How Trump is violating international law

U.S. President Donald Trump’s macho disposition was on full display when he took to the podium at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida retreat, to announce U.S. military action against Venezuela. He said that the capture of Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuela and his wife, Cilia Flores, to face trial on charges of “narco-terrorism” in New York was a “spectacular assault”. He announced that the U.S. would “run” the country and use its oil wealth to compensate U.S. companies whose corporations had been nationalised some two decades back.

Was U.S. military action in Venezuela actually about countering narco-terrorism? Since 2000, drug overdoses have claimed almost a million and a quarter U.S. lives. But, nearly 69% were on account of fentanyl — precursor chemicals of which are produced in China. Venezuela is only a “modest” source of cocaine in the U.S. However, Venezuela does have the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Mr. Trump’s declaration that U.S. oil companies, which are the “biggest anywhere in the world,” would now enter the South American nation, left little need for further confirmation of his intentions.

Violation of international law

The U.S’s action in Venezuela is one of the most flagrant violations of international law. It hardly needs emphasis that the action has violated the core of the UN charter [Article 2(4)] which prohibits the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State” except with the approval of the UN Security Council or in self-defence (Article 51).

This event signals the breakdown of the balance of power in international relations. Originally a European construct to maintain peace among several nations, it underwent radical change in the 20th century. After World War II, it attained a bipolar architecture with the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the main actors. During this period, neither country could employ power unhindered. One balanced the other, maintaining a tenuous peace.

A balance of power

The attack on Venezuela calls to mind how power dynamics played out in the Indian subcontinent during the Bangladesh War in December 1971. It frustrated the machinations of the visceral anti-Indian administration of President Richard Nixon. When Washington moved the US Seventh Fleet Task Force TF-74 to intimidate New Delhi into submission, a Soviet counter- deployment of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines neutralised the threat. It was the typical countervailing of a superpower by another in a classical play of the balance-of-power concept. Similarly, when the third army of Egypt was threatened with annihilation in the 1973 Yom Kippur War at the hands of Israel, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev moved airborne divisions to staging grounds, as Egypt was a close ally of Moscow. A worried U.S. declared DEFCON 3 (a U.S. defence readiness/threat alert). Israel capitulated, and the Soviet warning saved the Egyptian army.

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the world lost the sole power capable of challenging the unchecked exercise of power by the U.S. Emboldened, Washington has given itself the right to engage in pre-emptive war. It has toppled regimes in Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Syria either through direct action or supported movements.

In the immediate future, only China can emerge as a counter-balance to the U.S. A loose axis between Russia and China could challenge the existing unipolar structure, though differences between the major powers may prevent an enduring partnership.

With the U.S. proving yet again that it is insensitive to India’s security interests, New Delhi needs to go a long way before it can be a counter-balancer. It needs to evolve an imaginative and out-of-the-box strategy to build its military-industrial complex and strengthen its defence.

Thomas Mathew is a retd. civil servant who has served in the Indian Defence Ministry.