On November 9, the Valdai Club held a meeting with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia on the topic “Venezuela: Geopolitics of Unilateral Sanctions and Violations of International Law”.
Opening the event, Oleg Barabanov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club, noted that Russia and Venezuela are on the same side of the barricades in world politics. He pointed to the coinciding positions of the two countries on a number of multilateral issues, such as the protection of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter, and their development of bilateral cooperation. He also emphasised that Russia pays great attention to the ideological legacy of President Chavez.
Foreign Minister Plasencia began his speech with a brief excursion into the history of the liberation of Latin America from Spanish colonialism and with a story about the Bolivarian project, which meant the unification of all the former Spanish colonies into a single state. “This project was not based on the principles of hegemony and expansion, but on the principles of integration,” he stressed, calling this a key contradiction between the Bolivarian vision of the world and the United States’ vision of the world, which was laid out in the Monroe Doctrine. “So two hundred years ago, the ground for conflict arose,” the minister said, citing Simon Bolivar’s words that the North American colonies were born to bring “pain, sorrow and blood” to the south. Soon, the United States indeed began a policy of intervention in the affairs of the sovereign states of Latin America, a policy of expansion and annexation.
When President Chávez introduced a constitutional reform that made Venezuela the Bolivarian Republic, it meant that Venezuela was determined to fight to bring the political legacy of Simón Bolivar to life, Plasencia said. “We say that our America is a sovereign America, that we have our own pride, that we have our own goals and objectives, which differ from the goals of expansion, imperialism and interference in the affairs of other states,” he added, noting that the United States in every possible way obstructs the implementation of the Bolivarian project and the strengthening of the countries of Latin America. Venezuela’s integration projects, aimed at developing cooperation and preventing the exploitation of the weak by the strong, cause concern and aggression in Washington. After Venezuela’s return to Bolivarian philosophy, Washington began to view the republic as a threat to US interests. A separate negative reaction from the United States, according to Plasencia, has been elicited by the foreign policy of Venezuela, in particular the good relations of the Bolivarian Republic with Russia, China and Iran and its desire for multilateral cooperation. As a result, the United States is trying to reduce its resource base and impose sanctions aimed at limiting access to high-tech industrial goods for the servicing of the petrochemical and oil industries.
These sanctions were imposed in violation of the UN Charter and legally cannot even be called sanctions — these are unilateral coercive measures, the foreign minister stressed. According to him, individuals and legal entities that are under the “sanctions” of Washington are mainly associated with the production and processing of oil. In this way, the US is trying to weaken the Venezuelan economy. Oil exports are also under attack — Venezuelan tankers are being pursued across the world’s oceans. All this prevents the Bolivarian Republic from modernising its oil industry. The “sanctions” also prevent Venezuela from purchasing spare parts and consumables for the oil industry and from conducting financial transactions. Many of Venezuela’s financial assets have been frozen; in fact, they have been stolen. “As a consequence, according to Washington, our government should fall and a clown planted by the United States should reign in Venezuela.” This will not happen, but unilateral coercive measures are very harmful to the Venezuelan population, the minister said. In conclusion, Plasencia thanked the Russian government for its solidarity with the Venezuelan people and state, as well as for joint work on international platforms to uphold the principles of international law and protecting countries affected by unilateral coercive measures.
