Guaido Requests a Military Intervention Against Venezuela Invoking the R2P Doctrine
By Mision Verdad – Sep 24, 2020
In a parallel and informal zoom video-chat accompanied by some delegations in the framework of the 75th General Assembly of the United Nations, the outgoing Venezuelan deputy Juan Guaidó gave a speech supposedly representing the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
The [speech] was not included in the institutional panel and took place just minutes after the official [speech] of President Nicolás Maduro before this Assembly. Guaidó, again, made serious and worrying statements that were later reinforced on his social networks.
The outgoing deputy affirmed that the blockade measures are not generating the expected effect against Caracas, therefore he asked the international community to consider contemplating “scenarios” to “reestablish” democracy in Venezuela, after “all avenues have been exhausted” to consolidate the dismantling of the Venezuelan government.
In a nuanced but open way, Guaidó made a request for foreign intervention in Venezuela invoking the doctrine “Responsibility To Protect” (R2P), which has been implemented in countries that have been militarily invaded by USA in recent decades.
Guaidó again requested the pressure against the country be reinforced, insisting that the international community should “take action” to assume the removal by force of Venezuelan institutions, based on what was recently said in the false human rights report of the Lima Group, raised against Caracas, and making new accusations of “narco-terrorism” against the Venezuelan government.
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Narratives and context
The R2P doctrine is not a doctrine solidly enshrined in international law, however, it is a corollary of principles that have emanated from the doctrine of security and projection of US hegemony and that have been diluted in treaties and documents emanating from international institutions, including the United Nations system itself, to establish forceful actions by the international community in the face of eventualities and crises in a given country.
The introduction by the gringos of this doctrine has taken place through their influence in the UN Security Council, therefore, that would be the only body empowered to validate certain actions on countries, in full congruence with the endorsed law and that gives meaning to the Security Council itself.
This principle assumes the sense of “responsibility” that prompts countries to take part in internal situations of other countries. But it is worth emphasizing, the approval of such acts resides exclusively in the UN Security Council.
For narrative reasons, it is evident that Guaidó makes this invocation — according to him — before the UN, although he was not part of the session, to make it look like a “formal” request, as he refers to it.
It is worth saying that the United Nations does not recognize Guaidó’s artificial mandate, therefore, his request has no legal basis before this instance, nor in the General Assembly, much less in the Security Council.
What Guaidó does make is an open request to a diffuse level of international politics, which is the so-called “international community”, without referring to specific actors. In this way, it creates a narrative arc so that one or several actors, in a discretionary manner and outside the UN Security Council, may decide to adhere to R2P to press the trigger against Venezuela.
In this scenario, the US, along with Colombia and Brazil, could probably be won over to carry out actions against Venezuela under this stratagem.
The possibilities of a conflict in Venezuela have an alleged legal basis in the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR), signed in 1947 and which entered into force in 1948. The TIAR was conceived as an instrument to try to block the Soviet influence on the American continent in the context of the Cold War.
This regional collective security treaty, modeled by the Americans and enshrined in the Organization of American States (OAS), considers the use of force and the intervention in a country as one of its mechanisms but against extra-continental trheats. The resurrection of this Cold War monstrosity in the XXI century takes place within the framework of the construction of a “legal” scaffolding for intervention in Venezuela.
The spurious and non-existent government of Juan Guaidó has in fact representation in the OAS, although Venezuela has withdrawn from this entity by decision of its legitimate government. Basically, the only use of the artificial presence of Guaidó’s parallel diplomacy in this body has been to formalize the request for the activation of the TIAR against its own country. On September 11, 2019, the OAS approved the activation of the TIAR in the case of Venezuela.
Guaidó’s request aligns with other events, such as Mike Pompeo’s recent tour of countries bordering Venezuela, namely Guyana, Brazil, Colombia and Suriname, exhorting the overthrow of President Nicolás Maduro.
The possibility of the use of force against Venezuela in the current context lies in the so-called “October surprise” that the US government could be forging to encourage a favorable vote for Donald Trump in his re-election race next November.
Such a possibility is not to be underestimated. The Venezuelan government has called for “maximum alert” in the coming days and weeks in all civil and military levels of the country. The Venezuelan authorities have specified that the military provocation and the irregular use of force could take place.
The fabrication of a conflict in the country would go through irregular surgical actions and others that could be on the part of regular US forces.
Featured image: Photo: Bloomberg
Translation: OT/JRE/EF
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
