On Oct. 10, the UN Security Council convened at the request of Venezuela to address the growing threats of a U.S. military regime-change operation against the government of Nicolás Maduro, under the guise of fighting drugs. Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vassily Nebenzia was sharp in his condemnation:
“With each passing day, the situation is becoming more acute. A large-scale U.S. military activity is taking place just a few kilometers from this country’s coast, directly threatening regional and international peace and security…. Venezuela has every reason to believe that its northern neighbor is ready to move from threats to action with its naval fleet.” Ambassador Nebenzia said the U.S. argument that it is fighting drugs is “a fitting plot for a Hollywood blockbuster in which the Americans would once again save the world. However, these assertions are not underpinned by facts.” First, the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” purportedly headed by President Nicolas Maduro is not even mentioned in U.S. State Department reports on drug-trafficking over the years. Second “the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) does not classify Venezuela as a drug trafficking hub, because 87% of cocaine enters the United States through the Pacific Ocean.”
As for the four boats blown up on the high seas for allegedly carrying drugs, “the international community has no opportunity to verify these claims, because the suspects were neither detained nor charged, and the cargo they were allegedly carrying, according to the Americans, was destroyed. In other words, some vessels with people on them were simply fired upon in the open sea without trial or investigation, according to the cowboy principle of ‘shooting first,’ and now we are being offered to retroactively believe that there were criminals on board.”
Nebenzia continued: “Russia strongly condemns the strikes on civilian vessels as a flagrant violation of international law and human rights. Such actions only fall in line with the notorious theory of American exceptionalism, according to which the U.S. can do whatever it wants, and other countries can only do what the U.S. allows.” He warned the U.S. to not try to get UN Security Council approval for an attack on Venezuela, “to eventually bring their actions under the umbrella of the UN Security Council Resolution 2793, which provides for combating banditry—a resolution the U.S. recently pushed through this Council, and on which a number of members, including Russia, abstained. We want to warn right away: the U.S. will not get anywhere in trying to do so. Any expectation of securing international legal legitimacy for the lawlessness being perpetrated by Washington—even a contrived one—would be entirely misplaced.”
Russia warns that any U.S. attack “would be fraught with a sharp, uncontrolled degradation of the situation, leading to serious regional destabilization and undermining the foundations of peaceful existence in Latin America…. We expect that the states of the Latin American region, regardless of the level and quality of their bilateral relations with Venezuela, will at this difficult moment show solidarity and unity in defending their identity and political independence.”
The Chinese Permanent Representative to the UN Fu Cong also spoke against the impending danger, stating, according to Global Times, that: “China urged the U.S. to immediately cease relevant acts to avoid further escalation of the situation in the Caribbean, and urged it not to use the excuse of combating drug trafficking to jeopardize countries’ navigational security and the freedom and rights they enjoy under international law.”
