00:00Let's stay on topic. We are now joined by political scientist Eduardo Menezes to deepen on the impact of the U.S. blatant violation, its aggression against Venezuela, not only for the Bolivar Republic, but for the entire region and the international system. Welcome, Eduardo, to From the South.
00:18Thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:21It's always a pleasure to have you. Eduardo, it has been exactly one month today of the U.S. aggression against Venezuela and the kidnapping of the constitutional president, Nicolas Maduro, and first lady, Celia Flores.
00:34A month past, what are your takes? What has been the impact for Venezuela and for the region as a whole with the U.S. empire exercising its hegemon over the different countries of the region to try to implement their own policies in their own interest?
00:48Well, I think that the main takeaway that we can mention after this month is that definitely the real face of the U.S. imperialism has been shown.
01:02What happened in what happened in what happened in what happened in the aggression to the Venezuelan people had nothing to do with all the narrative that the Trump administration was trying to take out, like democracy, liberty, fight against terrorism.
01:18It has nothing to do with that.
01:20And we have been seeing during this month how all the U.S. imperialism has been getting forward in many other fronts, like all the debate on Greenland, what we are seeing right now with the total illegal and arbitrary blocus on Cuba,
01:48which has been strengthened to the point that Mexico had to take a step back on the exportation of oil to the Cuban island.
02:02And we have seen the same things in other territories where in Middle East, the U.S. is taking very aggressive stances in the same way.
02:13So it's very obvious that what happened to Venezuela had nothing to do with all the narrative that the U.S. has been developing during this month, the Trump administration.
02:25But it really has to do with this strategy from the Trump administration, but the whole U.S. state, which is trying to maintain a hegemonic place in the world by the only use of weapons,
02:41because there is not other ways in which the U.S. could try to maintain this global power position that it has had in the last two to three decades.
02:54If it's not by weapons, they do not have the same power economically, financially, even culturally.
03:00It has been eroding a lot in the last decade.
03:02So that's the only way that the U.S. empire has shown to try to maintain its position in the world.
03:09Eduardo, for a month now, we have seen the Venezuelan people rallying, taking to the streets to express their support for the acting president,
03:16Nelson Rodriguez, and for the Bolivarian Revolution, and also to demand the immediate release of the constitutional presidential couple.
03:24How important are these actions that are taking place in Venezuela, but also around the world, in different countries, in all five continents,
03:30people demanding respect for international law, for the respect of sovereignty and the right to self-determination of the people?
03:35How important are these actions coming from the people to ensure to be able to give way to a true international order
03:42that managed to guarantee the respect of all these international rights that exist today,
03:47but are obviously not being implemented because the rule of the stronghold appears to be the one that is being enforced right now?
03:55Well, there are different levels in which we could make an analysis of the importance of all this popular support
04:03that has been showing up during all this month.
04:05The first one is how the false narrative of the Trump administration around a dictatorial regime
04:15that was going to fall by itself if they took Maduro, what's going to happen?
04:22And that never happened.
04:23It's exactly the opposite.
04:24We have seen the Venezuelan people rallying together against this violation of the sovereignty,
04:30this violation of the international law, this totally illegal abduction of the President Maduro.
04:41But there's also another layer of analysis that's really important that we need to develop here,
04:47which is the fact that in all the corners of the world,
04:51we are seeing this aggression of the Trump administration against the Venezuelan people
04:58as a potential aggression to every people of the world.
05:02Obviously, mainly in Latino America, because the U.S. have been expressing in the last months
05:08and it has been put in the new Monroe Doctrine that went out in November, in last November,
05:16from the Trump administration, that Latino America is being mainly a territory that the U.S. is considering taking
05:25like its own colony and we need to use this word of colonization of our continent
05:30because that's exactly what the Trump administration is saying.
05:34But in other corners of the world, could be in the global south, but even in the global north,
05:39people are understanding that this violation of international law is something that is threatening
05:47every people in the world.
05:50It's not only Venezuela, it's not only Cuba, it's whole Latin America, but all the peoples in the world
05:56because, as I was saying, in this moment, the U.N., the international institutions
06:04that were supposed to defend and reinforce international law have not been able to do that.
06:13And we have been seen, I must say, we have been seen since the genocide in Palestine
06:19that international law, I think, has been buried through the bombs in Gaza.
06:25And after that, what is left when we do not have international law is only the law of the strongest.
06:32And that's exactly what the U.S. imperial is trying to bring to the table.
06:36That's exactly what the Trump administration is doing when they are defunding the U.N. institutions.
06:41But as the U.N. general secretary said in these last days, they are in a very critical economic situation,
06:50which they may need to close some of their headquarters, for example, in the U.S., if they continue to be defunded.
06:58And that is an extremely dangerous place for all the peoples in the world,
07:03knowing that international law is not longer an option, and it's only the law of the strongest,
07:12that could dictate what's going to happen in the relationships between nations.
07:15That's a very strong threat to all the peoples in the world.
07:21Thank you, Eduardo, for your time here and your inputs in From the South.
07:27Thank you very much.
07:28It's a pleasure to have you, as always.
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