Venezuela has told the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that the United States has “continental ambitions” over much of Latin America as it wages an unofficial war to remove the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“It’s not just about Venezuela. The ambition is continental,” Venezuela’s UN ambassador, Samuel Moncada, told a meeting of the 15-member UNSC on Tuesday.
“The US government has expressed this in its National Security Strategy, which states that the future of the continent belongs to them,” Moncada said.
“We want to alert the world that Venezuela is only the first target of a larger plan. The US government wants us to be divided so it can conquer us piece by piece,” he said.
Venezuela, earlier this month, requested that the UNSC meet to address the “ongoing US aggression”, which began in September when the White House launched air strikes against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The White House claimed, without providing any evidence, that the vessels were trafficking drugs to the US.
At least 105 people have been killed so far in the attacks by US forces, which legal experts and Latin American leaders have branded “extrajudicial killings”, but which Washington claims are necessary to stem the flow of drugs to US shores.
At the UNSC meeting, Moncada also accused the administration of US President Donald Trump of violating both international and US domestic law, since the White House has been acting without the approval of the US Congress, whose authority is required to formally declare war on another country.
Moncada said that Trump’s imposition last week of a naval blockade on all Venezuelan oil tankers sanctioned by the US was a “military act aimed at laying siege to the Venezuelan nation”.
“Today, the masks have come off,” Moncada said. “It is not drugs, it is not security, it is not freedom. It is oil, it is mines and it is land.”
US forces have seized at least two Venezuelan oil tankers and confiscated at least 4 million barrels of Venezuelan oil, according to Moncada, in a move he described as “a robbery carried out by military force”.
The US has defended its naval blockade of Venezuela as a “law enforcement” action to be carried out by the US coastguard, which has the authority to board ships under US sanctions. A naval blockade, by contrast, would be considered an act of war under international law.
The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, told the UNSC that Latin American drug cartels remain the “single most serious threat” and that Trump would continue to use the full power of the US to eradicate them. Waltz also said that Venezuelan oil is a critical component in funding the cartels in Venezuela.
“The reality of the situation is that sanctioned oil tankers operate as the primary economic lifeline for Maduro and his illegitimate regime,” he said.
The White House earlier this year designated several international drug cartels, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as terrorist organisations. Washington also added the “Cartel de los Soles,” which it claims is headed by Maduro, to the list in November.
The Venezuelan leader has denied the US allegations and accused the Trump administration of using the drug trafficking claims as a cover to carry out “regime change” in his country.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN separately warned that US “intervention” in Venezuela could “become a template for future acts of force against Latin American states”.
China’s ambassador told the UNSC that the US actions “seriously infringe” on the “sovereignty, security and legitimate rights” of Venezuela.