Venezuela situation has worrying echo of Iraq war - Alex Cole Hamilton
On a cold February morning nearly quarter of a century ago, my old friend and Liberal colleague, Charles Kennedy addressed hundreds of thousands of people in Hyde Park who had gathered to protest the war in Iraq. He said: “I join with you today because I have yet to be persuaded as to the case for war against Iraq.
“The information has been inconclusive and misleading. The arguments have been inconsistent and contradictory. The real aims – what would follow a war – have never been properly explained. No wonder people are suspicious and scared.”
I have been thinking about his words a great deal these past days. The removal of Nicolas Maduro as president of Venezuela in an audacious raid by the USA, carries with it echoes of the doctrine of regime change that toppled Saddam Hussein.
In the immediate aftermath of Maduro’s extraction there was an expectation that his opponent, Corina Machado, whose movement had won the 2024 General Election in Venezuela would be installed as President. Righting a democratic wrong by installing her to the office that had been denied her. Yet Donald Trump further surprised everyone by stating that he didn’t think she was ready for power and that the US would control the country and in particular its rich oil reserves, for the time being.
Then as now, this act of American adventurism was prosecuted without any kind of basis in international law and with no clear aim. That should worry all of us.
Not for the first time since Trump regained the White House, I’ve a sinking feeling that a new and insidious agenda has taken hold in American foreign policy. With Maduro in US custody, Trump swiftly started to dial up the rhetoric on Iran and Greenland.
It’s the latter of those two propositions that will be giving European leaders and diplomats special cause for alarm right now. Any kind of US military incursion into Greenland would represent an unprecedented attack by one NATO country on another. That would truly upend the world order that we have all known since the end of World War Two. In that circumstance we would be confronted with an almost unimaginable security dilemma.
As with Charles Kennedy’s brave resistance to America’s war with Iraq in 2003, in our Parliaments
it is the Liberal Democrats who now lead the voice of opposition to this new and destructive approach to international law from Trump’s White House. As America’s oldest and most steadfast ally, we need to use that access and that leverage to be the voice of reason. We need to plan for a world where Britain’s security is no longer underwritten by American firepower. Our country is stronger when we stand up to bullies. Our country is stronger when we work with our allies, meaning putting Britain back at the heart of Europe.
Just like Saddam Hussein, Nicolas Maduro is a villain who has crushed dissent and tortured his opponents. That reality has certainly offered Keir Starmer and other European leaders some sense of justification. But International law matters. You don’t just get to shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, he probably had it coming.” Because next year it might be a democratically elected leader you do like, who’s in a blindfold, fetters and on their way to a New York court room.