Filenews 11 December 2023 - by James Stavridis
A state that few Americans could spot on a map, the oil-rich South American country of Guyana, is in trouble. It has a large and aggressive neighbour, Venezuela, which is ruled by an authoritarian leader who maintains close relations with Russia, Iran, Cuba, and other states with authoritarian regimes.
In a move reminiscent of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro – a former bus driver and associate of his predecessor Hugo Chávez – recently held a referendum in his country. The question was whether or not to annex a vast area of Guyana bordering Venezuela, called Essequibo, which accounts for about two-thirds of Guyana's territory. It is an area rich in natural resources such as oil, gold, fresh water and timber – and a relatively tiny population of about 100,000.
Claims
Venezuela has claimed the territory for more than a century, although its claims were rejected through international arbitration in 1899. Guyanyans, understandably, see the referendum in Venezuela as an existential threat. The official result was foreordained given the repressive nature of the regime in Venezuela — Maduro claimed "absolute success," with 95 percent of voters approving of his proposals — but independent media reports said polling stations were largely empty.
The tragic irony is that Guyana, historically a very poor country, is booming. It has seen economic growth of 37% in 2023 according to the World Bank (and is projected to do even better next year) as its vast oil and gas resources – larger than Venezuela's with over 11 billion barrels of mostly offshore crude reserves – have finally come to fruition.
Given its total population of less than 1 million, Guyana could become a Kuwait in the Caribbean. No wonder a big, aggressive, unprincipled neighbour with a socialist economy is serious about redrawing maps and behaving as if Guyana no longer exists — as Putin seeks to do with Ukraine.
What are the consequences of this planned land grab? And what should the US, its South American friends, and the international community do about it?
When I was commander of the U.S. Armed Forces' Southern Command — responsible for military ties throughout Latin America and the Caribbean — I visited almost every country in the region. But not Venezuela, which at the time was already under Chávez's rule.
During my stay in Georgetown, the English-speaking capital of Guyana (formerly a British colony), I was impressed by the friendliness of the people, the quiet charm of the city and the immense beauty of the country's mountains, rivers and coastlines. We had a soft direct relationship between our armed forces and the tiny Guyanese self-defense forces, and I then tried to increase America's aid.
The country's president at the time told me he was concerned about three things: drug trafficking, the "brain drain" as talented younger Guyanese left the country for better-paying jobs in affluent countries, and last but not least Venezuela's territorial ambitions. Although we did not have a formal defense treaty with Guyana, I did my best to assure its leaders of U.S. support. Fortunately for Guyans, internal turmoil in Venezuela — including the death of the loathsome Chávez and the emergence of a serious opposition — has kept Caracas fixated on its own internal affairs.
Now, with his power more consolidated and national elections coming up in 2024, Maduro seems to be using the issue of the "Venezuelan Essequibo" as a rallying ground for his people. It sends employees of PDVSA, Venezuela's corrupt and failed national oil company, to the waters and territories of Guyana to carry out exploration and prepare extraction operations. Maduro has promoted maps of "greater Venezuela" encompassing most of Guyana and signed a decree creating the so-called "High Committee for the Defense of Essequibo."
Global dominoes
Whether Maduro is serious enough to back all of the above with a full-scale military invasion is unclear. But these are very worrying signs.
If we get to an invasion, the Venezuelan armed forces are much larger than those of Guyana, have a huge advantage in equipment and have been trained by Russia and Cuba. Most likely, in such a case, there would be Cuban advisers who would assist in the invasion.
Guyana has tiny military forces (only about 4,000 soldiers, including reserves), a small defense budget, and no foreign military advisers on the ground. So Guyanese are turning to the two largest states in the Americas – the US and Brazil – for support.
President Irfaan Ali says his government is talking to Washington and Brasilia and receiving assurances. He said he spoke with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who told him that "Brazil stands firmly with Guyana" and has deployed troops and armoured vehicles in his country's border area with Guyana and Venezuela.
All of this is in the wake of Putin's invasion of Ukraine two years ago: a much larger neighbour making territorial claims without truly internationally recognized legal arguments, preparing for annexations, making new maps, and licking around for vast natural resources. It is a good example of the global domino effect that occurs when countries that engage in illegal land grabs do not meet resistance in time.
In his brilliant 2018 book on geopolitics, The Jungle Grows Back, political scientist Robert Kagan argued that the more international rules are eroded somewhere, the faster chaos passes regionally, even globally. The situation may then begin to resemble the 1930s, when Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were beginning to grab ever larger chunks of territory in Europe and Asia, respectively.
The US, of course, is America's largest and most powerful country. Brazil has a strong army. Great Britain, as a former colonial power, expresses its support for its former colony, which gained independence by peaceful means in 1966. The U.S. is launching military flights into Guyana's airspace as part of the small country's ongoing operational partnership with the U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami.
Preventing escalation is key
As in Ukraine, Washington must use diplomatic capital to rally the region against the aggression of a thug. This would be done most effectively in close cooperation with the Organization of American States, the organization for cooperation of America's 34 independent states. A formal joint statement of U.S.-Brazilian support for Guyana would be helpful.
Bolstering U.S. military forces, perhaps even sending warships to Guyanese ports — there are always U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships sailing in the Caribbean — is a good idea. A ground exercise of U.S. Southern Command Army units could be organized fairly quickly.
As always, the key is to anticipate a dictator's impulses. The West failed to send a strong enough message to Iraq's Saddam Hussein before his invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Serbia invaded Kosovo in 1998, ignoring the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Similarly, Putin underestimated the West's response in the days before launching a full-scale attack on Ukraine — although, in this case, the U.S. and its allies happily had a strong plan to help Kiev diplomatically and militarily.
Maduro is clearly considering his options, and Venezuelan military forces continue to move toward the Guyanese border. Strong action now may lead Maduro to back down: Guyana's friends, especially the U.S. and Brazil, must prepare a combination of diplomatic, military, and economic tools in order to avoid a major military conflict in the Americas.
James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, retired U.S. Navy admiral, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also vice president of global affairs at the Carlyle Group. He serves on the boards of American Water Works, Fortinet, PreVeil, NFP, Ankura Consulting Group, Titan Holdings, Michael Baker and Neuberger Berman and has advised Shield Capital, a cybersecurity investor.
Performance – Editing – Selection of Texts (2019-2023): G.D. Pavlopoulos
