As Venezuela reels from the twin earthquakes of June 24, of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, which have killed more than 3,800 people and injured more than 16,000, China has provided emergency aid and demanded that Washington lift the sanctions strangling the country’s economy and recovery.
Beijing has sent a rescue team and medical relief and pledged an additional 100 million yuan (about $14.7 million) in supplies, an airlift of which reached Caracas on July 6. China’s Foreign Ministry called on the United States to “fully lift its illicit unilateral sanctions,” which, layered atop years of economic warfare, have hampered rescue and reconstruction even after Washington granted narrow, temporary exemptions for relief.
The backdrop is stark. In January, U.S. forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a military operation on Caracas and flew him to the United States, where he now faces court. That a great power should abduct the head of state of a sovereign nation and then leave sanctions in place as its people dig out from a disaster is the very “might makes right” the American Revolution was meant to abolish.
