- The United States tells the UN that it will take resources away from Maduro and the drug cartel.
- Russia warns that US actions could set a precedent for Latin America.
- China urges the United States to “avoid further escalation of tensions.”
The United States told the United Nations on Tuesday that it will impose and enforce sanctions “to the maximum extent” to deprive Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of resources, while Russia warned that other Latin American countries could be next.
US President Donald Trump's administration has for months carried out a campaign of deadly attacks against suspected drug trafficking vessels off the Venezuelan coast and the Pacific coast of Latin America. He has threatened attacks in Venezuelan territory.
“The most serious threat to this hemisphere, our own neighborhood and the United States, comes from transnational criminal and terrorist groups,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told the UN Security Council.
The United States has increased its military presence in the region and Trump announced a blockade of all ships subject to US sanctions.
So far this month, the United States Coast Guard has intercepted two oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea, both fully loaded with Venezuelan crude oil. The Coast Guard is also pursuing a third empty ship that was approaching the OPEC country's coast.
“The reality of the situation is that the sanctioned oil tankers operate as the main economic lifeline for Maduro and his illegitimate regime. The sanctioned oil tankers also finance the narcoterrorist group Cartel de Los Soles,” Waltz said.
Washington designated the Cartel of the Suns as a foreign terrorist organization late last month for the group's alleged role in importing illegal drugs into the United States. Accuses Maduro of leading the Cartel of the Suns. Venezuela's government rejected what it called a “ridiculous” move to designate the group as “non-existent.”
“This intervention that is unfolding can become a model for future acts of force against Latin American states,” Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council, citing a recent Trump strategy document that said the United States will reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Waltz spoke after Nebenzia and did not directly respond to her comment.
China urged the United States to “immediately stop relevant actions and avoid further escalation of tensions,” China's deputy ambassador to the UN, Sun Lei, told the council.
Venezuela, backed by Russia and China, requested Tuesday's meeting, the second to be held in the face of escalating tensions.
The Security Council first met in October, when the United States justified its actions as consistent with Article 51 of the founding Charter of the UN, which requires that the Security Council be immediately informed of any action taken by states in self-defense against armed attack.
“Let it be clear once and for all that there is no war in the Caribbean, there is no international armed conflict, nor is there a non-international conflict, so it is absurd that the United States government seeks to justify its actions by applying the rules of war,” Venezuela's ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, told the council.
“The threat is not Venezuela. The threat is the United States government,” he said.
