan regime. A principled defence of international law that applies equally to all actors, including the rich and the powerful, is an imperative so that the world does not descend further into anarchy.