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Saturday, March 15, 2025

World’s major powers still advantaging weaker nations

by

Yesterday
20250314

The world’s ma­jor pow­ers are threat­en­ing the de­sire of the Caribbean re­gion to re­main as a “Zone of Peace.” Al­though the ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute be­tween Guyana and Venezuela is over 125 years old, and notwith­stand­ing the 2023 Ar­gyle Agree­ment signed be­tween the two coun­tries in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, in which both coun­tries agreed not to take ac­tion which can pro­voke con­flict, ten­sion is again erupt­ing.

Ear­li­er this month, a Venezue­lan mil­i­tary ves­sel ap­proached and ac­cost­ed the op­er­a­tors of a float­ing plat­form owned by Amer­i­can en­er­gy gi­ant Exxon in an off­shore area con­sid­ered to be be­long­ing to Guyana. Protest­ing the “ag­gres­sion” of the in­ci­dent, Guyana Pres­i­dent Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali ac­ti­vat­ed his coun­try’s mil­i­tary as­sets in the area.

“Guyana’s mar­itime bound­aries are recog­nised un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law, and this in­cur­sion is a mat­ter of grave con­cern,” Pres­i­dent Ali said then.

How­ev­er, Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro de­nied any wrong­do­ing on the part of his coun­try, ar­gu­ing that the pa­trol ship was op­er­at­ing in what he claims to be “dis­put­ed in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters.” Guyana, how­ev­er, has been giv­en the right un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law to con­tin­ue to have ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol over the area.

The sit­u­a­tion is ag­gra­vat­ed by two re­al­i­ties: one is the Ar­gyle Agree­ment and the oth­er is the fact that both coun­tries are al­so await­ing ar­bi­tra­tion on the dis­pute by the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ).

Venezuela’s re­newed at­tempt to claim and con­fis­cate Guyana’s sov­er­eign Es­se­qui­bo ter­ri­to­ry, which was de­cid­ed up­on by ar­bi­tra­tion back in 1899 in favour of Britain, then the colo­nial au­thor­i­ty of British Guiana, was ini­tial­ly ac­cept­ed by the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment. But by 1962, then-Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Ro­mu­lo Be­tan­court de­clared the said judg­ment to be “null and void.” He then re­sus­ci­tat­ed claims to the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, which com­pris­es an es­ti­mat­ed 70 per cent of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry and in which there are rich en­er­gy de­posits.

Pres­i­dent Maduro is now tak­ing up those claims, con­se­quent up­on the dis­cov­ery of large vol­umes of hy­dro­car­bon re­sources in the Es­se­qui­bo. In 2024, large­ly a re­sult of ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion of oil and gas, Guyana reg­is­tered the high­est ex­pect­ed Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct growth rate in the world, at 26 per cent.

These re­newed and ag­gres­sive claims on Guyana’s sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry, there­fore, must be placed in the con­text of the not-too-new phe­nom­e­non of coun­tries with large and over­whelm­ing mil­i­tary ca­pac­i­ty oc­cu­py­ing lands of rel­a­tive­ly weak sov­er­eign states in an at­tempt for some ben­e­fit.

Rus­sia’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, and its cur­rent con­fis­ca­tion and oc­cu­pa­tion of a fur­ther 20 per cent of that coun­try, is but one such ex­am­ple of the strong coun­tries tak­ing ad­van­tage of the weak.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has re­it­er­at­ed his in­ten­tion to “re­take” the Pana­ma Canal, re­name the Gulf of Mex­i­co as the Gulf of Amer­i­ca, and his con­tin­u­ing stat­ed in­ten­tion to drag Green­land, Cana­da and the Gaza in­to Amer­i­can pos­ses­sion are con­sis­tent with the phe­nom­e­non of dom­i­na­tion by a world su­per­pow­er.

When the most mil­i­tar­i­ly pow­er­ful coun­tries en­gage in oc­cu­pa­tions and takeovers, they then lack the moral rec­ti­tude to pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing else­where.

For a cou­ple of decades now, the call has been con­sis­tent­ly made for a new world or­der to achieve eq­ui­ty, fair­ness and ul­ti­mate­ly serve as the ba­sis for peace and sta­bil­i­ty. Those with the pow­er, how­ev­er, are not lis­ten­ing.


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