UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Both allies and adversaries of the United States on Monday used an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to voice opposition to the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela that captured leader Nicolás Maduro.
Before the U.N.'s most powerful body, countries critiqued — if sometimes obliquely — President Donald Trump's intervention in the South American country and his recent comments signaling the possibility of
expanding military action to countries like Colombia and Mexico over drug trafficking accusations. The Republican president also has reupped his threat to take over the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests.
Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the mineral-rich island, carefully denounced U.S. prospects for taking over Greenland without mentioning its NATO ally by name.
“The inviolability of borders is not up for negotiation,” said Christina Markus Lassen, Danish ambassador to the U.N.
She also defended Venezuela's sovereignty, saying “no state should seek to influence political outcomes in Venezuela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law.”
While French President Emmanuel Macron recently endorsed Maduro's capture, its U.N. envoy was slightly more critical Monday, saying any violations of international law by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which include the U.S., erodes “the very foundation of the international order.”
“The military operation that has led to the capture of Maduro runs counter to the principle of peace dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of non-use of force," said Jay Dharmadhikari, deputy French ambassador to the U.N.
U.S. envoy Mike Waltz defended the operation in Venezuela as a justified and “surgical law enforcement operation,” calling out the 15-member council for criticizing the targeting of Maduro.
“If the United Nations in this body confers legitimacy on an illegitimate narco-terrorist with the same treatment in this charter of a democratically elected president or head of state, what kind of organization is this?” said Waltz, who is Trump’s former national security adviser.
Maduro's 2024 reelection was widely disputed.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that he is “deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected with regard to the 3 January military action.” He said the “grave” action by the U.S. could set a precedent for how future relations between nations unfold.
Even with the strong support for Venezuela's sovereignty, its envoy called on the U.N. to go beyond veiled comments and condemnation. Ambassador Samuel Moncada urged the Security Council to demand that Washington release Maduro and his wife.
“If the kidnapping of a head of state, the bombing of a sovereign country and the open threat of further armed action are tolerated or downplayed, the message sent to the world is a devastating one: namely that the law is optional, and that force is the true arbiter of international relations,” Moncada said.
He warned that other countries can’t afford to look away: “Accepting such a logic would mean to open the door to a deeply unstable world.”
Neighboring Colombia described the raid as reminiscent of “the worst interference in our area in the past.”
“Democracy cannot be defended or promoted through violence and coercion, and it cannot be superseded, either, by economic interests,” Ambassador Leonor Zalabata said.
The biggest critics of U.S. foreign policy, China and Russia, which are also permanent members of the Security Council, called for the U.N. body to unite in rejecting America turning back to an “era of lawlessness.”
Maduro, like his predecessor, forged a close relationship with Russia, while China was the main destination for most Venezuelan oil.
“We cannot allow the United States to proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and nonintervention,” Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said.
His own country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has drawn widespread condemnation within the U.N. and from the U.S., although the Trump administration is engaging with Russia in hopes of brokering an end to the fighting.
The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife early Saturday from their home on a military base and put them aboard a U.S. warship to face prosecution in New York in a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. Maduro declared his innocence during his first appearance in a Manhattan courthouse Monday.
His stunning removal came after months of the U.S. amassing a military presence off Venezuela’s coast and blowing up alleged drug trafficking boats. Trump has insisted that the U.S. would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, says the U.S. would enforce an oil quarantine that was already in place on sanctioned tankers and use that leverage to press policy changes in Venezuela.
