Venezuela: ‘Sovereignty, the law and the UK government response are all being confused’

There is much commentary on the legality of the US action in Venezuela which confuses many issues.

 The rules are clear. You cannot invade another country. You can be invited in. The UK is in Ukraine legally not because of the UN, but because the Ukrainian sovereign government has invited us in. Putin may say it’s illegal, but it isn’t.

Only a sovereign nation can determine an intervention as to whether it is by friend or foe. In this case, the government of Venezuela.

This is the point where it all gets confused and where it pivots to the question of who is the sovereign body for Venezuela under the legal principle of ‘One Voice?’. Who runs Venezuela?

READ MORE: Labour MPs raise concerns for international norms as Foreign Secretary responds to US action in Venezuela

Too many don’t realise or don’t want to realise what this legal framework means.

Venezuela is an odd case. 65 countries recognise the opposition as the winners of the 2024 election and legitimate (legal) sovereign body.

This UK government, like previous governments, has repeatedly stated that Maduro is not the President and refuse to refer to him as such, instead referring to him as illegitimate.

Broadly speaking, those with the opposite view, countries who recognise Maduro, are led by those with democratic deficits: Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Pyongyang.

And you know where this is going. The Venezuelan opposition (and election winners) call it a liberation and the Maduro regime (losers) an invasion.

Here in the UK, we are bound by law and we recognise the sovereign government as being the opposition. We have a robust legal framework here. There is opportunity to challenge the government and challenge this assertion in parliament and in the courts. But this recognition has been the policy of the last five prime ministers and crucially has already, for rare reasons, been tested in UK courts.

This is because the Bank of England holds vast quantities of Venezuelan gold bars in its vaults and both sides contested their sovereignty.

Maduro wanted it returned, the opposition wanted it to remain stored in the vaults. The court had to decide the principle of who represents Venezuela and held up the UK Government’s position that the Venezuelan opposition won the election and the gold must therefore stay in the UK.

The legal principle established here was who is the sovereign body in Venezuela to which the courts decided it was the opposition and not the Maduro government. In short, the UK government’s clear position as determined by the courts is that it can only take instruction from the Venezuelan opposition. The UK has therefore abided by the law and the gold bars remain in the BoE. This principle is at the crux of legality.

The UK government has and continues to uphold this legal judgement. The alternative would be to recognise the Maduro regime as legitimate.

It’s a factor in the US too where Maduro’s defence rests on whether he has sovereign immunity as head of state, or, as indited, an alleged drug trafficker involved in corruption facing the same laws as everyone else.

And the Venezuelan opposition has been quite clear on the US. They do not see the US action as an illegal incursion into their sovereignty. Not before, not during and not now. They have colluded with US authorities and described the action as “liberation”.

The pragmatic reality of this is straightforward.

The democratic representatives of the Venezuelan people decide, they are sovereign on this issue, not UK politicians. And that should be the election winners for that is the fundamental principle we hold.

Furthermore, should Maria Marchado win the next election, she’s more than likely to be on the White House lawn thanking the US leadership before going to the UN to celebrate liberation.

The Venezuelans are unlikely to pursue Maduro’s claims of invasion, or an illegal incursion on sovereign Venuzeula.

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It was Kofi Annan who said that international law wasn’t fit for purpose in the modern world after NATO took “illegal” military action in Kosovo in 1999 but the international community saw it as necessary and justified to prevent a genocide of the Kosovan Muslims by the Serbs. The UK parliamentary inquiry stated it was an illegal — but legitimate – war. No action was taken by the UN against this illegal war.

The international order didn’t collapse this week, it collapsed a long time ago. The law isn’t fit for purpose, as Annan stated.

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And it’s not just NATO. Every rogue regime has never abided by it – in particular Russia. Where’s the outrage over the occupation by Russia of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia? And on the erosion of the world’s rules-based order there is Maduro’s referendum in 2023, to get a mandate to take over the democratically sovereign neighbouring state, Guyana, a member of the UK Commonwealth. How many of those championing the rules-based order stood up for Guyana?

What has undermined any sense of an international legal framework is the picking and choosing (by all states) of the legality of conflicts — or the use of legal blinkers to outrages against humanity, particularly from the far left.

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