Dear Editor,
The US 303 Committee revelations were, alas, not revelations. Anyone with a modicum of critical analysis and some basic understanding of Cold War history knew this to be true. What the revelations do reveal is the depth of ineptitude and lack of tactical nous from Burnham and Jagan and the devastating consequences for this country. A lot of talk is made of Burnham’s Machiavellian genius and cunning, suggesting he is some political mastermind who outsmarted everyone. I don’t see it. I see vast intellectual shallowness and facts that contradict that very notion. Remember that Burnham was with the PPP and its communist ideological platform that opposed the West for many years before breaking away to form the PNC with the support of the West.
Burnham had to be moulded and made into an alternative to the PPP and it was the West that moulded and made Burnham into the alternative to Jagan and the PPP. The Forbes Burnham of the late 1950s was a creation of the West in the heat of the Cold War battle. He did not make his own destiny. He was made. His destiny was created by others who pulled the puppet string and who plotted its trajectory for him. The same applies to the inflexible ideologue Cheddi Jagan who was dominated by the ideological persuasions of his wife and who was beholden to the communist bloc and its Cold War agenda.
There is nothing original or nationalistic about these two men who have dominated our political history. They were puppets dancing on the strings of their masters. Now, it was hard to be truly independent as a small state leader in the cold brutality of Cold War politics where superpowers rumbled. But the world produced leaders of small states who played it right enough, navigating the waters with tactical awareness to extract maximum benefit for their people and nation. This is where Burnham’s failure is most stark. Leaders who obtained support from the West during the Cold War like Taiwan, Singapore, Chile and South Korea all managed to convert that support and use that relationship to generate massive economic growth for their nations and to emerge from the Cold War vastly ahead and incredibly prepared to seize the coming opportunities.
Guyana is arguably one of the most shocking cases of squandering this opportunity. Not only was Guyana primed and ready for major takeoff having the 50th highest GDP per capita in the world in 1964, it had massive advantages that Burnham and the PNC absolutely squandered. Some of these included significant natural resources per capita, close proximity to the USA for trade, a strong agricultural economy, a supporting ethnic group that could have used that economic propulsion and the opportunity for intense capital infusions from the West. So, instead of doing what Lee KuanYew and others did and use this relationship with the capitalist bloc during the Cold War to secure the kind of economic payoffs to build a powerful market economy, Burnham went down a socialist economic experiment rabbit hole that not only battered Guyana’s economy but also damaged the pipeline of economic support that the West with its massive financial resources had available to provide. Now, the PPP diehard apologists would rise up in protest when I say this, but the fact is that Jagan would have done the same and suffered the same fate. He would have pursued the same disastrous economic misadventures of nationalization and other socialist or communist economic experimentation and would have suffered the same fate as Burnham. In fact, despite their backers being different ideologically, both men were actually very similar in their orientation, which is why they were politically together in the beginning. Many of Burnham’s policies were policies Jagan would have implemented.
So, the 303 Committee tells a story of not so much about Cold War machinations as it does of the failed leadership Guyana was saddled with in its most important era and the tragic consequences that still scar this nation.
Yours faithfully,
M. Maxwell
