By Neville J. Bissember
Without leaving any room for doubt, President Irfaan Ali returned from his successful visit to the United States and frontally took aim at the “naysayers” who were critical of both the reason for the trip as well as the outcomes. Saying that he would look at all friendly countries as partners, the President put it this way: ‘The US, like all other countries — China, the UK…Cuba — you are our friends. You are our partners.’
As the saying goes, “Show me your company and I will tell you who you are”. Using any yardstick to assess inter-state relations – democratic credentials and free and fair elections; respect for human rights; role of civil society and non-state actors; role of the private sector in national development; foreign direct investment as a means of economic development – putting the US, China, the UK and Cuba in the same group of “friends” needs a bit of nuancing.
So if two friends, G and U, have grown up living in a neighbourhood for “donkeys’ years”, playing together, “liming together”, with U always having G’s back, and then C turns up and wants to hang out with G, chances are that U might feel threatened and jealous and might even want to pick up his bat and ball and “dun play”, while C entices G to play with his shiny Xbox. Or, U could be accommodating and allow the duo to become a threesome, and they all “lime” with each other, sometimes together, sometimes separately, with both U and C making sure that there is mutual benefit from their presence and friendship.
The challenge of course is how Guyana chooses to relate to its friends, whether old or new, big or small. In the conduct of international relations, Guyana and other developing countries have had to slay this dragon in the post-colonial era, which some characterize as neo-colonialism, when the consolidation of hard-won independence was being pursued. Out of that clash of competing interests, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was birthed in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (don’t bother to look for it on the map).
The NAM brought together newly independent states in a common design based on such core principles as the right to self-determination, national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, independence of its members from the influence of big-power politics and non-interference in the internal affairs of States and the peaceful coexistence of all States.
In other words, we have been down this road before, of being faced with a choice between befriending either of two, or both, powerful states. Back then, the world was conveniently separated into communist and capitalist, East and West. But we were to breathe a collective gasp in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, shortly after Francis Fukuyama had asked months before if we had arrived at The End of History. Released of the constricting ideological straightjackets, the expectation was that developing countries could now pursue a less constricted development path.
That, of course, was easier said than done. The collapse of communism and the diminution of Moscow’s global reach has been accompanied by the emergence of different considerations in the conduct of international relations, such as religious fundamentalism, international terrorism, migration, climate change and vulnerability. Concomitantly, new spheres of influence from the G20, China in its own right as a bilateral partner, the oil rich Middle Eastern countries, the BRICS – which might have to rebrand soon as BRICKS, or maybe Building Blocks, if Iran, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt are all admitted to membership – have complicated life for the members of the Non Aligned Movement.
The common carrot dangled by all these comparatively new development partners, in competition with the traditional ones from the West, is access to financial resources and providing development opportunities from making technology and training available.
Tempting
In this new dispensation, it is tempting to supplant Russia with China, in any new superpower contestation with the US. China, even more so it would seem than Russia in the heyday of the Cold War, is flush with capital for investment. Are we therefore currently witnessing Non Alignment Redux?
The short answer is No. No one is arguing for a reinvigoration of the NAM, or the unleashing of scarce human and other resources to revisit some of the tensions that had played out during the Cold War, for example with the push to establish a New International Economic Order (NIEO: remember that?). The NIEO was in fact the major initiative pursued by the Group of 77, the economic counterpart to the NAM, the goals of which were to promote and defend the collective economic interests of its members, while safeguarding their independence and sovereignty.
The challenge of economic development of small states is fixated nowadays on the availability of even scarcer financial resources than was the case decades ago. This has been compounded by new and competing hurdles such as the need for climate financing, correspondent banking and a lingering unwillingness of development partners to accept vulnerability as a criterion for access to concessional financing, over and above per capita income.
The fundamental difference at present, is the release of the ideological pressure on developing countries which emanated from the former Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe during that period, notwithstanding the fact that the political system in China is Communist, as mandated by the Chinese Communist Party.
The US and the Soviet Union have not been coy over the years about political interference and influence of neighbouring states, if not outright annexation. While this may have been more evident in the case of the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe and in Cuba, we recently heard an open admission on US network television from John Bolton, former President Trump’s National Security Adviser, and hawk of hawks, that he, and by logical deduction, the US Administration, was involved in regime change and planning of coups in foreign countries. The role of the Kennedy Administration in the events of pre-independence Guyana speaks for itself.
Another fundamental difference is that whereas the US marks the copybooks of countries in areas such as human rights, trafficking in persons and the use of the death penalty, such matters do not feature in the calculus on development assistance and investment finance as administered by China. By contrast, Beijing’s approach to internationalising its influence has been decidedly different, utilising such means as the infrastructural grand design known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing is on a path of establishing economic footholds in various parts of the globe, primarily to bolster its huge demand for raw materials – a kind of economic colonialism, if you like – while also consolidating its political influence, as an additional objective.
China, like Russia, is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Like the US, they too can exert pressure on small states on matters related to contentious international issues and to seek support for General Assembly resolutions, on which they are usually on the opposing side to the US. Their veto power makes both of them precious allies.
By contrast, whereas the US does not have a non-negotiable territorial issue dear to its ethos as the unification of mainland China with Taiwan, the US wields great power through its long-standing influence over the Washington-based international financial institutions. These respective considerations feature prominently in the relations that either Beijing or Washington conducts with third states.
It would be fair to say that the issue of Taiwan’s status as being part of China is of similar existential importance as the territorial integrity of Guyana’s 83,000 square miles, inclusive of the five-eighths’ of its land territory which comprises the Essequibo. The historical and political antecedents underpinning the two issues are fundamentally different, but do not diminish their centrality to either Beijing or Georgetown.
As this is the most important issue on Guyana’s foreign policy agenda and intrinsically linked to its potential as an oil producing state, it was not insignificant that as far back as the tenure of the former US Ambassador, Washington showed its hand and supported the correctness of Guyana’s position on the finality of the 1899 Arbitral Award which settled the border between Guyana and Venezuela. While Beijing may tend to be circumspect on issues such as this, China has never – or, to be fair – has never been expected to publicly let its position be known.
Like-mindedness
In crafting its foreign policy, Guyana very often has to take account of the position of like-minded States, for example in the OACPS, the NAM or the G77 and more specifically, its treaty and other obligations to CARICOM. Thus albeit Article 16 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas refers to the Community establishing ‘…measures to co-ordinate the foreign policies of the Member States of the Community’, the obligation to adopt ‘Community positions on major…issues’ is only to be ensured ‘as far as practicable’.
It is submitted that Community positions require neither uniformity not symmetry across the membership. In the process of coordination to arrive at a Community position, a Member State can ventilate its respective views and advance principled and practical reasons why it would elect not to go along with the pack. Why is it that some Member States of the EU are continuing to purchase oil from Russia without criticism, notwithstanding the Union’s overall position on sanctions against the so-called aggressor, but if CARICOM’s membership does not adopt a herd mentality and all take the same position on an issue, it is maligned as being fractured and inconsistent?
In so far as groupings go, the Group of 77 had welcomed China into its fold and acknowledged its membership from 1994. In that regard, it is more aligned with the goals and aspirations of developing countries than the US. Indeed, notwithstanding its vast wealth, military might and veto power in the UN Security Council, China is still categorised, by what could be termed a statistical quirk, as a developing country.
In March of 2021, President Biden clearly stated that the realization of China’s goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest and most powerful, was not going to happen on his watch. Such a position would have resonated in the US’s neighbourhood, so the invitation a year later from Washington to the President of the fastest growing economy in the Western Hemisphere, an emerging oil powerhouse, could be described as the initiation of what could be referred to in basketball terms as a “full court press”, intended to deflect any perceived influence-peddling by Beijing within the Region. But, according to US television show host Bill Maher, the US was not losing to China, they have lost already – the returns just have not all come in as yet.
It may be recalled that in the Caribbean from as far back as the 1970’s, China began a hearts and minds campaign, using a soft power approach of cultural penetration, through sport and culture – how many remember the steady stream of Chinese acrobats that toured the Region? This was right up there alongside the US Peace Corps program of education and coaching our youth in schools – remember the Peace Corps volunteer Pete Turner and “Scotchie” Hinds and former Police Commissioner Henry “Bantu” Greene, of the QC Tumblers?
Subsequently, using its vast experience in infrastructural works and construction, Beijing has penetrated the Region and executed major projects like the majestic NAPA Building just off the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port-of-Spain, the North-South Highway in Jamaica, and port facilities in Antigua and Barbuda. The large scale Baha Mar Resort in The Bahamas was constructed with the financial backing of China Exim Bank, with the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) as the general contractor. Interestingly, in this popular tourist destination, which is geographically as well as politically close to Washington, the general contractor’s role was assumed by China Construction America, CSCES’s US subsidiary. Our own soon to be completed (hopefully) main international airport is another case in point.
Chinese companies have forestry and mining interests in Guyana and bauxite in Jamaica and their merchandisers are present throughout the Region. Students in the Caribbean have benefitted from scholarships and training in China.
Increased tolerance
The reality is that in international relations, the US and China have shared interests in the areas such as trade, science and technology and nuclear non-proliferation. In other words, over recent decades, there has been an increasing tolerance, if not co-existence between these two superpowers. US-China hegemonic rivalry, whether in the charged atmosphere of the South China Sea, or the calmer waters of the Caribbean Sea, is not at the expense of their strategic collaboration in certain areas like space exploration and climate change (excluding the period of the Trump Presidency). Closer to home, one need only take into account the partnership between Exxon and CNOC in the oil sector. However, rivalry at the quadrennial Olympic Games is a different kettle of fish!
At the local level, there is news that the inking of an MOU between the Guyanese and Chinese private sectors is imminent. There is of course, already in existence, a Guyanese American Chamber of Commerce.
In other words, in the current dispensation there is space for all to get along side by side and so, whether or not the recent Guyana-US high level meeting in Washington was as a result of a summons, there is no need for anxious hand-wringing. The reality is that we have been there and done that in the days of the NAM and the Cold War rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. Tiptoeing between the raindrops on the international scene is a skill that is still in vogue.
Thus it is quite possible for Guyana to position itself strategically in conducting correct and cordial relations with both Washington and Beijing. Just as some EU countries continue to buy oil from Russia, despite the Union’s principled stand against the so-called aggressor, and if the coordination of CARICOM’s foreign policy does not in all cases have to be translated into symmetry or sameness, then it falls to Guyana’s foreign policy strategists to leverage its newfound oil wealth and enhanced regional standing, as and when necessary, and establish and articulate principled and pragmatic positions based on its national interests.
As former Director General and Ambassador Cheryl Miles once said, in an internal strategy meeting in the Foreign Ministry, while we may have disagreements with our friends, disagreement must not result in discord. We can all romp together in the playground, without the need for anybody to kick sand in another’s face.
Neville J. Bissember is a retired career diplomat.
