U.S. military action morally right, says Kemi Badenoch

United States air strikes on Venezuela and the seizing of the country’s leader at the weekend clearly “undermined a fundamental principle of international law”, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

“States must not threaten or use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, told reporters in Geneva.

“And this is what we are seeing,” she said, calling on the international community to “come together with one voice to make clear that this is an action that is in contravention of the international law set up by member states”.

But UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said the recent US military action in Venezuela was morally justified, even though she questioned its legal basis of the action.

Badenoch made the remarks during interviews with the BBC, where she said she did not fully understand the legal framework underpinning former US President Donald Trump’s operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power.

However, she argued that Maduro presided over a repressive government and welcomed his removal.

“Where the legal certainty is not yet clear, morally, I do think it was the right thing to do,” Badenoch said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

She described the US intervention as “extraordinary” but said she understood the rationale behind it, given the nature of Maduro’s leadership.