In an exclusive intervention, Dame Emily Thornberry has issued a stark warning that the United States' dramatic military action in Venezuela is motivated by a desire to control the nation's vast oil reserves, not to combat the drug trade as publicly claimed.
A Breach of International Rules
The Chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee condemned the operation in which Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were seized from their beds by American Special Forces in a night-time raid. The couple were then bundled into helicopters and taken to face trial in a US court.
Dame Emily was unequivocal, stating that such an action is fundamentally not permitted under international law. "You really aren’t allowed to walk into other countries and arrest the leadership, then take them off to be tried in your domestic court," she argued, questioning the dangerous precedent it sets. "Where would it end?"
The Real Motive: 303 Billion Barrels of Oil
Thornberry directly challenged the Trump administration's justification that the intervention was aimed at stemming the flow of illicit drugs. She pointed out that if narcotics were the true concern, there are numerous other nations that rank as far more significant sources.
She highlighted the apparent hypocrisy in Donald Trump's recent pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 45 years in a US court for drug trafficking. "If Trump was so worried about drugs from South America, why did he last month pardon former Honduras President Hernandez?" she asked.
The real objective, she asserts, is Venezuela's colossal oil wealth. The nation sits on an estimated 303 billion barrels of proven reserves, the largest in the world. Thornberry noted that Trump and his allies have openly spoken about "getting back the oil that was stolen."
"That’s Venezuelan oil to you and me," she said, drawing a parallel to historical resource grabs. "This oil is going to make America (and the Venezuelans) rich. Sound familiar?"
Risking a Global Free-For-All
The senior Labour MP warned that flouting the post-Second World War international order, established to prevent chaos and bloodshed, has severe global consequences. "Might must not be right," she insisted. "Just because larger countries can walk into smaller ones doesn’t mean they are allowed to."
She expressed profound concern that the US action risks emboldening other major powers to act unilaterally within what they deem their own "spheres of influence."
Thornberry posed the alarming question of how other nations might now interpret this precedent. "The worry is that China may today be thinking ‘Isn’t Taiwan in our sphere of influence?’ And Putin thinking ‘And Ukraine is in mine’."
While acknowledging that powerful nations have historically acted in this manner, she stressed it is in everyone's interest to call it out and uphold the rules. "It has to be called out," Dame Emily concluded, arguing that the stability of the global system depends on it.
