Stephen Sefton, Tortilla con Sal, October 13th 2019
Ireland’s long history of involvement and engagement with the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean has always been ambivalent. The anti-imperialist John Riley of the San Patricios defending Mexico against yankee expansionism in 1846 was contemporary with Spain’s genocidal proconsul in Cuba, Leopoldo O’Donnell, who in 1844 oversaw murderous repression of that year’s Escalera slave revolt. A modern day expression of that contrasting duality among Irish people was Ireland’s initial June 2007 vote rejecting the European Union’s proposed Lisbon Treaty, which essentially replaced proposals for a putative European Constitution already rejected by the peoples of France and Holland.
In a second vote, after legal guarantees addressed people’s misgivings, Ireland approved the Lisbon Treaty. Among other things, the Lisbon Treaty centralized the expression of European Union foreign policy in the person of a High Representative. Ever since then it has been more difficult than ever in practice for small European countries like Ireland to express potential differences contradicting official European Union foreign policy. In practice, Irish governments have generally colluded with the foreign policy imperatives of the North American and European corporate elites. Gone are the days when an Irish government might recognize the legitimacy of a popular insurgency as it did the FMLN in El Salvador in the 1980s.
The latest disturbing example of this reality came in August this year when Ireland’s ambassador to Chile, Paul Gleeson, attended what was called an International Conference for Democracy in Venezuela of the de facto Lima group. Representatives of another 20 EU member states also attended the meeting in Peru as did then US National Security Adviser, John Bolton. At the meeting, Bolton threatened, “We are sending a signal to third parties that want to do business with the Maduro regime: Proceed with extreme caution,” because businesses or countries ignoring the illegal US sanctions against Venezuela “risk [their] business interests with the United States.”
Subsequently, solidarity activists of the Venezuela Ireland Network wrote to Simon Coveney, Ireland’s right wing Foreign Minister, asking what, if any, response the Irish government intended to make to this threat in order to defend Ireland’s sovereign policy in its relations with Venezuela. Simon Coveney’s office replied:
“Ireland believes that this complex crisis can only have a political, peaceful, democratic solution, excluding the use of force, through the holding of free, transparent and credible Presidential elections as soon as possible. In searching for such a solution, it is essential that all national and regional stakeholders and interlocutors are engaged…
Ambassador Gleeson expressed Ireland’s commitment to finding a peaceful, democratic and Venezuelan-owned solution to the crisis, and expressed our support to the Oslo Talks process, facilitated by Norway, between the Maduro administration and the opposition. Ambassador Gleeson also expressed our deep concern at the humanitarian situation in the country, as well as the human rights violations detailed in the report of High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, and voiced our support for those countries in the region most affected by the resulting mass migration.
Ireland, together with our EU partners, stands firmly with the Venezuelan people and their legitimate democratic aspirations.”
This fine example of interventionist humbug openly violates the fundamental principle of self-determination of peoples established in the UN charter and also, by omission, brazenly colludes with US aggression against Venezuela. The Lima Group is a de facto bloc operating outside the remit of legitimate regional bodies like Union of South American States (UNASUR), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) or even the US dominated Organization of American States (OAS). It has zero legal status to be discussing the internal affairs of Venezuela, and operates at the behest of the United States because, in the OAS, the US government failed to get approval for its aggression against Venezuela.
By contrast, Norway’s support for dialogue between Venezuela’s government and its political opposition has been explicitly accepted by Venezuela’s legitimate President Nicolas Maduro and his government. The recent UN General Assembly’s respective treatment of Venezuela’s legitimate authorities and of the usurper pretenders backed by the United States was a categorical rebuff of US and EU policy towards Venezuela. The presence of European Union representatives at that illegitimate interventionist August meeting in Lima very clearly signals EU support for US aggression against Venezuela and itself contradicts the Irish government’s hypocritical claim of “deep concern” at the humanitarian situation in the country.
Federica Mogherini, the EU’s current High Representative for foreign affairs never acknowleges the role of the illegal US sanctions against Venezuela or their effects on the general population. In its statements, the EU places responsibility for the crisis in Venezuela solely on President Nicolás Maduro and his government. Mogherini has said, “...Ministers have discussed their readiness to consider further sanctions on the basis of a solid legal basis. Again, I want to stress this very clearly, not sanctions in general terms against the country – we definitely do not want to affect the population – but targeted towards persons that have a special responsibility, either in the obstruction of the democratic processes or for the use of violence against demonstrations.”
Mogherini’s hypocritical remarks implicitly acknowledge the destructive role of US sanctions while shamelessly failing to condemn them. Likewise, Mogherini cynically omits the effects on Venezuela’s people of the appropriation of billions of dollars of Venezuela’s wealth in the form of gold and foreign exchange by institutions in EU member states at the behest of their governments. No honest appraisal of the crisis in Venezuela can omit the role of the savage illegal US sanctions and EU country measures indiscriminately attacking the basic rights of people in Venezuela and their government to be able to feed themselves and guarantee inputs needed for health care and education .
The EU also colludes uncritically in the failure of dishonest UN functionaries like Michelle Bachelet to give a true and fair view of the events on which they report. By contrast, an independent report by the highly respected Center for Economic and Policy Research has confirmed that sanctions against Venezuela have led directly to the deaths of tens of thousands of vulnerable people. The EU’s collusion in US aggression against Venezuela does not just violate basic UN principles of non-intervention and non-aggression. The EU and its member states are also effectively violating a slew of international humanitarian and human rights laws, for example, in relation to the rights of children.
Globally, US and EU foreign policy seeks to maintain the current unsustainable global status quo via multi-faceted aggression against rivals like Russia or China and those countries’ regional allies like Iran and Venezuela. Ireland now offers a good example of how even a people with a long history of suffering under colonial exploitation can end up collaborating in the same sadistic hypocrisy they themselves endured for centuries at the hands of British imperialism. Beyond all the diplomatic humbug of its Foreign Ministry, in Latin America Ireland has abandoned John Riley’s steadfast defense of sovereignty and self determination and adopted the ruthless imperialist collaboration of Leopoldo O’Donnell.