Today’s session is on Venezuela, following the United States’ recent intervention in the territory and subsequent capture of President Maduro. We have two expert witnesses on our first panel. Will you please introduce yourselves?

I am Christopher Sabatini, the senior research fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.

Hi, my name is Dr Carlos Solar. I am the senior research fellow for Latin American security at RUSI.

Thank you for coming—what a great panel. Can you set out, in a minute or two, the background in relation to Venezuela to set the scene for the people watching who do not necessarily know a great deal about Venezuela, or may have known nothing about it until the recent incursion by the United States? I am sorry; I am essentially asking you to give us a summary of the political and social history of Venezuela in two minutes.

I will not give a long history. In 1998, Hugo Chávez, a former lieutenant colonel who attempted a coup, was elected. In 1999, when he was inaugurated, he quickly set out on what he called the Bolivarian revolution. He formed an alliance with the Cuban Government, to which he provided 100,000 barrels a day, and brought in Cuban security advisers and intelligence officers to consolidate the Bolivarian revolution. He passed away in 2013, and then Nicolás Maduro was elected. Over that time—from 1999, effectively, until recently—the Bolivarian revolution gutted institutions and checks and balances in Venezuela, packed the Supreme Court and the electoral council with loyalists, repressed and jailed opponents and closed down independent media to the point that in 2024, although the opposition managed to hold together and elect a candidate, María Corina Machado, the recent Nobel peace prize laureate, she was prohibited from running by the pro-Government Supreme Court, so she backed a stand-in candidate. On 28 July 2024, they won the elections, according to most independent polls and observers, but Nicolás Maduro declared himself the President without providing any evidence. At that point, it became clear that the electoral route was closed down for the opposition. At the same time, Donald Trump was campaigning and alleging—incorrectly—all sorts of claims about Venezuelan immigrants in the United States, the use of drugs and the transhipment of drugs to the United States. In August last year, after a long build-up, over five to six months, of a substantial naval arsenal off the coast of Venezuela and, again, the exaggerated claims of narcotics trafficking, that led to the—I’ll say it quite frankly—extrajudicial murder of alleged drug traffickers off the coast of Venezuela and in the Pacific. All the while, it was claimed that this was about removing Nicolás Maduro. As the Russian playwright Chekhov says, you do not show a gun in the first act of a play without using it the second act. As soon as it was clear that Donald Trump was amassing 14% of US naval assets off the coast of Venezuela, it was clear that he was going to do something to remove Nicolás Maduro, and indeed he did. On 3 January, special ops forces went in, removed Nicolás Maduro, who was about to enter a bunker, and his wife, put him on a plane and sent him to a Brooklyn jail. He is now facing charges for weapons possession and cocaine trafficking. Please note that the charges do not include fentanyl trafficking, which is one of the excuses Donald Trump used for the build-up. The US then designated the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, as interim President. Many members of the opposition had hoped that María Corina Machado and her stand-in candidate, Edmundo González, who was legitimately elected on 28 July 2024, would become the de facto Government. That did not happen. What we have seen is a decapitation of the Government of Venezuela, but the apparatus has remained in place. Now we are facing the question of what will happen in terms of this Government, democratisation and the opposition, and of what will happen to an economy that has contracted by more than three quarters over the last decade, which has led to the fleeing of more than 8 million Venezuelans to seek both freedom and economic opportunity. That is where we are now. I can talk more about the current situation, but I will turn over to my colleague, Carlos.

I have to say that the Chekhov analogy does not bode well for Iran with the armada just off its coast.

That is precisely my point.

Is there anything you want to add, Dr Solar? Do you agree with that analysis?

I would agree. I will add something on where the UK fits in all this. Initially, the Hugo Chávez presidency was legitimised by the entire world. He went on to win elections, with international observers who legitimised that—Europeans and Latin Americans. However, the rhetoric of Hugo Chávez was always anti-capitalism and anti the western ideas that this country defends to the utmost. What Hugo Chávez did through the years, as Chris has just explained, was to create a parallel system of multilateralism within Latin America. That is why you see that, until today, the organisation of the American state has not been able to deal with the Venezuelan issue. That is mostly because Hugo Chávez had a lot of friendships with other regimes in Latin America—mostly ones he could fund either through the oil he was selling or just by sending cash in bags to other countries. The UK clearly saw that, and Venezuela has been sanctioned by different offices of the UK. One of the relevant aspects in the timeline is how Venezuela sits within the relationship between Russia and other countries around the world. Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chávez were always keen sympathisers of Vladimir Putin. What happened in Ukraine in 2022 gave Nicolás Maduro an excuse to grow a tighter relationship with Russia, and the UK has clearly been sidelined from all this. Another important item to add to the timeline is the relationship between the UK and Colombia. Most of what is happening with the US build-up in the southern Caribbean has been led by the UK in its relationship with Colombia. You need to remember that the UK has only a chargé d'affaires in Caracas, meaning that there is a lot of information that this country wouldn’t know if it was not for the presence of the UK elsewhere in the southern Caribbean.

For those of us watching, it is difficult to understand what the United States’ objectives have been and whether they have achieved them yet, or whether they will. Could you help us with what they are trying to achieve?

I don’t think what the US is trying to achieve starts with Donald Trump in his second term. He tried to deal with the opposition during the entirety of his first Administration between 2017 and 2021. He clearly backed up Juan Guaidó, as did this country. There were elections in which, clearly, the United States and the UK were quite eager for the opposition to win. Clearly, we do not know the results, because they were never public, and that has meant that the opposition has thinned out. Now, you barely see any opposition in Venezuela. On what Donald Trump is doing at the moment, and for the rest of the US presidency, there is clearly a different set of tools. There is a metaphor that they were amassing a big move and then a karate-type, Bruce Lee operation happened, not the sumo operation that all the analysts were waiting for. The US has now clearly written, on paper, three very specific documents: they have the national security strategy and the national defence strategy, and the State Department recently put out a shorter document on the priorities for the next four years, with the western hemisphere at the top of those priorities. It has caught the attention of every single international analyst on how the western hemisphere now plays a key role in the concept of “America first” in the United States. So where is the US going? Just this week there is a new ambassador in Caracas, with three main concepts on her agenda: stabilisation, economic recovery, and reconciliation and transition. I think Delcy Rodríguez, the current President of Venezuela, will abide by this agenda.

Transition to what?

That is a big question. We are all quite expectant that there will be a transition to democracy soon. We can look at other parts of the world where something similar happened: you can think of Chile in the ’80s, when there was a big movement against the Government there, or the final years of apartheid in South Africa. The transition should clearly be towards elections. But in my opinion—Chris might have a different opinion—Delcy Rodríguez now wants to validate herself as a politician, so that she can be pardoned by the United States and then move on. She might lose an election anytime soon, but she will remain a political player, and she might come back into government in Venezuela in the future.

Do you want to add anything, Dr Sabatini, about what you think the Americans are doing?

You are exactly right that the narrative of the objectives has changed over time. In Trump’s first term, it was about democracy. That failed. The creation of a so-called interim Government simply failed—it was dissolved in 2022. In this case, it was driven in part by domestic objectives, with Trump making all these wild claims about Venezuelan immigrants—refugees, if you will—sowing crime in the United States. It then shifted to the anti-narcotics objectives, and was then simply reduced to the lowest common denominator, which was the removal of Nicolás Maduro. The risks here are severalfold. First of all—to talk about the broader objectives of this panel—the risk is that this suited Donald Trump’s more immediate, short-term and even domestic agenda. He got what he wanted, which was a reality TV show—basically, a smash-and-grab video—at the cost of the 100 Cubans and Venezuelans who were killed. The question is how much he is invested in the long-term health, stability and democracy of Venezuela. I am very sceptical of that, because it has never really entered into his calculations. Marco Rubio is talking about it and has laid out the three phases, but without any flesh on the bones of what those three phases will be in terms of preparation for elections or economic stabilisation. We are now simply talking about investment in the oil sector, which will be important to renew economic growth and inject liquidity into a very troubled—even collapsed—economy, but the truth is that Trump is probably going to move on. He wants this off his desk. The other consequence is that he is feeling emboldened. This was a success for Donald Trump: they invaded, no American lives were lost—maybe a helicopter was damaged—and it looks good on TV. But it does not necessarily translate into long-term policy consequences. I would venture that what we saw in his rhetoric towards Greenland, and what we are seeing now in relation to Iran, Cuba, Colombia and potentially other countries, is the idea that this is a model that works for him—politically, in foreign policy terms, and in terms of not having to deal with the messiness that comes afterwards. The challenge here is defending international norms when this happens, as well as recognising and dealing with the consequences of those actions, whether in Venezuela or potentially in Cuba, I would argue, and the risk now is also in Iran. The risk is not just to international norms, which is a real risk, but in terms of putting back together a country that has been broken without any real plan for moving forward.

This is the latest in a succession of interventions by the United States in South America, or in the western hemisphere, if you like: we have had Panama, Cuba, Nicaragua and so on. To what extent does this represent a continuation of the policy that was initially expressed through Monroe and Roosevelt, and is now called the Donroe doctrine? What does it tell us about America’s attitude to the western hemisphere now?

I have my opinions on that. The Donroe doctrine is very real. The three documents that I mentioned follow the same narrative, word by word. There is a clear convergence within the US Government on pushing this agenda. This is not just one Ministry or one state acting on its own. It is not Marco Rubio acting on his own. There is a wider perspective on this. Clearly, the events you mentioned have occurred, but at a time when memory is quite fragile, and politicians run by the day, a lot of politicians were quite happy with what happened on 3 January. You need to remember that Venezuela has been an exporter of many bad behaviours into the rest of the region, which is turning into a colour similar to Donald Trump’s in Washington. There is a new 2026 for Latin America, and therefore for the relationship between many countries and Washington. The Donroe doctrine aims to secure the western hemisphere for the United States and to prevent adversaries—namely Russia, Iran, China and others—from going in. It is a doctrine that does not come with any resources—it is literally just words right now—but we saw on 3 January a massive event like we had probably not seen since 1994, when the US and other countries went into Haiti, and the same happened again in 2004. The clear similarity does not go back to Panama in 1989, where there was a different context; it is clearly with a country that is much closer, which is Haiti. What did that mean for the reconstruction of the country? After 13 years of the MINUSTAH operation—a UN peacekeeping operation—Haiti is probably at the bottom of the scale of the human development index and other rankings. The US has clearly used the case of Venezuela to send a very strong signal to the region. I do not think the US will do something similar in Cuba, Nicaragua or elsewhere, mostly because there is also the military component of this. The United States spent six months preparing for 3 January. It happened on the weekend of the new year, when everyone in Latin America—and in this country—is a little more relaxed. There is clearly a military component of that. If they were to move into Cuba or elsewhere, I would imagine there would be a similar operation: a months-long operation to pressure Cuba and other countries, and then they go in. The short takeaway is that this is very real. The UK is obviously a strong ally of what the US does in the region. The UK has interests in the Caribbean sea, in the south Atlantic, in Antarctica, in the Pacific ocean and in Ecuador—80% of the drugs that come out through the port of Guayaquil probably end up on the streets of London and the rest of the UK. The Donroe doctrine is very important for the UK to consider, and it should not be looked at as something foreign. It has a funny name that we might take plenty of years to get used to, but it is happening, it is real and there is no time to be cast to the side.

What makes the Donroe doctrine different—I do not mean to become didactic and professorial about this—is that when the Monroe doctrine was originally articulated in 1823, the idea was to thwart European former colonial powers from reasserting their control, or asserting their control, over the western hemisphere. That was a geostrategic vision with a fair amount of bluster. In 1823, the US really did not have the authority and power to be able to project that level of military defence. Subsequently, most US actions under the Monroe doctrine were to preserve the integrity of the hemisphere for US geostrategic interests. That included economic interventions in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and, in fact, Venezuela. The US would intervene and basically seize the customs houses, and try to put their financial houses in order so that they were not in financial distress, which would put them at risk of foreign intervention. What is different about the so-called Donroe doctrine is, first, the redefinition of national interests. It is being driven by largely domestic concerns over immigration and drugs. As much as they try to justify it in terms of Iran, China and Russia, the justification has been driven by issues of “America first”, and not so much by thwarting malign influence in the hemisphere. The second difference is that there is a very partisan component to this. We have seen that in Donald Trump’s embrace—endorsement, even—of the right-wing candidate in Honduras, Tito Asfura, and in his support for the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, by offering him a $20 billion line of credit just before the mid-term elections. We will see how it plays out today when he meets with President Gustavo Petro of Colombia in the White House. Colombia will be having elections this year; Gustavo Petro cannot run, but clearly Donald Trump favours a number of candidates of the far right. This is very different from being simply about national security. This is about the projection of a particular brand of domestic politics, and even partisanship, by Donald Trump and his particular faction within the Republican party. [Sir John Whittingdale took the Chair]

Dr Solar, you are an expert in security across this region. Can you give us an idea of what the links were, perhaps in cash and oil, with regimes like Iran, Russia and others?

All these relationships were quite dissimilar, but the common factor is that the economic management of Chávez and Maduro has always been quite atrocious—and it is currently. It was simply not in the playbook for them to participate in a formal exchange of goods and attract foreign investment in the way that this country, or other Latin American countries, would. You need to remember that the economy of Venezuela runs on how much oil they can get out and how much oil their partners are willing to buy. They completely depleted that industry, from its infrastructure to its engineers—there was a massive brain exit from Caracas. It was a booming country in the ’80s and ’90s; it had probably the highest GDP in the region and now has one of the lowest GDPs per capita in the region. The relationship is that they have scared away many foreign investors from different parts of the world. They have also nationalised and had the state take the majority of many international companies. The likes of Germany, Italy, France, the UK and elsewhere just left Venezuela. There is only a very small set of countries that actually deal with Venezuela. The reason is that pariah countries tend to group together, and Venezuela was quite good at being friends with those countries. Nicolás Maduro did this in very informal ways. Venezuela would sell oil at different prices to different buyers—they would sell more oil but at a lower price to China, for example. Other countries did not have much to pay, so there was also an exchange of goods. Most of the military hardware that was shown during the military build-up over the last six months—Russian and Iranian drones, and so on—were probably paid for not in cash, but in oil at a very low price. That was how Caracas dealt with the international economy. Obviously, it was a very corrupt regime. Where you do not have civilian CEOs running large corporations, you probably have the military running these types of operations. A way that Maduro and Hugo Chávez sought to prove themselves to avoid a coup was to buy people by giving them a senior managerial position in one of the key companies that were making thousands of US dollars. You need to remember that Venezuelans live on very few US dollars per day. It is a very poor country; it used to be a rich country. One of the aims of the US with all of this is double-speak: “The money will go into Venezuela, and we will probably end up with a little bit of money ourselves.”

We noticed that, after the 3 January intervention, the Iranian, Chinese and Russian influence was the dog that did not bite. Despite all the claims of Iranian, Russian and Chinese influence, they denounced it. They will certainly make hay with it in terms of their own relations in the global south, claiming that they are better defenders of popular and national sovereignty—we can dispute that, clearly. What we saw was that, despite the somewhat inflated claims of others, Iran, Russia and China realised that Venezuela was a bad bet. They had a rogues’ gallery of supporters, but they were not willing to completely defend a very corrupt, fractured and collapsed economy in any way. Yes, they were willing to use them to launder money—in the case of Russia—or to evade sanctions when it came to pirate fleets shipping oil, but any sort of strategic military alliance simply did not play out in real time on 3 January or in the lead up.

Given all of that, what would you say it means for Russia and China’s ambitions in Latin America, and more broadly for regional stability?

It is worth noting that, according to public opinion polls, most Venezuelans—in fact, the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans—supported the removal of Maduro. He is a reviled figure within Venezuela, and for good reason—not just the economic collapse, but also the political repression and, quite frankly, the buffoonery of his Government recently. Latin American citizens, too, are largely supportive of the removal of Maduro, according to public opinion polls. Despite the proclamations of some of their leaders, they realise that this was tied to transnational crime and growing insecurity, directly or indirectly, in their own countries, which has become the No. 1 concern in Latin America. When it comes to Russian and Chinese influence in the hemisphere, I think we will start to see them begin to court some elements of those citizens and leaders who prefer to defend national sovereignty over elements of popular sovereignty—human rights, democracy and the like. They have somewhat of a good leg to stand on. We could argue in the case of Russia and China that there is a certain element of hypocrisy there, but I think they will try to make as much of it as they can. I think China is going to be much more cautious in the hemisphere in terms of its investments. Yes, it will continue to serve as the No. 1 trade partner for Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Peru, but in terms of investments in infrastructure and engagements, it will be much more cautious. That is obviously a good thing. Russia, quite frankly, does not have the power to project much influence in the hemisphere. It is strapped for cash. It is mostly symbolic. It would love, in the case of Venezuela and even maybe Haiti, to see conflict and criminality continue. It is willing to support that asymmetric warfare, if you will, but it can do that on the cheap. It can basically bother the United States, but without formally projecting its power into the hemisphere. That is one of the larger concerns in terms of Russian and even Chinese influence: they can continue to support armed groups and criminal gangs on the cheap, whether it is in Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti or elsewhere, but it is not traditional statecraft where they project their security influence in the hemisphere.

There are two things to add. The first is on Russian disinformation being run from Venezuela. The internet in Venezuela is highly censored, which means that the state has control of basically all telecommunications. Another thing is clearly the Venezuela-Colombia border. The UK has a clear interest in cutting down the amount of coca that has been produced in Colombia lately. The drivers of all this are clearly going in and out of suspicious territories between these two countries.

Are you talking about cocaine?

Yes.

Okay. Dr Sabatini, in your opening remarks you commented on how significant the drug issue is and whether it aligns with what the President of the United States has said. Obviously, fentanyl is not a big drug that is trafficked through Venezuela, but my understanding is that about 10% of the world’s cocaine supply travels through Venezuela. Does that align with your understanding?

It does. Most of the cocaine that is trans-shipped through Venezuelan airspace, or is sometimes stored in Venezuela, is mostly destined for west Africa and Europe. It is not destined for US markets. That is important. As Carlos said, in the case of Ecuador, much of that cocaine is coming here. It demonstrates a shared interest in this issue and the need for the UK and Europe to take a more active stance. Security and concerns about transnational crime have historically been the main purview of the United States when it comes to Latin America, and particularly the war on drugs. We need to start to reframe this as a broader global concern that demands a regional response, not necessarily a bilateral response country by country. [Emily Thornberry resumed the Chair]

What type of reaction do you mean?

The intervention was highly criticised—I think you will have a larger discussion on international law with the second panel. Latin America has small countries so, within the multilateral system, they need international law to push certain agendas, such as climate change, energy co-operation and other agendas in which those countries do not have enough weight to act on their own. Multilateralism for the entirety of the Americas is quite important. Clearly, the intervention was seen as a violation of international law. It is a grey area, if you allow me to be honest—mostly because of the question of what to do with the Chávez-Maduro regime, which has been in place for 26 years. I think politicians in the region had a conversation, “Okay, so this is clearly an illegal operation, but how legitimate was it finally to get rid of this particular person who has been doing that to this country?” Formally, there is one reaction, but informally, there might be another. The Tren de Aragua, the criminal organisation that stems from Venezuela, has clearly impacted the entire region from Canada all the way to the southern cone of Chile and Argentina. There is a lot of attention on the migration issue as well: 8 million migrants from Venezuela are in different countries. Obviously, those on the periphery of Venezuela are affected the most—Colombia, Peru and so on—but as Chris mentioned, the whole Venezuela issue has clearly been adopted by all those countries in different manners. If your country is having a hard time dealing with migration, Venezuela comes into the equation. Some countries are trying to create a humanitarian corridor, in order to return migrants to Venezuela. As you know, Nicolás Maduro could say no to flights returning migrants from one country to another. Although countries were struggling with migrants on their own side, they could not deal with the Maduro regime. As I mentioned, the OAS is quite weakened at the moment. It does not have the same weight as it had before, so the clear need is for multilateralism to re-energise. The UK could use its soft power-type of foreign diplomacy to help draw up something, as you have done in the case of Ukraine with continental Europe. There is a lot that other countries can do to help Venezuela.

May I add something quickly to my friend Carlos’s comments?

Very quickly, as I am mindful of time.

I will be very quick. We need to understand that most Governments—the Brazilian Government, the Mexican Government, the Colombian Government—denounced the US intervention. The truth is that what we are looking at is not just, yes, an illegal intervention by the United States, but a complete failure of regional diplomacy to address the issue. Yes, the US intervention was a violation of article 2(4) of the UN charter on the use of force, but the truth is that other elements of the UN charter had not been enforced beforehand—self-determination and human rights—and we saw a moment in 2024 when the elections were clearly stolen. The regional community did nothing. I will be honest, but it is a little rich. Those countries are blaming the United States, correctly, but they failed to protect the rights of Venezuelan citizens to define their own future and to defend their own liberty. They simply walked away. Yes, the US intervened in violation of international law. However, as we saw in the case of Greenland—if we think about this projecting broader implications beyond Venezuela—the truth is that regional diplomacy and multilateralism matter, but we need to raise the flag beforehand, before the intervention, not afterwards. What we can take away from that and the relative success of Greenland is that when countries stand up collectively, interact and say, “We draw the line here”, even if it is behind closed doors, it matters. It would have mattered even during the six-month build up to what was inevitable. Again, I am not going to quote Chekhov, but what was inevitable? There was not a peep.

Again, I see that Donald Trump is clearly emboldened by his idea of the success of Venezuela. He has always had his eyes on Greenland—even going back to the first term, he was talking about it—and now we are seeing military solutions in the case of Iran. The problem is that Cuba and Iran are not similar cases. Decapitating, if you will—figuratively speaking—the head of Government of Iran or Cuba will not solve those countries’ problems. In fact, they will probably spiral into more chaos and violence. The risk is that he sees a model of foreign policy that has worked for him in one particular instance, but the world needs to be aware that the model, regardless of how it plays out in Venezuela, will not be successful in other situations in which, I would argue, he is seeking to employ it.

All western countries, or European countries, were condemnatory on Venezuela.

Two things. First, signalling beforehand, even if it does not work, is important. You can’t defend the international normative order ex post; you need to defend it in the moment. Yes, the UK Government is very clear on those elections. Your embassy in Caracas is great. I have worked with them very closely on this, and they have been very courageous.

That is nice to hear.

But also, in that case, there is personal interaction. Remember that it was when Donald Trump went to Davos that he changed his mind. We see that he is basically transactional, but he also believes in face-to-face diplomacy. If you can engage in some sort of face-to-face diplomacy and take away the megaphone of social media, through which he likes to engage in performative acts of foreign policy announcement—even ramping it up—that is effective. Again, we need to recognise that Donald Trump does what he says. We say that Trump always chickens out—“TACO” was coined by the Financial Times, by the way; this is not a US import—but in that case, he does what he says. The international community needs to be willing to intervene diplomatically, even if it does not necessarily produce the result it wants. Again, defending international norms has to come before.

Dr Solar, what would you add to the pre-emptive action that the international community could take? Where precisely do you anticipate further US intervention in the western hemisphere? Cuba has been mentioned, as have Colombia, Panama, Mexico and even Canada. What should we look out for as the warning signs? Where do you think this might happen next, if anywhere?

To put those last two comments together, I think the Greenland case is quite different from Venezuela, mostly because Venezuela has been pointed to as an adversarial state. Greenland was literally a way to push NATO into a conversation, which is clearly at another level. It follows a different set of history between the US and other countries, and the US’s belonging in the NATO bloc. Although the behaviour might be quite similar, we need to distinguish those two elements. I would do the same exercise with Cuba and Nicaragua. The pressure that the US is presenting to Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas is moving her to do something as amazing as trying to close the El Helicoide jail, which is quite a spectacular monument in the centre of Caracas that has been used to house political dissidents. If Delcy Rodríguez moves in that direction and concedes to this transition in power, other Governments will feel the pressure. The US can start with economic coercion, which we have seen recently in Cuba, and then make another move. With Operation Southern Spear, there was a six-month military build-up to do this 45-minute operation. We are not seeing that at the moment in Greenland or elsewhere, so it is quite difficult for someone who knows defence and security to see that this might happen again, either in Cuba or in Central America. One key point in the US national defence strategy, which was recently released, is the word “chokepoints”. Greenland, Canada, Alaska and so on—the Arctic—are chokepoints. If you start going south within the western hemisphere, you have another chokepoint, which is the Panama canal. It was in the news because Donald Trump pointed at the Panama canal on day two of his second Administration. Then you have the Drake passage and the Magellan strait—the point of combination between the South Atlantic, the South Pacific and Antarctica. There will be a discussion about the Antarctic treaty system not too far from 2026, and that is another chokepoint. We can clearly see that there are at least two other elements in the western hemisphere that might feel the pressure of the United States, because there are already three policy documents that present them as the chokepoints of this generation.

Dr Sabatini, you started to pick up on where the international community had failed to act on Venezuela. I am interested in that, because there is a lot of debate about the change to the international rules-based order and moving to a “might is right” situation. One of the reasons why criticisms of President Trump have not really landed in the case of Venezuela is because the international community had failed the people of Venezuela for so long. Is there a way for the United Nations, international law, regional powers or countries like the United Kingdom to do more to act when people are being violated in such a way over such a sustained period?

It is noteworthy that there is no UN Security Council discussion on the stolen elections of 2024, despite the fact that the UN panel of experts went to Venezuela to monitor the elections and reported back that they were stolen. That did not trigger any response. So yes, we are looking at the failure of the international community to speak out on their behalf and to provide some sort of answer. They could have not ceded the entire answer to the Donald Trump Administration. We need to recognise that while Donald Trump may not be engaging in this policy on Venezuela explicitly for democratisation, it was justified as such, certainly within his own Administration.

The same is now happening in Iran, isn’t it?

Precisely. There needs to be a recognition that citizens’ rights matter. There are two components of the UN charter: national sovereignty and, if you will, popular sovereignty or self-determination. It is quite striking that speaking out in defence of popular sovereignty has become a bit sacrosanct. We simply do not do that.

Can I cut across you for a moment? It is quite striking what you just said about the UN monitors going in to monitor the elections, concluding that they had been stolen and then nothing happening. Is there a precedent for that? Are there other examples where that has happened and the UN has not done anything, or is this a stand-alone case?

To the best of my knowledge, there are examples in which the UN did something, but because of the broader international reaction and rejection of that process. In this case, in the absence of any international reaction, the UN, quite frankly, just remained mute.

The UN is only as strong as the international community wants it to be.

That is exactly right. There are no, if you will, advocates in the UN—in the Security Council or in any other organism. Obviously, the UN Human Rights Council has raised the issue and the International Criminal Court is investigating members of the Venezuelan Government for crimes against humanity, but no state members of the UN spoke up to request a formal hearing or some sort of mediation discussion. Again, I think that was partly because of the lack of a concerted effort internationally. To your point, Dan, I was working on this very closely, and we saw a frustrating silence on the part of the international community, quite frankly because they did not know what to do. That does not necessarily mean that if you do not know what to do, you cannot speak out loud and request some sort of multilateral discussion on the issue, and that is the risk in this case.

You said that if the international community had spoken out when the UN monitors went into the election, there could have been a hearing. What else could the UN have asked to happen, or what could have been done in another scenario where the international community did speak out? Has there been another country where the UN went in, saw the election had disagreements and then something different happened?

In those cases it was not simply the UN, but there was a case in 1994 in the Dominican Republic when the then President Balaguer flagrantly stole the election. A group from the Organisation of American States and the UN organised a mediation session, which included the Catholic Church and other civil society representatives. They agreed to reconvene the elections and that Balaguer could not stand for election in the repeat. That produced President Leonel Fernández. As a result of that, the policies that followed and policy continuity, the Dominican Republic is one of the fastest growing and most successful economies in Latin America. That is one example. We have also seen in the case of Mexico, UN pressure was instrumental in ensuring free and fair elections that helped set the stage for the 2000 transition in the election of Vicente Fox. We have seen cases of this. Quite frankly, our muscle memory, collectively speaking, has become a little weakened by the success, and we are not vigilant enough in these cases. That is not to say these will produce results or that the Maduro Government, after the stolen elections, would necessarily have yielded to international pressure, but in those cases—and I hate to reduce it to virtue signalling—the act of paying attention and demonstrating support for the Venezuelan people would have sent a very strong message.

These cases work because they were by invitation—the host state allowed the international system to go in and solve differences with the opposition regarding voting and so on. Nicolás Maduro has not done that. One of the limits of the international system is to say, “We will go only if we get an email from Nicolás Maduro inviting us,” and that has not happened.

Thank you so much; it has been so interesting hearing from you. We would really like to speak to you for another hour, but we are not able to today. If there is anything else, when you have finished your evidence, that you think we should know more about, please do write to us, because we are very interested in this and we are incredibly grateful for your time. Thank you so much for coming here.

It is an honour to be here.

Thank you. Witnesses: Professor Janina Dill and Professor Antonios Tzanakopoulos.

We are hearing evidence on Venezuela, in the international law context. The previous witnesses spoke to us particularly about Venezuela. We now have the great pleasure to hear from experts on the international law context. Could you introduce yourselves?

Hello. My name is Antonios Tzanakopoulos. I am a professor of public international law at the University of Oxford.

Good morning. My name is Janina Dill. I am a professor of global security at the University of Oxford.

We have some questions for you. I will begin with a general question: can you briefly outline the international law rules on the use of force?

Things are relatively simple in that respect. There is a prohibition on the use of force in article 2(4) of the UN charter, which reflects customary law. There are two exceptions that are generally accepted. One is the right to use force in self-defence if an armed attack occurs—not against any use of force, but specifically against armed attacks. Beyond that, the only possibility for states to use force is when they are authorised to do so by the United Nations Security Council, under chapter VII of the charter and, in particular, article 42.

Is there also something about it not being just if you are attacked, but if one of your allies is attacked?

The right is to individual or collective self-defence. There are some specific rules there. I have not gone through all the rules. There needs to be a call for assistance. You cannot assist simply because you consider—

Because you think you should go in.

Yes, because you think, “Oh, they’ve been bombed, so here I go”. There needs to be a call for assistance; that is in part what NATO does, right? NATO automates the call for assistance through article 5 so that an attack on one is automatically an attack on all. There needs to be no formal call of assistance in that sense. Of course, if you are using force in self-defence, you also need to inform the Security Council and so on and so forth. I am happy to go into details, but things are relatively simple in that aspect.

Thank you. Is there anything to add?

There is nothing much to add except to say that the right of self-defence is triggered by an imminent or an ongoing armed attack. In some sense, the question whether in a particular case the legal analysis is complex or not is usually the question whether self-defence is plausibly available as an exception to the prohibition on the use of force. There is a strong presumption when one country uses its military force without the consent of the other country on that country’s territory that that violates international law, because international law is premised on the non-use of force in international relations. That presumption can really only be overturned if there is a right of self-defence. If a country does not even argue or claim self-defence, or if there is no plausible pathway to that country having faced an imminent or ongoing armed attack, then self-defence is off the table and the diagnosis of an illegal use of force—in this case an act of aggression—is relatively straightforward and uncomplicated.

I always think that it is simple, for me, to think of it in terms of just English criminal law. When are you allowed to hit someone? If you think they are about to hit you and you want to defend yourself, or because they are in the middle of hitting you? That seems to be the baseline. If you begin with that, but on a larger scale, that seems to be quite a good way of holding it back to reality. Sorry, I am not supposed to be giving evidence. Is there a justification in international law for the US military operation?

No.

Okay. That is fine.

I am happy to address some of the rationales that have been brought forward and why they do not fit any pathway towards a justification, but we can also just leave it at a resounding “no”.

Let’s take some more questions and we will see how we get on. I think Richard wanted to ask some questions.

What we have seen is that the United States has justified the action in terms of its own domestic law enforcement. What is the significance of the US not having sought to justify the operation in terms of international law? Can I put that first to Professor Dill?

In the first instance, both an act of aggression and an international armed conflict are matters of fact. Whether or not they exist is determined by the prevailing facts on the grounds, so the label that a belligerent or aggressor wishes to attach to their military operation is immaterial for the legal classification in this case. We very clearly have a non-consensual use of US military force on the territory of Venezuela. There is no particular requirement for that to reach a level of protractedness or be recognised by the aggressor; it is simply, as a matter of legal fact, an armed conflict and an act of aggression. In this case, there was a parallel law enforcement operation that the United States conducted during that act of aggression, but I think the most important thing to stress is that a law enforcement operation is not apt to redeem the illegality of the aggression. In fact, it adds its own layer of illegality because enforcing your own domestic law on the territory of another state without that state’s consent is itself a violation of international law. In the process of that law enforcement operation, the United States abducted a sitting Head of State, which violates the rule of personal immunity, so there are two layers of illegality that are added to the aggression in virtue of that law enforcement operation. The extent to which that can be justified under US domestic law is immaterial for the question of whether or not it violates international law.

Professor Tzanakopoulos, do you have anything to add?

I have very little to add; Janina said it. You cannot go around enforcing UK law in other states. That is a violation of the prohibition of exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction, if you want the expression that is used. In simple terms, you can never use your domestic law as an excuse for the violation of international law—end of story. Saying, “I was undertaking a domestic law enforcement operation”, as Janina said, simply adds another violation. The second thing I would say more directly to your question is about the lack of justification. I think that is important because of the lack of justification in international law, which is a decentralised system where the law is actually made by states through their practice and through expressions of their legal claims. When you are doing something, if you are not trying to justify it, then the presumption is that you are putting forward a claim and that you are at least entitled to do it. Then it is not so much about what the United States does, but about what the rest of the world does.

On the international reaction to the operation, what implications are there for international law on the use of force in the reaction that we saw—or didn’t see?

The United States has previously conducted military operations in stark tension with international law, but it has always seen fit to attempt to explain them in legal terms and to convince the rest of the world that they were instantiations of self-defence or covered by Security Council authorisation. As Antonios was putting it, the difference between doing that and offering a legal justification, and simply not offering a legal justification is very stark, because if you violate the law but you claim legality, you potentially reshape the rule. You might contest the context of the rule, but you do not question the obligatory character of international law and the system as such. That is much more dangerous. The United States have now, for the first time in a sense, abandoned the pretence that international law applies to them. The President has said as much as, “I don’t need international law”. For the rest of the international community, the question then is whether we need international law. I would say that we do. Every other state in the international system needs international law; we have 2,000 years of political theory and almost as much empirical evidence to know that without international law, there is no justice, no security, no rights and not even stable trade relations.[1] For the rest of the international system, this was a moment of truth. Every single state should have stood up and called out this violation and then acted in line with its own obligations, because third states have clear obligations of non-recognition, non-assistance and, in this case, even protest. In a sense, I think we have not seen that happen and that is the real problem here, because it does not come as a surprise to anyone watching that the current US Administration violates international law. The problem is how egregious, how serious and how manifestly incontestable that violation was, and how little of a reaction we have seen to that from the rest of the world.

Could this set a precedent? In particular, are we seeing customary international law change because of that lack of reaction from the rest of the international community?

Before we get there, for those people who are not lawyers, why is international law customary at all? That is important to explain. What is the standing of international law? Who says what is international law and what isn’t? Do you mind briefly explaining that?

That is no problem at all. UK law is also customary; domestic law is customary in many states, including here where we do not have a written constitution, so that should not come as a surprise to us. The formal definition of customary law is a general practice that is accepted as law. To put it simply, when states do something and couple it with a legal claim, or just the implication of a legal claim, whether that will turn into a rule or not depends on the reaction of other states. To give an example of what we were saying earlier, in 1967 a tanker called the Torrey Canyon, under a Liberian flag, ran aground off the coast of the UK—you may have heard of it.

I remember that.

Exactly. In 1967 the Torrey Canyon runs aground. It is outside the three-mile territorial sea, which means that it is on the high seas, so it is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the state of the flag, which is Liberia. Yet the oil is going to destroy the United Kingdom’s coast, so the United Kingdom gets in touch with Liberia and asks if they will waive that or consent to it being waived, or if they can assist. Liberia says no, because they do not want to give up the exclusivity of the flag, because then what is the point of the Liberian flag? What does the UK do? It sends the Royal Air Force and bombs the ship to burn the oil. Who protested that? No one—not even Liberia. That alone could have created a new rule. Why? Because you have an act that is coupled with at least a claim that you are entitled to do that—especially for permissive rules, that is how it works—and then if nobody protests, that very quickly will become the rule. Do you know who protested that? The United Kingdom protested itself. It came out and said, “Sorry, sorry. We should not have done that; we really had to, but we will pay for it” and so on and so forth. The point is that the next time a UK ship runs aground off the coast of whatever state, we do not want people to be like, “Excellent! Let’s just bomb them now.” That is the idea. This is how customary law is formed. Okay, it is a simple example with permissive rules—it gets a little more complicated with prohibitive rules and so on—but this is how the law is formed in a decentralised legal order. This is what we are saying about there being no reaction. Okay, the United States can do what the United States does, but it is important that when they offer an explanation, they are confirming the rule. When the United States tortures and says, “But I am not torturing, because this does not fall within our definition of torture as pain equivalent to death or major organ failure”—how they measure it I do not know—the rest of the world can disagree and say, “You are wrong. That is not the definition,” but the fact that they have put that explanation forward is enough to underscore the rule and say that the United States respects the rule. When they use force and say that it is self-defence, that they are saving nationals abroad, that it is humanitarian intervention or whatever each state says, they are at least underscoring that they respect the rule. Even Russia did that. They sent an article 51 letter when they invaded Ukraine and said, “We are using force in self-defence.” The rest of the world can laugh at that and say, “No, that is not self-defence—you are wrong,” but they are underscoring that they respect the rule. That is how customary law works in those circumstances. That is the terrifying thing that we are seeing now, at least on the part of Europe, which is that you have a clearly unlawful act. I do not think we have met anybody who—

But obviously Russia was not following international law when it invaded Ukraine, so the fact that they gave a fig leaf to it is irrelevant, isn’t it?

Not for the change of international law. If you are thinking in days, months and years, you may be right, but international law moves at a much longer—

It is a mockery of international law.

If it is a mockery of international law, the United Kingdom can come out and say it: “It is a mockery of international law.” That is enough to put on the record that both Russia and the United Kingdom respect the prohibition of the use of force as a rule, and disagree—so they have a dispute—as to whether, in these specific circumstances, the rule of the use of force was justified. You know what? Russia also said that it is a mockery of international law to go and bomb Serbia over Kosovo, and we can disagree with that.

What the President has said is, “The only constraint on me is my conscience.” That is where we have a change.

Also, one of the differences was that, I think, 140 countries in the United Nations then saw fit to condemn the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to push back against the notion that this is a valid instantiation of the right of self-defence or the prevention of genocide, or whatever rationales Russia put forward. There was a contestation about the shape of the rule, the content of self-defence and the definition of aggression, which was in some sense settled in favour of both the integrity of the rule and the obligatory character of international law. None of that has happened in this case.

Can we move on to immunity and the doctrine of Head of State immunity? Does President Maduro enjoy immunity from legal proceedings by virtue of being a Head of State?

Yes. On 3 January, Nicolás Maduro was the effective incumbent as a Head of State and Head of Government according to the Venezuelan constitution. As such, he enjoys personal immunity. That is an immunity that attaches to his person while he is in office and that makes him inviolable against detention by foreign countries’ enforcement operations and immune from prosecution before the courts of other countries. Personal immunity is a very long-standing rule. It protects Heads of State against interference by other countries. There are very few pathways towards piercing personal immunity, none of which are available in this case, so the abduction and prosecution of Nicolás Maduro on that day is another egregious violation of international law.

Do you have anything to add on that question, Professor Tzanakopoulos?

No, I have nothing to add. That is exactly right.

What should we make, then, of the assertions from the United States that Maduro’s presidency is not legitimate?

Let us first say what personal immunity is actually for. It is not for the benefit of the person holding the job; it is for the benefit of the country. It is an instantiation of the principle of sovereign equality, because the incumbent Head of State partakes in their country’s sovereignty, so breaching the rule is a violation not of that person’s individual rights but of that country’s sovereignty. Personal immunity is supposed to protect Heads of State, in doing their business, against unilateral political acts by other countries. If non-recognition, which is a unilateral political act by another country, could pierce immunity, that would be the exception that swallows the rule whole: immunity would not do what it is meant to do. Non-recognition—the designation of a Head of State or Head of Government as illegitimate—does not create an exception to personal immunity. The International Law Commission restated customary law here, I think, in 2022, suggesting that the pathway by which someone came to hold that position is immaterial, as long as they in fact hold that position. Nicolás Maduro is, doubtless, illegitimate under moral considerations. As I think the previous panel suggested, he stole an election; he was credibly accused of crimes against humanity, against the Venezuelan people. In this legal context, that is immaterial, because he was widely treated by the international community as being able to bind the state—as, in fact, holding the position as Head of State—and, as such, he had immunity. That may be frustrating, but it is important for us to remember that that is not to his benefit; it is to the benefit of the international system and to the benefit of international stability. That rule also protects British diplomats abroad.

Are there any exceptions to this doctrine of Head of State immunity?

I would just caution generally on “illegitimacy”. Illegitimacy according to whom, and based on what criteria? What other Heads of State are illegitimate? Is someone who is back in the polls illegitimate?

How does the International Criminal Court issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin?

The International Criminal Court does not have to respect immunity.

Are you saying that immunity is part of international law?

No. Immunity is immunity from the jurisdiction of the domestic courts of other states. For example, the United Kingdom Prime Minister is immune from jurisdiction and enforcement within the territory or by the courts of any other state. He is not immune from the International Criminal Court, because immunity is precisely a rule that stems from what we call sovereign equality. To put it very simply, “sovereignty” is this magical term which basically means nothing but jurisdiction—it means the power to make law and enforce that law. Every state has the power to make whatever law it makes, and it has the power to enforce that law within its territory. That is its sovereignty—la plénitude de pouvoir. It has all the power within the territory. Every other state also has all the power within its own territory, which means that the two sovereigns are necessarily also equal. Thus, an equal cannot have power over another equal. Just like you are immune from my jurisdiction, Sir John, and I am immune from your jurisdiction, neither of us is immune from the jurisdiction of the UK courts. The point here is that it is not the United Kingdom or the United States that can sit in judgment on Maduro or whoever else; it is international courts that can sit in judgment on him or whoever else in certain circumstances, and so on and so forth. Before the International Criminal Court, there is no immunity.

May I add something? I think the statist bias that international law has gives a lot of people frustration. International law prioritises sovereignty, territorial integrity and the immunity of the Head of State over democratic rights, even the individual rights of people living on the Venezuelan territory. That can often frustrate justice.

That was what we were hearing from the previous witnesses.

Yes, we heard it from the previous panel. But in this instance, it is important to say that states have already seen fit to create pathways to right that wrong. The exception to personal immunity, and the appropriate pathway to deal with an illegitimate regime like Nicolás Maduro’s, would have been for the international community to appropriately empower and fund the International Criminal Court in its investigations of him. That is the way to pierce Head of State immunity, right the wrong of the statist bias and vindicate the claims and rights of the Venezuelan people. Do not put the reform of a system in the hands of an agent that is seeking to destroy it. The unilateral resort to force—an aggression—is not an appropriate remedy to the fact that international law, on balance, still prioritises sovereignty over human rights, because that is generally the way to ensure stability. Otherwise, there is simply too much of a risk of abuse and ulterior motive, as we have seen in this case. I do not think that we should make the mistake of thinking that this aggression, in the end, is either for the benefit of reforming an imperfect international legal system or for the benefit of the long-suffering Venezuelan people.

I am so tempted to ask one of the previous witnesses to come and join you, but we do not have time.

We were tempted to jump in ourselves.

And the non-recognition of the ICC by the United States does not change anything—it does not give them any ability to pursue an action in their own system.

No. Mr Foord asked for exceptions. The International Court of Justice has said that immunity does not mean impunity and has explained what that means. Serving high-ranking officials of the state are personally absolutely immune because they embody the state. There is no way to pierce that immunity except a waiver—going before an international court or tribunal established for that purpose. Once they stop serving, they shed part of their immunity and have only subject-matter immunity or material immunity.[2]

We saw that with the head of Bolivia, who was prosecuted for importing drugs into the United States. President Trump gave him a pardon.

That you can do.

The United States sought his extradition rather than abducting him.

We have seen abductions. The Israelis abducted Eichmann from Argentina. However, Eichmann was not a Head of State, nor was it accepted that it was a lawful act. In fact, the Israelis said, “Sorry, we shouldn’t have done that—we exercised jurisdiction in the territory of Argentina.” The Turks abducted Abdullah Öcalan and put him in jail, but he was not a Head of State either. Abductions do happen, but it is accepted that they are violations of international law. As Janina said, they are also layered with the fact that you are violating immunity.

Is there any exception that would apply in the case of Putin if there were a special tribunal to prosecute the crime of aggression against Ukraine? There has been discussion of a tribunal sitting in Ukraine, which would be one domestic jurisdiction acting against another. Could you comment on that?

How long do you have? The International Criminal Court is one thing. It is not ad hoc. It was not created for a specific case; it was created on the basis of a statute to deal with all potential cases falling under the four crimes within its jurisdiction. There are provisions in it about immunity, and the Court has already found that when cases that do not involve states parties are referred to it, immunity does not apply, although that decision has been seen by some as problematic. Even that is problematic before the ICC. The creation of a special court specifically for aggression against Ukraine is not something we have never seen before. However, if you go outside the framework of the UN Security Council—all the other ad hoc courts that we had, such as those for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, were based on binding Security Council decisions—in parallel to an existing international criminal court to create a special court for a particular crime, there may be issues. That is a much more complicated issue.

The Security Council, like the International Criminal Court, is an instance in which states have managed to create an institution that rises above sovereign equality. Generally speaking, international law is enforced not vertically between the sovereign and the subjects, like domestic law, but horizontally. The Security Council is the exception: it has enforcement powers and can grant jurisdictional powers that rise above the principle of sovereign equality. Of course, it is entirely neutered when the aggressor is a permanent member holding a veto, which is the case for both Ukraine and Venezuela. We see the limits of that system there. Being frustrated with those limits is entirely legitimate. However, the way around it is not to blow up the entire system, but to work within that system and see, particularly from the point of view of this country or any other third state, how we can shore up that system against its limitations when nuclear-armed great powers that are permanent members of the Security Council violate the most fundamental rules of international law. It should be, “How can we shore up and stand up for that system?”, not, “How can we blow it up because it has failed us in this context?”

The other thing to remember is that, of course, we made it that way. It was done by design; we made it. It did not come from above. The Security Council has five permanent members because that is what the states agreed.

The UN Security Council is often described as being gridlocked because of the permanent members on it. In an ideal world, what would the Security Council be doing, if it was working together and seeking to deal with some of the problems in the world?

It is shocking how broad the powers of the Security Council under chapter VII are. When the Security Council operates, you should worry about the fact that it is operating. From 1945 to 1990, let’s say, we had the Security Council basically almost not operating at all, because it was deadlocked. Okay—fair enough. Only twice, with South Africa and Rhodesia, did we have sanctions; I will not go into that story, because, especially in the UK, it may ruffle some feathers. However, from the 1990s to, say, 2008 or perhaps 2010, when the Security Council was operating, in fact the danger was what the Security Council was doing, because it was able to impose even individual sanctions—sanctions on individuals not connected to any state—and freeze those individuals’ accounts, and impose not just arms embargoes, which is okay, but travel bans on them. That was always done in closed session, with no evidence and absolutely no way to appeal. We have even had the UK Supreme Court react to these kinds of sanctions from the Security Council by striking down domestic implementing Acts.

Could you give us an example?

Yes. The 1267 sanctions regime was originally the one against Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and now it is also against ISIS, so it is still in existence. For many years, this operated by someone going to the Security Council—by “someone”, I mean one of the members of the Security Council—in closed session saying, “This dude looks kinda dark and his beard is too long, so he should be on the consolidated sanctions list.” Say my name was entered in the consolidated sanctions list. I would then go to the bank and have no access to my money. I would ask the bank. They would say, “Oh, the Treasury…” I would go to the Treasury and they would say, “Order in Council says we have to run this.” I would go and ask about this Order in Council and they would tell me, “Oh, the EU told us we have to do it.” I would go to the EU and they would say, “Your name appears on the Security Council list.” I would go to the Security Council—except I cannot, because I cannot just show up in the Security Council, so there was no way for me to do anything about it. That shows you the power of the Security Council—so much so that it was the UK and other states that had to react, through their courts primarily, to then push the Security Council to create an office of the ombudsperson, where you could go and ask about your delisting, and so on and so forth. If you think I am kidding about someone saying, “This guy’s beard is too long”, when they were asking for Interpol notices on the consolidated list, Interpol called the Security Council and said, “Your No.98 on the list, Mr Mohamed Mohamed—which one of the 100,000 people named Mohamed Mohamed is that?”, because literally sometimes you would end up on that list as just a name, and whoever happened to have that name. That is the power that the Security Council has under article 41; forget about article 42. It has the power to create courts, to impose wide-ranging sanctions on states and on individuals, and even to bring into force treaties that have not actually been brought into force, to some extent—or at least it has done that in the past. The power of the Security Council is very broad, if the five agree, plus a minimum of another four—or at least, if none of the five disagrees and you have nine votes in favour, so nine out of 15. In that sense, there is nothing—almost nothing—that the Security Council cannot do, except when states—

Agree.

Or if it is violating the limits of the charter, or peremptory norms of international law, but that is a whole other debate.

Antonios has made an evocative case for the potential downsides of a Security Council that acts to the full extent of its empowerment. I don’t think that is the problem we have at the moment, though. I think the problem at the moment is that we have a disjuncture between where a material power and that empowerment sits, and the willingness to act on behalf of international law and enforce it. Right?

We have done an inquiry into the Security Council. Given the time that we have today, do you mind if I just cut that here? I think we are well aware of it and are very worried about it. However, I know that Fleur has some other questions, if you do not mind, because we are short of time and I know that we want to finish at quarter past—so we only have about six minutes left.

I will roll my questions into one. What now? What could the Venezuelans themselves do to seek a remedy against the US if this action has violated international law, and what could the international community, including the UK, do to maintain the integrity of international law by challenging this? Otherwise, will it just become, as we were talking about earlier, a new rule?

Maybe I can take the part of the question about what the United Kingdom can do, because I think that is absolutely critical. We have seen the President of the United States say he does not need international law and we have seen his Administration, in a relatively short period of time, violate almost every foundational rule of international law: the prohibition on the use of force, the prohibition on violating the immunity of heads of states, the prohibition on extrajudicial killings and the prohibition on coercive intervention in other states’ affairs. He does what he says here. From the point of view of the United Kingdom, the question is whether the special relationship, understood as a reflexive collaboration with and trust in US foreign policy, is at all compatible with the vision articulated by the Attorney General that Britain leads on international law. My answer would be no. Those are no longer compatible positions to take. The United Kingdom needs to radically reorient its foreign policy if it wishes to continue to lead on international law—and not just lead on international law, but stand up for international law. That requires building coalitions with Europe and with new partners in Asia and Africa and standing up together for international law. That moment is now, and it will pass. I understand the notion that third states have by and large not reacted to this latest violation of international law by the United States out of the sense that they fear a weaponisation of their dependence on the United States, and to ward off the cost to their own national interests that comes from drawing the ire of the United States, or particularly of this Administration. But that is a political error; it is short-sighted, because you thereby partake in the destruction of a system on which your long-term security depends for a very short-term gain. This is very important, and it is a fundamental question, because there are no easy solutions here. It is a radical shift that is required for the United Kingdom if it wishes to stick to being a leader on international law, or even to have international law as a bulwark against anarchy, securing the survival of every single state that on its own could not stand up to the United States—and that includes this state. At this moment in time, you either stand together with other like-minded nations or you hang alone, sooner or later.

I have very little to add to that. I would just say that you have to react. If you do not react, that means basically you accept. If the UK Prime Minister comes out and says, “We support the action” and “We respect international law”, he can be saying one of two things: either, he is unfamiliar with the context of mutually exclusive statements, or he considers the act as being in accordance with international law. When a Minister comes out in the news and says that it is not for the United Kingdom to sit in judgment on what foreign states do, that is shocking. That is exactly what the United Kingdom is there to do. It is there to sit in judgment on other states. If it does not, it just accepts whatever the other states do as law, and that cannot be done. It did not have a problem sitting in judgment on Russia, so it has to sit in judgment on the United States.

I think I need to correct a little thing; I think the Ministers did not say they supported the action in Venezuela. I think they said that they supported international law, and that it was for the United States to justify what it was that they had done. I don’t think they said they supported it.

But that is also incompatible with international law, because international law rests on the horizontal enforcement. There is nothing else but states holding each other to account.

I understand. I just wanted to—

Wherever it is—a statement here, a statement at the UN—where does that statement come from?

Anywhere. When it comes from the UK Prime Minister, from a Minister, from such a high-ranking organ of the state, that is basically the United Kingdom position.

It binds the state.

It binds the state, unless it is reversed. It does not matter whether it is done on TV or on Twitter, and it does not matter whether it is done at the podium in the United Nations, if it is a public position taken by the UK Prime Minister or someone like this. The Greek Prime Minister was criticised in Greece for days because in a tweet he said that this was not the time to discuss the legality of the current actions, and they were like, “Really? So when is the time to discuss?”.

The German Government said it was complex. These are weak statements. The notion that they are there to protect diplomacy and statecraft is mistaken. The principals in the United States bureaucracy are on board with the notion, “We don’t need international law.” They are conducting a foreign policy that is constrained neither by law nor ethics, neither the interests of their allies, nor even traditional understandings of US national interest. The desks of the agents where we would normally find the expertise in diplomacy and law on the United States have partly been left empty. I am obviously not privy to what happens behind closed doors, and I would never suggest giving up on diplomacy. Diplomacy and statecraft must always do whatever they can. But the notion of, particularly in the interaction with this Administration, not calling out a legal violation for the uncertain, speculative benefit it might have for diplomacy is a mistake, because the costs of this are not speculative. They are devastating and immediate—the costs to the international legal order and its obligatory character and integrity. If you cannot call out, or even name, violations of international law by your friends, you have no credibility when demanding compliance from your enemy. I think the Prime Minister of Canada said it very eloquently: “It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”

We have two minutes—there is time for one more question.

I have one question that is relevant to where we are going. Given what the murder of thousands of citizens in Iran and the involvement of the Iranian Government in terrorism acts across the globe, is there any justification in international law for America to take action against Iran?

Not without Security Council authorisation or an armed attack taking place on the part of Iran, or at least one being imminent—in the sense of it being properly imminent, not Iraq 2003 imminent. There is no justification. I would like to add a couple of things. You know this; you are lawmakers. The international legal order is not in any danger of collapsing, because the international legal order does not have any content. It is a system; it is a mechanism. But laws change. In the United Kingdom they are changed by you; at the international level, the sovereign lawmakers—the equivalent of you—are the states. People are talking about the collapse of the order and so on and so forth. The order is not collapsing, but the rules are changing. The order is still going to be there, but we are just going to have much worse rules in the future—that is, if we do not react now. That is the point. The prohibition of the use of force has served us however it has served us, but at least it has served us in the sense that we have avoided a third world war. If we do not do whatever is needed to maintain that rule to prevent new exceptions or its complete erosion, the order will still be there, but it probably will not be an order that you would want to live in.

I am not sure I entirely agree. I think law as the organising principle of international relations is being replaced with something that affords much less security for the survival of smaller states, or even predictability for the stability of trade relations. I would like very briefly to answer your question. This is a case where we get frustrated with international law, because would we not all want the brave Iranian people to be supported internationally? There are pathways to aid the Iranian people legally and to do much more to stand up on their behalf. Allow me to put on my hat as a political science professor for a minute: the unilateral use of force for the purpose of regime change almost never has the outcome desired. In fact, in many cases, it can make things worse. That may be hard to imagine from the point of view of the Iranian people, but the empirical track record of outside forcible unilateral regime change is appalling. The temptation may be there, but I urge us all to look at history, particularly recent history, and not go down that same route again.

I feel slightly breathless, but I am so grateful. It has been such a good morning. Thank you so much for your time. I am sorry to have rushed you, but you wanted to leave.

I have to teach—I have to get to Oxford.

Thank you for your time. If there is anything further that you think we should know about, please send us a note.     [1] Note by witness: When saying, ‘empirical evidence to know that without international law, there is no justice, no security, no rights and not even stable trade relations’ this should read ‘empirical evidence to know that without the rule of law, there is no justice, no security, no rights and not even stable trade relations’. [2] Note by witness: When saying ‘no way to pierce that immunity except a waiver – going before an international court’, I misspoke. What I meant to say was ‘no way to pierce that immunity except a waiver or going before an international court’.