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Sunday, May 4, 2025

Ex­perts at we­bi­nar on Es­se­qui­bo dis­pute:

Venezuela, Guyana won’t go to war

by

433 days ago
20240226
Guyana president  Dr Irfaan Ali, left, shakes hands with Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro, during a meeting in  St Vincent on the Essequibo border controversy last December.

Guyana president Dr Irfaan Ali, left, shakes hands with Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro, during a meeting in St Vincent on the Essequibo border controversy last December.

Courtesy Gordon. U. French

A war be­tween Venezuela and Guyana is high­ly un­like­ly. That is the view of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts who took part in a we­bi­nar host­ed by the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine on Thurs­day. The theme was “The Guyana-Venezuela Con­tro­ver­sy: The Ar­gyle De­c­la­ra­tion and Im­pli­ca­tions for In­ter­na­tion­al Law and the Caribbean.”

Prof Ivelaw Lloyd Grif­fith, a fel­low of the Caribbean Pol­i­cy Con­sor­tium and Se­nior As­so­ciate of the Cen­tre of Strate­gic and In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, is of the view that the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment’s ag­gres­sion to­wards Guyana is aimed at ap­peas­ing Venezuela’s do­mes­tic au­di­ence.

He de­scribed the ac­tions of the Maduro regime as “blus­ter­ing, mil­i­tar­i­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly” but added that “the cal­cu­lus of risk and re­ward sug­gests that it would not be in Venezuela’s in­ter­est to risk push­ing the en­ve­lope of ag­gres­sion, phys­i­cal­ly with an­nex­a­tion. I think there are suf­fi­cient neg­a­tives in that re­gard, some hav­ing to do with broad­er geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors. It is not in Brazil’s self-in­ter­est to al­low an­nex­a­tion to hap­pen. I am fair­ly com­fort­ed in the fact that I don’t see phys­i­cal ag­gres­sion hap­pen­ing.”

Co-founder and co-chair of the Caribbean Pol­i­cy Con­sor­tium and Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, An­tho­ny Bryan agreed that there was very lit­tle risk of war be­tween the South Amer­i­can neigh­bours.

“There will be no war. There will be no in­va­sion. It is a risk that Venezuela will not take be­cause it will change the geopo­lit­i­cal and the mil­i­tary sta­tus of South Amer­i­ca,” Bryan said.

“But what there might be is that there might be bor­der skir­mish­es. I do not think that Guyana has any op­tion oth­er than the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ). The Ar­gyle Agree­ment is a tem­po­rary damper on the is­sue. This is not an is­sue that will dis­ap­pear even when the ICJ rules in Guyana’s favour.”

Un­der the Ar­gyle Agree­ment, signed be­tween the pres­i­dents of Venezuela and Guyana in St Vin­cent late last year, the two na­tions will not use force to solve the dis­pute over the oil-rich Es­se­qui­bo re­gion which Guyana cur­rent­ly ad­min­is­ters.

Al­so dis­cussed dur­ing the we­bi­nar was a warn­ing giv­en by the late Dr Er­ic Williams, T&T’s first prime min­is­ter, about Venezuela’s im­pe­r­i­al am­bi­tions in the Caribbean.

Guyana’s for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Carl Greenidge, who spoke high­ly of Williams’ ear­ly works, said, “You might want to bear in mind Dr Er­ic Williams’ com­ments about Venezuela’s in­ten­tions in the re­gion. I have the pa­per that he pre­sent­ed at a (PNM) par­ty con­fer­ence en­ti­tled ‘Venezuela’s Threat to the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty’. In the doc­u­ment it­self, he ex­am­ines the im­pli­ca­tion of Venezuela’s at­tempts to con­clude bi­lat­er­al arrange­ments with these Caribbean coun­tries.”

Grif­fith al­so spoke about Williams’ stance on Venezuela.

“Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams was not on­ly con­cerned about Venezuela to the point of writ­ing nine pages, he con­vened a spe­cial con­ven­tion of the PNM in 1975. He fo­cused the par­ty’s at­ten­tion on what he called Venezuela’s im­pe­ri­al­ism. He used his aca­d­e­m­ic skills as a his­to­ri­an to lay out over many decades what Venezuela’s in­tents, de­signs and pur­suits were. It’s a doc­u­ment pub­licly avail­able and worth read­ing,” he said.

Bryan said Venezue­lan im­pe­ri­al­ism was a very re­al is­sue dur­ing Williams’ tenure as prime min­is­ter.

“What Dr Williams was con­cerned about was the fact that Cari­com, which was called CARIF­TA at the time, was be­ing frag­ment­ed, the Venezue­lans play­ing off Caribbean states against each oth­er. Dr Williams didn’t like that. As a his­to­ri­an he saw it as im­pe­ri­al­ism,” he said.


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