Venezuela and the exception to the principle of non-intervention in international law

The principle of non-intervention is enshrined in the UN Charter (1945) and in Resolution 2625 of its General Assembly, which states that ‘no State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for whatever reason, in the internal or external affairs of any other State’.

It is true that this principle refers to respect for the sovereignty of the State and is associated with the horizontality of international law, which establishes that all States are legally equal, so that none can claim superior power over another in order to invade it.

The case of Venezuela, viewed in this light, should lead us to conclude that the US should never have done so under any circumstances. But we are not considering the reasons of domestic law; the US has invoked the principle of universal jurisdiction that lies in its national law, powerfully associated with the intrinsic principle of state sovereignty.

This is what the Donald Trump administration believed, considering Maduro not to be the president of Venezuela, but rather the head of a drug trafficking gang, and therefore his status with regard to Venezuela, which he controlled at will, was and is that of a criminal in Washington's eyes.

However, from the moment this assumption was added to that of Nicolás Maduro, who threw national and international legality to the ground on 28 July 2024, the date on which he refused to acknowledge his defeat at the polls and therefore did not even have a shred of internal or international legitimacy, it was clear that the dictator, totally tainted by illegality and anti-democratic behaviour, had triggered the aforementioned exception to the principle of non-intervention for legitimate defence invoked by Washington (also given for collective security and for failure to comply with the rulings of the International Court of Justice), and that is what must be understood, for one must not believe that international law is only a rule, it is also an exception.

Hitler, because of everything he did during the Second World War, could not possibly be endorsed by German democratic law or international law. Many of us wanted Maduro to be overthrown by Venezuela's internal forces (the armed forces or the Venezuelan people), protected by the right to civil disobedience, enshrined in Articles 333 and 350 of its Political Constitution, but this did not happen due to the draconian way in which Maduro controlled the country.

Venezuela has been freed from a tyrant who caused the largest diaspora in Latin America and committed wholesale human rights violations, mocking the electoral process and controlling the fate of Venezuelans at will. It should not be difficult to warn and condemn him. The great liberation of Venezuela, then, has begun, and its total consummation is inexorable.

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Mackay, former Foreign Minister of Peru and internationalist.