Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2022
The Venezuelan participation in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 2015 and 2016 was expected to be a challenge for the institution, as the Maduro government adopted controversial positions at the General Assembly (UNGA). However, Venezuela contestation line did not appear clearly at the UNSC. Drawing upon an in-depth qualitative study, Erving Goffman's work, and literature on contestation in international organisations (IOs), we interpret this apparent inconsistency from the concept of interaction order. We argue that the UNGA and the UNSC each constitutes a specific interaction order that influences the way contestation practices are channelled. The contestation practices Venezuelan representatives set up at the UNGA hardly work during the UNSC official sessions, where they adapt their practices to its interaction order. Venezuelan representatives also use informal and backstage actions to express their dissent, without avoiding being called into order. Venezuela's moderation at the UNSC results from an invisibilisation of contestation by interaction practices.
1 A/69/PV.8.
2 See, for example, Medina Mejías, ‘The Security Council had contributed to the violation of the rule of law on many occasions, without any accountability whatsoever.’ (A/C.6/70/SR.7), or Ramírez Carreño: ‘It is clear that the purpose of the arrangement [the perpetual provisional status of the Security Council's rules of procedure] has been to favour a small group of permanent members that, under the guise of a supposedly rules-based practice, does or does not do, as wishes.’ (A/70/PV.44).
On the criticisms addressed to the UNSC within UNGA, see Binder, Martin and Heupel, Monika, ‘The legitimacy of the UN Security Council: Evidence from recent General Assembly debates’, International Studies Quarterly, 59:2 (2015), pp. 238–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Wolf Grabendorff, ‘¿Una voz radical del “Sur global”? Venezuela en el Consejo de Seguridad’, Nueva sociedad (January 2015), available at: {https://nuso.org/articulo/una-voz-radical-del-sur-global-venezuela-en-el-consejo-de-seguridad-de-la-onu/}; Víctor Mijares, ‘Soft balancing the titans: Venezuelan foreign-policy strategy toward the United States, China, and Russia’, Latin American Policy, 8:2 (2017), pp. 201–31.
4 Molina, Rubén Darío, ‘Venezuela ingresa al Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU: Venció la diplomacia soberana y el multilateralismo inclusivo’, Correo del Alba, 41 (2014), pp. 28–9Google Scholar.
5 Samantha Power, ‘Statement by the U.S. Ambassador to the UN on the Newly Elected Members of the Security Council’, US Mission to International Organizations in Geneva (16 October 2014); Somini Sengupta, ‘Venezuela Gest UN seat; Turkey is denied’, The New York Times (16 October 2014).
6 Grabendorff, ‘¿Una voz radical del “Sur global”?’.
7 Interview with a Chilean diplomat, Santiago, 7 May 2015.
8 Interview with a national diplomat, New York, June 2017.
9 Resolutions 2209, 2240, 2244 in 2015, and 2312 in 2016.
10 Five drafts were vetoed by one or more Permanent members.
11 Albaret, Mélanie, ‘Négocier et contester au Conseil des droits de l'homme des Nations unies’, Négociations, 2 (2020), pp. 79–93Google Scholar; Voss, Joel, ‘The use (or misuse) of amendments to contest human rights norms at the UN Human Rights Council’, Human Rights Review, 20:4 (2019), pp. 397–422. 10.1162/002081800551154CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Ann-Marie Ekrengren, Fredrik D. Hjorthen, and Ulrika Möller, ‘A nonpermanent seat in the United Nations Security Council: Why bother?’, Global Governance, 26:1 (2020), pp. 21–45; Jeremy Farrall et al., ‘Elected member influence in the United Nations Security Council’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 33:1 (2020), pp. 101–15; Gifkins, Jess, ‘Beyond the veto: Roles in UN Security Council decision-making’, Global Governance, 27 (2021), pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Colin Keating, ‘Power dynamics between permanent and elected members’, in Sebastian von Einsiedel, David M. Malone, and Bruno Stagno Ugarte (eds), The UN Security Council in the 21st Century (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 2016), pp. 139–56; Roele, Isobel, ‘Around Arendt's table: Bureaucracy and the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 33:1 (2020), pp. 117–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Ralph S. Clem and Anthony P. Maingot (eds), Venezuela's Petro-Diplomacy: Hugo Chávez's Foreign Policy (Gainesville, FA: University Press of Florida, 2011); Javier Corrales and Carlos A. Romero, ‘Venezuela's foreign policy, 1920s–2010s’, in Jorge I. Domínguez and Ana Covarrubias (eds), Routledge Handbook of Latin America in the World (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), pp. 153–68; Steve Ellner, ‘The Chávez government in the international arena’, in Rethinking Venezuelan Politics (London, UK: Lynne Rienner, 2008), pp. 195–225; Rita Giacalone, ‘Venezuelan foreign policy: Petro-politics and paradigm change’, in Ryan K. Beasley et al. (eds), Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective (2nd edn, Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, 2013), pp. 290–312; Anthea McCarthy-Jones and Marc Turner, ‘Explaining radical policy change: The case of Venezuelan foreign policy’, Policy Studies, 32:5 (2011), pp. 549–67; Diana Raby, ‘Venezuelan foreign policy under Chávez, 1999–2010: The pragmatic success of revolutionary ideology?’, in Gian Luca Gardini and Peter Lambert (eds), Latin American Foreign Policies: Between Ideology and Pragmatism (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), pp. 159–77; Carlos A. Romero, Jugando con el globo: Política exterior de Hugo Chávez (Caracas, Venezuela: Ediciones B./Grupo Zeta, 2006); Andrés Serbin and Andrei Serbin Pont, ‘Quince años de política exterior bolivariana: ¿entre el Soft-Balancing y la militarización?’, Pensamiento propio, 39 (2014), pp. 287–326; Mark Eric Williams, ‘The new balancing act: International Relations theory and Venezuela's foreign policy’, in Thomas Ponniah and Jonathan Eastwood (eds), The Revolution in Venezuela (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2011), pp. 259, 273.
14 Barreto, Luis Maximiliano, ‘La domesticación de la Política Exterior de Venezuela (2013–2017)’, Relaciones internacionales (Costa Rica), 91:2 (2018), pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Élodie Brun, ‘Une continuité à toute épreuve: la politique étrangère de Nicolás Maduro’, CERI-Sciences Po Note (20 June 2014); Corrales and Romero, ‘Venezuela's foreign policy’, p. 163; Carlos A. Romero and Víctor M. Mijares, ‘From Chávez to Maduro: Continuity and change in Venezuelan foreign policy’, Contexto Internacional, 38:1 (2016), pp. 165–201.
15 Emmanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot (eds), International Practices (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Christian Bueger and Frank Gadinger, ‘The play of international practice’, International Studies Quarterly, 59:3 (2015), pp. 449–60.
16 Inken Von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas, ‘The Costs of Membership Withdrawal from Intergovernmental Organizations’, Political Economy of International Organizations Conference, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2018.
17 Voss, Joel, ‘Contesting sexual orientation and gender identity at the UN Human Rights Council’, Human Rights Review, 19 (2018), pp. 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Rosa Freedman and Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, ‘“Jistis ak reparasyon pou tout viktim kolera MINUSTAH”: The United Nations and the right to health in Haiti’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 28:3 (2015), pp. 507–27.
19 For recent references, see, for example, Deitelhoff, Nicole, ‘What's in a name? Contestation and backlash against international norms and institutions’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 22:4 (2020), pp. 715–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar7; Annette Stimmer and Lea Wisken, ‘The dynamics of dissent: When actions are louder than words’, International Affairs, 95:3 (2019), pp. 515–33; Antje Wiener, Contestation and Constitution of Norms in Global International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
20 Ian Hurd, ‘Legitimacy and contestation in global governance: Revisiting the folk theory of international institutions’, The Review of International Organizations, 14 (2019), pp. 717–29.
21 Benjamin Fraude and Michal Parizek, ‘Contested multilateralism as credible signaling: How strategic inconsistency can induce cooperation among states’, The Review of International Organizations, 16 (2021), pp. 843–70.
22 JBrunnée, utta, ‘Multilateralism in crisis’, Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting, 12 (2018), pp. 335–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frederick W. Mayer and Nicola Phillips, ‘Global inequality and the Trump administration’, Review of International Studies, 45:3 (2019), pp. 502–10; James Sperling and Mark Webber, ‘Trump's foreign policy and NATO: Exit and voice’, Review of International Studies, 45:3 (2019), pp. 511–26.
23 Barreto, ‘La domesticación de la Política Exterior de Venezuela (2013–2017)’; Brun, ‘Une continuité à toute épreuve’; Romero and Mijares, ‘From Chávez to Maduro’.
24 Barreto, ‘La domesticación de la Política Exterior de Venezuela (2013–2017)’.
25 Gary Goertz, Contexts of International Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
26 Alberto van Klaveren, ‘El análisis de la política exterior: una visión desde América Latina’, in Thomas Legler, Arturo Santa-Cruz, and Laura Zamudio González (eds), Introducción a las Relaciones Internacionales: América Latina y la Política Global (México, DF: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 96–109.
27 See the discussions identified in the following documents: S/PV.7775, S/PV.7587, S/PV.7831, or the support given to France following the Paris attacks: S/PV.7565.
Despite persistent differences among the UNSC members, Venezuela did not have to position itself as was the case for elected members of the UNSC in 2013 when chemical attacks occurred in Syria and threats of military intervention increased by the US and its European allies at the UNSC.
28 Julia C. Morse and Robert O. Keohane, ‘Contested multilateralism’, The Review of International Organizations, 9 (2014), pp. 385–412.
29 Jordaan, Eduard, ‘Foreign policy without the policy? South Africa and activism on sexual orientation at the United Nations’, South African Journal of International Affairs, 24:1 (2017), pp. 79–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Samuel Brazys and Diana Panke, ‘Analyzing voting inconsistency in the UNGA’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 28:3 (2017), pp. 538–60.
31 United Nations Digital Library, Permanent Missions to the United Nations 305 and 306, 2015 and 2016, available at: {https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/795099?ln=en} and {https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/840484?ln=en}.
32 For various examples, see the footnotes in sections 3 to 5, which include extracts from speeches by various Venezuelan diplomats.
33 Erik Voeten, ‘Making sense of the design of international institutions’, Annual Review of Political Science, 22 (2019), pp. 147–63.
34 Gifkins, ‘Beyond the veto’; Keating, ‘Power dynamics between permanent and elected members’; Niels Nagelhus Schia, ‘Being part of the parade: “Going native” in the UNSC’, PoLAR, 36:1 (2013), pp. 138–56.
35 For a testimony from a Guatemalan actor, see Gert Rosenthal, Inside the United Nations: Multilateral Diplomacy Up Close (London, UK: Routledge, 2017), pp. 74–88.
36 For instance, Adler-Nissen and Pouliot show that contestation is not impossible at the UNSC. Rebecca Adler-Nissen and Vincent Pouliot, ‘Power in practice: Negotiating the international intervention in Libya’, European Journal of International Relations, 20:4 (2014), pp. 889–911.
37 Rebecca Adler-Nissen, ‘Stigma management in International Relations: Transgressive identities, norms, and order in international society’, International Organization, 68:1 (2014), pp. 143–76; Michael Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order (New York, NY: Columbia University Press 1998); Jeffrey Chwieroth, ‘Managing and transforming policy stigmas in international finance: Emerging markets and controlling capital inflows after the crisis’, Review of International Political Economy, 22:1 (2015), pp. 44–76; Guillaume Devin, ‘Goffman, la scène’, in Guillaume Devin (ed.), 10 concepts sociologiques en relations internationales (Paris: CNRS Biblis, 2015), pp. 9–28; Ben Mor, ‘Accounts and impression management in public diplomacy: Israeli justification of force during the 2006 Lebanon War’, Global Change, Peace and Security, 21:2 (2009), pp. 219–39; Frank Schimmelfennig, ‘Goffman meets IR: Dramaturgical action in international community’, International Review of Sociology, 12:3 (2002), pp. 417–37; Ayşe Zarakol, After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Seanon S. Wong, ‘One-upmanship and putdowns: The aggressive use of interaction rituals in face-to-face diplomacy’, International Theory, 13 (2021), pp. 341–71.
38 David Ambrosetti, Normes et rivalités diplomatiques à l'ONU: Le Conseil de sécurité en audience (Brusells: Peter Lang, 2009); Deepak Nair, ‘Saving face in diplomacy: A political sociology of face-to-face interactions in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’, European Journal of International Relations, 25:3 (2019), pp. 672–97; Vincent Pouliot, International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
39 ‘A “performance” may be defined as all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion that serves to influence in any way any of the other participants.’ Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), p. 15. ‘Defining social role as the enactment of rights and duties attached to a given status, we can say that a social role will involve one or more parts and that each of these different parts may be presented by the performer on a series of occasions to the same kinds of audience or to an audience of the same persons.’ Ibid., p. 16.
40 A line is ‘a pattern of verbal and nonverbal acts by which he expresses his view of the situation and though this his line of evaluation of the participants, especially himself.’ Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1982), p. 5.
41 Erving Goffman, ‘The interaction order’, American Sociological Review, 48:1 (1983), p. 2.
42 Ibid., p. 3.
43 Goffman, Interaction Ritual, pp. 33–4.
44 Goffman, ‘The interaction order’, p. 11.
45 Vincent Pouliot, L'ordre hiérarchique international (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2017), p. 39, authors’ translation.
46 Pouliot, International Pecking Orders.
47 Adler-Nissen highlights the ‘partly merging between the diplomatic self and the state self or identity’. Rebecca Adler-Nissen, ‘Diplomacy as Impression Management: Strategic Face-Work and Post-Colonial Embarrassment’, Center for International Peace and Security Studies, Working Paper No. 38 (2012), p. 16.
48 Adler-Nissen, ‘Diplomacy as Impression Management’.
49 Goffman, Interaction Ritual, p. 11.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., p. 12.
52 Wong, ‘One-upmanship and putdowns’.
53 Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, p. 112.
54 Ibid., p. 107.
55 Ibid., p. 112.
56 Nair, ‘Saving face in diplomacy’, p. 687.
57 Adler-Nissen, ‘Diplomacy as Impression Management’, p. 7.
58 The ‘interaction modus vivendi’ refers to the fact that ‘together the participants contribute to a single over-all definition of the situation which involves not so much a real agreement as to what exist but rather a real agreement as to whose claims concerning what issues will be temporarily honoured.’ Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, pp. 9–10.
59 Vincent Pouliot, International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATO-Russia Diplomacy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
60 Mélanie Albaret and Joan Deas, ‘Semi-structured interviews’, in Fanny Badache, Leah Kimber, and Lucile Maertens (eds), Introduction to International Organizations Research Methods (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press, forthcoming).
61 Part of our field study was carried out at the time of the intensification of the multidimensional crisis in Venezuela that generated international tensions. That is why some respondents expressly requested that their total anonymity be respected.
62 Mélanie Albaret and Simon Tordjman, ‘Usages et effets politiques’, in Guillaume Devin, Franck Petiteville, and Simon Tordjman (eds), L'Assemblée Générale: sociologie d'une institution politique mondiale (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2020), pp. 13–23.
63 A/61/PV.12.
64 Even the architectural features of the UN buildings make the UNGA an outwardly open forum while the UNSC is located in the basements. George A. Dudley, A Workshop for Peace: Designing the United Nations Headquarters (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).
65 Several authors point out the room's size: David Ambrosetti, Normes et rivalités diplomatiques à l'ONU; Jean-Marc de la Sablière, Le Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies (2nd edn, Brussels: Larcier, 2018), pp. 66–7: ‘It is in a small room, equipped with interpretation services, where the heads of delegation are side by side, accompanied by a few staff members, only two of whom can find a seat, that everything is decided.’ Loraine Sievers and Sam Daws, The Procedure of the UN Security Council (4th edn, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 62: ‘The Consultations Room contains a smaller horseshoe table.’ Moreover, the observation was mentioned several times during our interviews with national diplomats, New York, June 2017.
66 Kishore Mahbubani, ‘The permanent and elected council members’, in David Malone (ed.), The UN Security Council (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), p. 258.
67 Interview with a Chilean diplomat, Santiago, 7 May 2015.
68 Interview with a national diplomat, New York, June 2017.
69 In official sessions, the use of the formula ‘Representative of x country’ and the use of vouvoiement are required.
70 Comments by a Venezuelan ex-diplomat, April 2020.
71 As Peterson noted it, a large part of the scholarship work on the UNGA questions the collective dimensions of states’ votes. M. J. Peterson, ‘General Assembly’, in Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (eds), The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations (2nd edn, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 132.
For a recent reference, see, for example, Michael A. Bailey, Anton Strezhnev, and Erik Voeten, ‘Estimating dynamic state preferences from United Nations voting data’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61:2 (2017), pp. 430–56.
72 Élodie Brun, ‘Semejanzas ideológicas y diversidad diplomática de la Alianza Bolivariana frente a la crisis siria’, in Gilberto Conde (ed.), Siria en el torbellino (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2017), pp. 599–628.
73 Interviews with national diplomats, New York, June 2017.
74 According to Ana Cara, ‘Relations between the two countries in the chamber [the UNSC] have been described as polite so far.’ Anna Cara, ‘The “favorite daughter” of Venezuela's late leader Hugo Chavez just made her debut at the UN’, Associated Press (1 April 2015), available at: {https://www.businessinsider.com/the-favorite-daughter-of-venezuelas-late-leader-hugo-chavez-just-made-her-debut-at-the-un-2015-4?IR=T}. See also El Universal, ‘Consenso guía a Venezuela en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU’ (19 April 2015), available at: {http://www.eluniversal.com/internacional/150419/consenso-guia-a-venezuela-en-el-consejo-de-seguridad-de-la-onu}.
75 Interview with a national diplomat, New York, June 2017.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
79 United Nations, ‘Israel's Settlements Have no Legal Validity, Constitute Flagrant Violation of International Law, Security Council Reaffirms’, Meetings coverage SC/12657 (23 December 2016), available at: {https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm}.
80 Adler-Nissen, ‘Diplomacy as Impression Management’, p. 15.
81 Inis L. Claude, ‘Collective legitimization as a political function of the United Nations’, International Organization, 20:3 (1966), pp. 367–79.
82 Diana Panke, Unequal Actors in Equalising Institutions: Negotiations in the United Nations General Assembly (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
83 Robert O. Keohane, ‘The study of political influence in the General Assembly’, International Organisation, 21:2 (1967), pp. 221–37.
84 M. J. Peterson, The UN General Assembly (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006), p. 84.
85 The argument could be refined by taking into account the interaction orders of the different configurations of the UNGA. For an example of the interactions in the Fifth Committee (administrative and budgetary issues), see Alger, Chadwick F., ‘Interaction in a committee of the United Nations General Assembly’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, 10:4 (1966), pp. 411–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Venezuela proved to be a very dissenting player in the 2nd Committee (economics issues) and 3rd committee (human rights) and tempered its role in the others (on disarmament and international security, administrative, budgetary, and legal issues. Comments by a Venezuelan ex-diplomat, April 2020.
86 Marie-Claude Smouts, ‘The General Assembly: Grandeur and decadence’, in Paul Taylor and A. J. R. Groom (eds), The United Nations at the Millennium (London, UK: Continuum, 2000), p. 21.
87 A/61/PV.12.
88 On the UNSC practices, working methods, and evolutions, see David L. Bosco, Five to Rule them All: The Security Council and the Making of the Modern World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009); Sebastian von Einsiedel, David Malone, and Bruno Stagno Ugarte (eds), The UN Security Council in the 21st Century (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 2016); Thomas Gehring and Thomas Dörfler, ‘Constitutive mechanisms of UN Security Council practices: Precedent pressure, ratchet effect, and council action regarding intrastate conflicts’, Review of International Studies, 45:1 (2019), pp. 120–40; Edward C. Luck, UN Security Council: Practice and Promise (London, UK: Routledge, 2006); Sievers and Daws, The Procedure of the UN Security Council.
89 This reflects Goffman's analysis when he writes that ‘members of the team must not exploit their presence in the front region in order to stage their own show …. Nor must they use their performance time as an occasion to denounce their team.’ Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, p. 214.
90 Interview with a national diplomat, New York, June 2017.
91 Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, p. 216.
92 Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
93 Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, p. 229.
94 Interview with a Chilean diplomat, Santiago, 7 May 2015.
95 Interview with a national diplomat, New York, June 2017.
96 Interview with a Chilean diplomat, Santiago, 12 May 2015.
97 S/PV.7541, p. 2.
98 ‘Somalia – Security Council, 7541st Meeting’, UN Web TV (23 October 2015), available at: {https://media.un.org/en/asset/k10/k10t66oe14}.
99 See, for example, Ramírez Carreño (A/C.2/70/SR.3): ‘Capitalism, which was based on selfishness, greed and dispossession, was an unsustainable system since it promoted a culture of death.’ Also see the speeches of Engelbrecht Schadtler (A/C.2/70/SR.9) or Rodríguez de Febres-Cordero (A/C.3/70/SR.4).
100 For example, by denouncing ‘the colonial domination of the United States of America for over 100 years’ on Porto Rico, ‘Morocco's occupation’ of Western Sahara or ‘the colonial process undertaken there [in Palestine] by the occupying Power in violation of international law’. See Ramírez Carreño (A/C.4/70/SR.2).
101 This was particularly the case when the Cuban question was on the agenda. See, for example, the speeches of Moncada (A/69/PV.30) and Ramírez Carreño (A/70/PV.40).
102 Nicolas Maduro stated: ‘After so much death and bombing of the brotherly Arab people of Iraq, we have to invite the sovereign Governments of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt and indeed the entire region to come up with a comprehensive political, military, cultural and communication strategy that can be supported by the UNSC. Anything else is crazy.’ (A/69/PV.8).
103 Criticisms of the US, often referred to as ‘the empire’, were based on its domination of the international system. For instance, in 2014 at the plenary of the UNGA, Nicolas Maduro declared: ‘Venezuela has had to suffer ongoing harassment and persecution at the hands of the imperial forces and the allies of the United States empire, who have sought again and again to undermine our democracy.’ (A/69/PV.8) On relations with the US, see Javier Corrales and Carlos Romero, U.S.-Venezuela Relations since the 1990s (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013). As for Israel, criticisms were more related to its role in the conflicts in the Middle East. At the time of Operation ‘Cast Lead’, led by Tsahal in the Gaza Strip in late 2008, Hugo Chávez decided to break off diplomatic relations with Israel in protest and his government recognized Palestine as a state a few months later. Israel is described ‘as an occupying Power in the Palestinian territories’ (A/70/PV.62). For an analysis of bilateral relations, see Angel Blanco Sorio, ‘Venezuela and the Middle East under Hugo Chávez (1999–2013)’, in Marta Tawil (ed.), Latin American Foreign Policies towards the Middle East (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), pp. 99–134.
104 See Ramírez Carreño: ‘It is therefore necessary for Israel, the occupying Power, to put an end to the policies derived from the prolonged occupation of the territories of the State of Palestine, as well as the inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has lasted for almost a decade and is a flagrant violation of international law.’ (S/PV.7853). Regarding the US see, for example, Ramírez Carreño in September 2016: ‘Unfortunately, it must be said that the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant took military action last weekend against the Syrian army, jeopardizing the cessation of hostilities agreed to a few days earlier. Venezuela condemns and laments the inexplicable attack on positions of the Syrian Arab Army carried out by American, British and Australian aircraft, manned by the aforementioned coalition, on 17 September.’ (S/PV.7777).
105 S/PV.7191, S/PV.7527, S/PV.7774.
106 Syria is thus described as ‘a brotherly Arab country which has been a victim of terrorist barbarism and is fighting to defend its sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity and to guarantee respect for the human rights of its people.’ (A/71/PV.58). Venezuelan leaders read the Syrian conflict through an anti-imperialist prism and focused their criticism on US foreign policy. See Fadi Ahmar, ‘The Syrian-Venezuelan rapprochement: Two anti-American strategies into practice’, in Elodie Brun and Roberto Khatlab (eds), Latin America and the Middle East: Crossed Perspectives (Beirut: USEK), pp. 63–79.
107 See A/71/PV.65 and also A/72/PV.73.
108 S/PRST/2015/15.
109 Interview with a national diplomat, New York, June 2017.
110 See S/PV.7504. This practice to preserve consensus by making a reservation was repeated for the vote of Resolution 2216 on Yemen (S/PV.7426).
111 Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly, Seventieth Session, 2015–2016, Part I, Subject Index (New York, NY: United Nations, 2017), pp. 239–53, available at: {https://library.un.org/sites/library.un.org/files/itp/a70-parti.pdf}.
112 Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Index to Proceedings of the General Assembly, Seventy-first Session, 2016–2017, Part I, Subject Index (New York, NY: United Nations, 2018), pp. 233–44, available at: {https://library.un.org/sites/library.un.org/files/itp/a71-parti.pdf}.
113 International Crisis Group, ‘Council of Despair? The Fragmentation of UN diplomacy’, Special Briefing 1 (30 April 2019), available at: {https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/b001-council-despair-fragmentation-un-diplomacy}. For a comparison of Venezuelan alignment on China and Russia, see Mijares, ‘Soft balancing the titans’.
114 On Resolution 2285 (2016), Venezuela and Uruguay coincided on Western Sahara, whose aspiration for independence most Latin American countries have traditionally supported. The representatives of both states deplore their exclusion from the preparation of the draft and question the effectiveness of the resolution in a direct criticism to Morocco (S.PV7684). This is an example of how regional agendas can interfere in the UNSC, but without concrete consequences, as the text was approved.
115 Resolutions 2240 (2015) and 2312 (2016) dealt with the same issue: the migration securitisation process and the expansion of the UNSC agenda. The other two (Resolutions 2209 and 2244, both voted in 2015) address the situation in the Middle East and in Somalia, respectively.
116 S/PV.7366, S/PV.7531, S/PV.7541, S/PV.7783.
117 ‘Middle East (Syria), Security Council, 7401st Meeting’, UN Web TV (6 March 2015), available at: {https://media.un.org/en/asset/k18/k1808s2pub}.
118 Brun, ‘Une continuité à toute épreuve’; Romero and Mijares, ‘From Chávez to Maduro’.
119 Abstention from the vote of draft resolution S/2015/562 on Ukraine. Russia vetoed. See the meeting record S/PV.7498.
120 A few days later, an investigation was opened against him in Venezuela for embezzlement. The representative had publicly expressed his reservations about the government's economic decisions. ‘Venezuela to investigate ex-oil tsar over corruption’, BBC (12 December 2017), available at: {https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42332858}.
121 Comments by a Venezuelan ex-diplomat, April 2020.
122 Abstention on Resolution 2303 (2016) on the sending of police officers to Burundi without the consent of the government of that country. The same situation applied to South Sudan (Resolution 2304 (2016)).
123 Vote in favour of Resolution 2218 (2015) and vote against the end of the mission endorsed by Resolution 2285 (2016).
124 Camille Forite, Chávez et l'Afrique: dix ans de politique extérieure vénézuélienne (Paris: IHEAL, 2011).
125 Interview with a Chilean diplomat, Santiago, 7 May 2015.
126 Comments by a Venezuelan ex-diplomat, April 2020.
127 Ibid.
128 ‘Although not explicitly stated, it seems that Venezuela was particularly frustrated that it was not consulted in its capacity as chair of the Sanctions Committee by the penholder drafting the resolution, in this case the UK.’
What's in Blue, ‘Working Methods Debate’ (9 February 2016), available at: {https://www.whatsinblue.org/2016/02/working-methods-debate-2.php}.
129 Comments by a Venezuelan ex-diplomat, April 2020.
130 Loiselle, Marie-Eve, ‘The penholder system and the rule of law in the Security Council decision-making: Setback or improvement?’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 33:1 (2020), pp. 139–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
131 Gifkins, ‘Beyond the veto’.
132 S/PV.7633.
133 Security Council Report, ‘In Hindsight: The Security Council in 2015: High Activity, Less Consensus’ (29 January 2016), available at: {https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthly-forecast/2016-02/in_hindsight_the_security_council_in_2015_high_activity_less_consensus.php}.
134 ‘Venezuela promoverá debate sobre conflictos en Medio Oriente ante la ONU’, Telesur (1 February 2016), available at: {https://www.telesurtv.net/news/Venezuela-promovera-debate-sobre-conflictos-en-Medio-Oriente-ante-la-ONU-20160201-0044.html}.
135 S/PV.7633.
136 ‘Efficiency and Transparency of the Council's Work, Security Council, 7633rd Meeting’, UN Web TV (20 February 2016), available at: {https://media.un.org/en/asset/k17/k17urlabpj}.
