The UK/EU's double standards

A day after the kidnapping of Venezuela’s democratically elected leader, Spain signed a statement together with Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay condemning the US action.

It was a rare show of defiance from an EU member state. Following President Maduro’s abduction, EU and European leaders have committed only to “closely monitor the situation.”

Kaja Kallas’s statement doesn’t blame the US for the crisis, but endorses the Trump administration’s casus belli that President Maduro was not only illegitimate but a drug trafficking kingpin to boot. The EU says it fully respects “international humanitarian law,” but just not plain old “international law.”

However, not all EU members have been equally vague. Hungary’s Viktor Orban called the coup “good for energy markets.” Hungary needs cheap Russian gas - as does the rest of Europe - but also wants to diversify its energy supply. Last month the state owned energy company signed a five year deal with US oil giant Chevron for 2 billion cubic metres of LNG.

While French President Macron has fallen into line behind Trump, opposition figures haven’t been as accommodating. Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen, leaders of the French right-wing National Rally, and Manuel Bompard from the left-wing La France Insoumise, condemned the coup.

But it took Gaullist conservative and former French PM Dominique de Villepin to point out that in refusing to denounce the attack on Venezuela, Europe’s position vis-a-vis Ukraine is weakened, just as it was when it failed to condemn the zionist entity’s genocide in Gaza. By selectively applying international law, Europe exposes its hypocrisy.

Notice how Keir Starmer squirms when Laura Kuenssberg asks him why he’s silent on President Trump’s attack on Venezuela when he was quick to condemn President Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

You’ve been incredibly clear always, that Vladimir Putin’s attack on a sovereign country, Ukraine, was wrong and ought to be condemned. What about President Trump’s attack on a sovereign country of Venezuela. Will you condemn that action against a sovereign state?

In June 2024, dimwit Kaja Kallas proclaimed that “sovereignty, territorial integrity and discrediting aggression as a tool of statecraft are crucial principles that must be upheld in case of Ukraine and globally.” Just not in the case of Venezuela.

President Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev called out European double standards, taking a dig at Sir Keir.

Now consider the Danish territory of Greenland, which Trump has said he wants to annex. His advisor Stephen Miller’s wife attracted a lot of attention for her post on X that showed Greenland shrouded in an American flag.

An outraged Danish PM Mette Frederiksen fired back: “The United States has no right to annex one of the three countries in the Danish Realm.” Leaping to Denmark’s defence, the Latvian president said that “understanding the legitimate security needs of the US can be addressed in a direct dialogue between Denmark and US.”

That’s great advice, one that he and other European leaders should follow by initiating a “direct dialogue with Russia” and understanding Russia’s “legitimate security needs.”

They won’t because they’ve surrendered their sovereignty and entrusted their security to the US hegemon, who is abandoning Project Ukraine and pivoting away from Europe, leaving it isolated and broke.

European nations could still turn things around by reclaiming their sovereignty and hence agency and refusing US vassalage. If they don’t, they’ll plunge more deeply into economic and social collapse and become geopolitically irrelevant.