Venezuela: Trump faces a test of international law

Therefore, why should a rule of conduct of international importance be respected as a cardinal principle of supranational behavior, in order to prevent anyone, in the near future or in the future, from believing they can do the same against any existing sovereign state, creating and spreading a climate of destabilizing uncertainty potentially capable of generating a sort of introversion of national policies, all with a preventive defensive function?

Finally, why does the alleged legitimacy of the attack against the Venezuelan regime, considered a "non-democracy" (if I may use the expression), clash with Donald Trump's own statements directed at Greenland, also reported by the press: "We need Greenland for national security reasons," as it is "full of Russian and Chinese ships everywhere." Yet, Greenland, unlike Venezuela (according to the Tycoon's ideological motivation for launching the attack on the night of January 3, 2016), appears to be exercising, and does exercise, its political action within a framework of parliamentary representative democracy under Danish control? So, what would be the ultimate outcome of Trump's new vision? It would seem (and the doubtful formula is necessary) that the President of the United States of America wants, with his own policies, which are evidently not unanimously shared if carried out with the use of force, to increase the US sphere of influence in the nerve centres of direct interest.

A decisive intervention by the UN and the international community would be important, capable of re-establishing the violated International Order by directing it towards respect for the principle of self-determination of peoples, the rejection of war and any systematic use of force as a mechanism of international antagonism.

Today, more than ever , the European Union, in its complex composition—that is, with all its Member States— should intervene to uphold existing international principles and to offer its concrete and active contribution to the development and affirmation of an internationalism respectful of the universalistic principle of rights and social and economic equality.

Otherwise, the risk would be to be overwhelmed by the centrifugal and centripetal dynamics of the major world powers, both Western and Eastern, where the interplay of historic alliances would seem like a faint memory. Moreover, this is what appears to be already happening, and has happened, in the negotiations to reach a resolution to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

The time has come for the European Union to resolutely reaffirm its international role as a "Middle World" between superpowers , as a guarantor of the universal principles on which it was founded, and thus as a bulwark of human dignity, freedom, justice and democracy, of the principles of the rule of law and human rights, and therefore as the promoter of peace that it has always been.

Giuseppina Di Salvatore