Venezuela - The Lesson for Canada

Make no mistake, the attack on Venezuela by the Trump regime is not about removing a rogue leader; it is a deliberate attack on international law.

Since coming to power, the Trump regime has deliberately undermined the international rules-based order.

He has targeted the work of the International Criminal Court over its investigations into war crimes in Gaza. He has betrayed Ukraine time and time again while justifying the illegal Russian invasion.

And he has threatened NATO allies, Canada, and Greenland.

By invading Venezuela, Trump is declaring war on the United Nations.

One of the founding principles of the UN is that it is illegal to use force against another nation without UN Security Council Authorization. Over the decades, the United States skirted these obligations while carefully avoiding directly challenging the legitimacy of international law and institutions.

In the case of the invasion of Panama and the kidnapping of President Noriega, the United States set up a long paper trail in the courts regarding allegations of racketeering and drug trafficking.

When George W. Bush set out to invade Iraq, he brought the case for war to the United Nations. The claims of weapons of mass destruction were clearly false, but the United States presented its case in order to be seen as acting within the larger obligations of international law.

Bush also pushed for support from Western allies to create the impression of an international consensus. Trump doesn’t believe in the Western allies. He prefers the United States to act like a rogue state.

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In the case of Venezuela, Trump and his minions have made a mockery of the laws of the sea and warfare. The blockade was deemed by UN human rights experts to have no legitimacy. It was considered equal to “an armed attack” because no credible justification was given and no Security Council vote took place.

Trump claimed the Venezuelans had stolen American oil – a ridiculous claim.

Similar ridiculous claims were made for the boats being hunted on the high seas.

These strikes represented murder on the high seas. At least 83 people were killed, including those who were deliberately targeted after their boats were destroyed. This represented clear violations of the law.

Then they shifted from killing supposed drug dealers to seizing oil tankers. Some US lawmakers even suggested legalizing high-seas piracy to advance their goals. This represents a move into banditry by a nuclear-backed nation.

David Crane, the founding Chief Prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, writes:

“If the United States normalizes unilateral force, it signals to authoritarian leaders that aggression is once again an acceptable instrument of statecraft. This erodes the UN Charter’s foundational principle that disputes must be resolved peacefully and that force is a last resort. The United States helped build the post‑war legal order. It cannot selectively abandon it without consequence.”

Trump has contempt for traditional allies in Europe and the Americas. What has emerged in place of the traditional alliances is a dangerous new alignment – a triumvirate of gangster leaders determined to undermine international law – Putin, Netanyahu, Trump.

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In the book Autocracy Inc., Anne Applebaum documented how the invasion of Ukraine was marked by Putin’s provocative challenge to principles of international law.

“From the first days of the war, Putin and the Russian security elite ostentatiously demonstrated their disdain for the language of human rights, their disregard for the laws, their scorn for international law, and for treaties they themselves had signed. They arrested public officials and civic leaders. . . They built torture chambers for civilians. . . They kidnapped thousands of children. . . they deliberately targeted emergency workers.”

Even more flagrant were the actions of Israel following October 7.

From the earliest days of the incursion into Gaza, Netanyahu’s agenda seemed less about freeing the hostages and more about eradicating the people of Gaza. A clear pattern of provocations against civilians and aid agencies emerged. The world watched increasingly bold and vicious assaults on hospitals and aid convoys, aid workers, and journalists. Food was used as a weapon of war, including deliberate starvation or gunning down hungry children at supposed aid stations.

Netanyahu was banking on the unwillingness of Western leaders like the UK and Germany to call out these brazen war crimes. And so, while Western leaders denounced crimes by Putin, they tiptoed around the increasingly belligerent attacks on international law by Israel, thereby weakening an already tottering international order.

And then came Trump.

He has issued sanctions against a Canadian jurist working to investigate the war crimes. He has aligned the United States with the crimes of both Putin and Netanyahu. And he has deliberately targeted the Western alliances with threats of invasion in Greenland or arbitrarily moving the Canadian border.

With the attack on Venezuela, he has upped the ante through invasion and kidnapping. Venezuela puts the world on notice, and Canada must be ready.

We played a key role in establishing the International Criminal Court. We helped establish the Statute of Rome, which laid out key protections against state violence.

Canada has a long history of defending the international rule of law. We are now dealing with a regime that will kill people in the water, seize ships on the high seas, invade other countries, and kidnap their leaders. All bets are off.

This is the age of gangsters. And Canada must be ready to rise to the threat.

We must work to build alliances with other democratic nations in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. We need to establish the citizen’s volunteer force.

We must be ready for whatever comes next from the gangsters on our border.

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