No one with knowledge of the long-standing territorial controversy between Guyana and Venezuela is likely to be shocked over the recent seizure of two Guyanese fishing vessels by the Venezuelan Navy and the detention of their Guyanese crew in Guyana’s territorial waters late last month. Notwithstanding the release of the boats and crew on Tuesday, it is a development that is characteristic of the kind of pinprick aggression that has been perpetrated by Venezuela against Guyana for decades and which has included armed incursions into Guyana territory and even the physical occupation by the Venezuelan military of areas belonging to Guyana.
Caracas’ aggression towards Guyana has also previously impacted the operations of ExxonMobil, the US oil company currently in the midst of oil recovery and exploration operations which are projected to significantly transform the Guyana economy. In early 2019 the beleaguered Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro responded to the 2015 announcement by ExxonMobil that it had recorded ‘world class’ oil finds in Guyana and that the prospects for further finds were better than good, with a pronouncement to the effect that his administration would block the globally influential US oil company from exploring for oil in offshore waters which it claims it owns. Militarily, this is a threat which, even in its current decidedly hobbled state, Venezuela can carry out without great difficulty.
Under Maduro, however, the circumstances in the country boasting the world largest volumes of oil reserves have changed. US-led strictures imposed by the Trump administration have put a stranglehold on Venezuelan oil exports and brought its economy to a standstill. The enormous outward migration of Venezuelans during the course of the Maduro regime has even seen relatively modest numbers of the country’s nationals moving to Guyana, where, significantly, there has been no indication of local hostility towards them.
The Maduro administration’s recent action in the seizure of the Guyanese fishing vessels and the detention of their crews may well be a response to a succession of ‘misfortunes’ which the embattled leader has had to face. The success of US action against the country’s oil exports has ravaged its economy to a point where it would likely take years to recover and there are no guarantees that the circumstances will be immediately and dramatically transformed by the changing of the political guard in Washington.
For Maduro, the string of what his administration would have seen as bad luck did not end there.
In December the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that it was empowered to entertain Guyana’s case in the matter of the validity of the so-called 1899 Arbitral Award, which, under international law, effectively settled the boundary between the two countries. To add insult to injury, the Court openly frowned on Caracas’ decision to take no part in the hearing. In Georgetown, the Court’s decision triggered a restrained official mood of celebration here, though, saddled with what was already a surfeit of domestic woes, the decision by the World Court would not have put Maduro in a better mood.
Venezuela’s posture in the matter of addressing its territorial claim against Guyana has always been informed by two characteristics. First, it appears to be unable to resist the temptation to employ a repeated practice of sabre rattling as a kind of adjunct to its exchanges with Guyana, a propensity that sharply underlines its ‘might is right’ posture in the prosecution of its claim. Secondly, even in its conventional diplomatic exchanges with Guyana, it has employed a ‘big country/little country’ approach underpinned by high-handedness and a contempt for the rules of diplomacy. Smallness and the absence of comparable force has compelled Guyana to rely heavily on levelheadedness, international support, and the resort to international law, which successive governments here in Georgetown have used in responding to the Venezuelan threat.
Diplomatically, Guyana has sought consistently to proffer sober and measured perspectives whenever deliberations that have to do with Venezuela have arisen at international fora.
Guyana’s recently being celebrated as being a future oil-rich country, may, in more ways than one, have been a game-changer. If power relations between the two countries are unlikely to change in a hurry, oil, in the eyes of the international community and more particularly in the eyes of Washington, lifts Guyana out of that zone of obscurity where it has remained stuck for decades. From a geo-strategic standpoint, oil, in the eyes of the west, will cause Guyana to be seen as a country of a greater measure of significance than it might have been a decade ago. Contextually, analysts are likely to see the 2020 visit by the then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a clear indication that Washington was awake to Guyana’s new-found significance as a country of strategic significance.
In strictly material terms the Maduro administration can expect no immediate-term material gain from sending warships to seize what, by comparison, are tiny Guyanese fishing vessels manned by a handful of fishermen who eke out a living. The development, however, follows what, for Venezuela, has always been a pattern of incremental escalation in the prosecution of its territorial claim.
Here in Georgetown there has been no sense of either civilian or official panic, the vast majority of the media coverage focusing on the well-rehearsed official resort to drawing the attention of the international community to Venezuela’s excesses, a practice to which Guyana has become accustomed. Neither the government nor the people in Guyana, however, will be unmindful of the fact that Venezuela’s aggression has always been characterized by buildups that eventually arrive at a disturbing zenith.
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