The anglophone Caribbean nations are finally doing what the late Trinidadian Prime Minister Eric Williams foresaw all those decades ago: they are making themselves client states of Venezuela. The reason is apparent to all; at a time of acute economic distress, Venezuela has made them not just an offer, but offers which they cannot refuse. President Chávez, ever quick to react to changing circumstances, has effectively moved into a vacuum, and by distributing largesse on a scale which no developed nation would be inclined to entertain, has effectively fashioned a new geopolitical reality in the region.
It was Mr David Jessop in his column last week who expressed the fear that the region might be on the point of disintegration, while the lack of coherence in the regional integration movement was taken up in the Stabroek News editorial on Friday. The leader warned that in a situation of “division and disunity” states would be picked off one by one, beginning with the “weakest and most vulnerable,” and that this was already happening.
It is not as if Miraflores has ever masked its intentions; the President of Venezuela has been nothing if not frank about his vision for South America and the Caribbean, and no one can be in any doubt that PetroCaribe and all its associated benefits are in the end directed towards one objective – his grand Bolivarian project. And that is a project, it must be emphasized, with a political, ‘socialist’ end and in which Venezuela is envisioned to play a hegemonic role. As such, it is inimical to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and any kind of regional integration. But there is something else too; Venezuela is as avaricious as ever where the resources of the region are concerned.
There is no point pretending to ourselves that Venezuela’s generosity has no strings attached; certainly Caracas has no intention of shelling out the vast sums it has been doing and then expect nothing in return. The piper in the region has changed, and those Caricom countries which have associated themselves with Venezuela will now have to dance to a different tune. Dominica has already joined ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), and there is the distinct possibility that some other small Caricom states will feel themselves constrained to follow suit. The ALBA club, of course, is an anti-capitalist one, which includes Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua among its members, and which has, among other things, a proselytizing mission. Its outreach arm under the guise of a humanitarian organization – the Houses of Alba – is currently under investigation by the Congress of Peru in relation to the alleged concealment of political-lobbying networks with connections to foreign governments and possible subversive activity in that country.
Mr Chávez’s vision as it relates to the mainland is doomed; among many other factors (time being one) operating against its fulfilment, Brazil sits squarely in the way. But the Venezuelan head of state is solidifying his base beginning with governments of a like mind in Latin America and the small nations sitting in the Caribbean Sea, and future government changes in Venezuela notwithstanding, Caricom countries may be left with the consequences of their Caracas alignment for a very long time to come. As it is, the likelihood is that these small nations will find themselves drawn ever tighter into the Venezuelan net.
The price which Dominica has paid for her assistance from Venezuela has been a high one. She has, of course, joined ALBA, but far more important she appears to have abandoned her claim to Bird Rock, a claim for which Caricom had provided consistent backing over the years. This uninhabitable speck of sand and coral is infinitely closer to Dominica than to Venezuela, and its importance lies solely in the fact that if Venezuelan sovereignty over it is recognized, it would increase Caracas’s EEZ dramatically at the expense not just of Dominica, but other islands in the Caribbean as well. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea countries cannot ground their EEZ claims on the basis of uninhabitable ‘islands,’ which it calls ‘rocks,’ and Bird Rock falls into this category. However, Venezuela craftily has never signed on to this convention, and President Chávez clearly has no intention of doing so. He is not, therefore, interested in small economies developing themselves, since he is denying them their resource-rich sea-space; what he is interested in is ensuring their dependency.
Trinidad has possibly been punished for staying out of PetroCaribe (she really doesn’t need to be in it, of course) by having reached a seeming impasse with Venezuela over a provisional agreement on natural gas made some time ago; as Mr Jessop says in his column today, the future of that accord is now uncertain. Then there is Barbados, which has also declined to join PetroCaribe, and which Mr Jessop says is subject to a claim that two of its offshore blocks for which it has invited bids from oil companies fall within Venezuelan territory.
The source of this story appears to be Petroleumworld News; however, up to the time of writing the Barbados press had not reported the receipt by the Barbadian government of any formal diplomatic note of protest from Venezuela. The blocks concerned are the two most southerly ones, although whether they come within the area encompassed by the Guyana-Barbados Treaty of 2003 has not been made clear. As things stand, whether the report has no substance, or whether Caracas is firing an unofficial shot across Barbados’s (and perhaps Guyana’s?) bows, only time will tell.
As it is, Guyana has more immediate problems with her neighbour to the west, although the Government of Guyana appears blissfully unaware of these. The proposals for an oil pipeline and a road to Caracas have reared their heads again, although the pipeline, which was originally intended to run south to Argentina with offshoots to Guyana and Suriname, has now been truncated to a pipeline to Guyana and Suriname alone. To all intents and purposes, Brazil is stymieing the more ambitious project.
Miraflores will not be happy about the Brazil road, of course, more especially if it eventually comes to include a deep-water harbour. However, given our weak institutions and our total lack of capacity to control our current landspace, a road to Caracas (and a pipeline) will give Venezuela control of the North-West, which it has always wanted, and a section of our coast the dimensions of which are unknown at this stage. It would be a reasonable, if unacknowledged, trade-off with Brazil. As long as there is a road, Venezuela does not need to promote her illegal claim to Guyana’s Essequibo; she will get more control over our territory by the highway method than she ever would by prosecuting the claim in a formal sense. It might be added in passing that there would be huge environmental implications attached to a road and a pipeline, which would run entirely counter to President Jagdeo’s present stance on the environment.
The formal statements supporting Guyana’s case at Caricom Heads of Government meetings notwithstanding, this country can no longer rely on regional support on the controversy in the way we used to do. Despite the 1990 maritime delimitation treaty between Trinidad and Venezuela, the former country, Barbados and Guyana have certain interests in common where our neighbour to the west is concerned. As a consequence, we now should begin looking to identify our friends given the new dispensation in the Caribbean, and above all, we should be seeking to create a foreign policy which will take account of our weaknesses and the new realities.
