There is no two without a three, as we say in Italian. After their complicit silence on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and their tacit acceptance of the US/Israel attack on Iran, Europeans now hesitate to condemn the US’s audacious military operation to bring about regime change in Venezuela. With few notable exceptions – such as Spain, the Netherlands and Norway – most European leaders have fudged their response. Spain, in fact, has acted without its EU partners, condemning the US attack alongside a group of Latin American countries. European governments seem unable to utter in the same breath that, although Nicolás Maduro was an illegitimate dictator, the US attack to topple him is a gross violation of international law.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, at least made reference to international law, while emphasising that they shed no tears for the end of Maduro’s regime. Others, such as the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, strangely talked about looking into the legality of the US military action, as if there were any doubt about its nature. Worse still, Trump-friendly Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni defined this act of external military intervention as “legitimate” self-defence against narco-trafficking.
These are all European leaders, who head liberal democracies and represent institutions that elevate multilateralism and international law as core principles. Why are they so ambiguous about such a gross violation? Even if we set global legal norms aside, does such ambiguity serve the European interest? » | Nathalie Tocci | Tuesday, January 6, 2026
Margaret Thatcher wasn’t right about everything, but she was right about the weakness of many Europeam politicians. She said they were a weak, feeble lot. Their timidity to condemn Trump for trampling over international law and kidnapping its president points to how right Thatcher was about European leaders’ propensity to be weak and feeble. — © Mark Alexander
