UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said recent US military action in Venezuela was morally justified, despite questioning its legal basis.
Speaking in interviews with the BBC, Badenoch 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 but argued that the nature of Maduro’s leadership warranted intervention.
“Where the legal certainty is not yet clear, morally, I do think it was the right thing to do,” she said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, describing the action as “extraordinary” while adding, “He was overseeing a brutal regime, and I’m glad he’s gone.”
Badenoch acknowledged that the intervention raised wider concerns about international norms, saying it “does raise serious questions about the rules-based order,” particularly in relation to international law.
The UK government has so far stopped short of condemning the US move, maintaining that Maduro was an “illegitimate president,” while Labour MPs and other opposition parties have called for it to be described as illegal.
Drawing on her background, Badenoch said, “I grew up under a military dictatorship, so I know what it’s like to have someone like Maduro in charge,” referring to her childhood in Nigeria, but cautioned against applying similar interventions elsewhere, adding: “There is a big difference between democratic states and the gangster state in Venezuela… What happens in Greenland is up to Denmark and the people of Greenland.”