Venezuela and the exception to the principle of non-intervention

According to this principle, ‘No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State.’

It is true that this principle refers to the unshakeable and inviolable respect for the sovereignty of the State and that it 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 or to contribute to such an invasion.

The issue of Venezuela, viewed in this light, should lead us to conclude that the United States of America should not do so under any circumstances. But we are not considering the reasons of domestic law powerfully associated with the intrinsic principle of sovereignty that all States in the international community have. This is the view of the Republican administration led by Donald Trump, which considers that Nicolás Maduro has not been the president of Venezuela for some time, but rather the head of a drug trafficking gang – the so-called Cartel of the Suns – and therefore, for Washington, his actions with regard to the country he controls, i.e. Venezuela, are those of a criminal.

However, from the moment this assumption is added to that of a Nicolás Maduro who threw national and international legality to the ground on 28 July 2024 when he refused to acknowledge his defeat at the polls, and therefore does not have even a shred of internal legitimacy or legitimacy on the world stage, it is clear that the dictator, totally tainted by illegality and anti-democratic behaviour, has triggered an exception to the principle of non-intervention, and this is what must be understood, because it should not be believed that only the law is the rule; the exception is also the rule.

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 have wanted Maduro to be ousted by endogenous forces in Venezuela, that is, by the Armed Forces themselves and by the Venezuelan people, protected by the right to civil disobedience, enshrined in Articles 333 and 350 of the Political Constitution, but this has not been possible due to the draconian and abusive way in which Maduro controls Venezuelan life at the national level.

In his desperation, he has just turned to the ideologised Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to seek international support, but he will not achieve what the democratic and goodwill peoples of the Americas are seeking, namely the great liberation of the Venezuelan people, who have every right to turn the page and make up for lost time.

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

Article published in the Diario Expreso newspaper in Peru