Senior Research Fellow Dr Christopher Sabatini provided evidence to a session of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on 3 February.
Dr Sabatini was invited to provide evidence due to his expertise on Venezuela and US policy towards the country. During his appearance he discussed repression and electoral fraud under Venezuela’s deposed President Nicolás Maduro; US claims of narcotics trafficking by his government; the subsequent attack on Venezuela and removal of Maduro and his wife; and the response of the Venezuelan people and the wider region.
Dr Sabatini also discussed US objectives in the country now regarding democracy, economic recovery and the oil industry, and the relation of the Trump administration’s actions to domestic US politics.
Dr Sabatini describes his evidence at committee.
Drawing from his previous work on Chatham House’s Venezuela working group, Dr Sabatini’s testimony focused on recommendations on how the UK and other democratic governments can be more effective defending international norms and multilateralism through collective, pre-emptive diplomacy.
Dr Sabatini said:
‘The response to President Trump’s sabre rattling over Greenland provides an example of what nation states acting pre-emptively and collectively may achieve.
‘In the case of Venezuela, governments could and should have acted earlier to defend the other international norms of self determination and human rights.
‘International efforts to defend human rights, self-determination and national sovereignty may not have been enough to deter the targeted military action in Venezuela. But they would have signalled earlier a commitment to international norms’.