On Tuesday Guyana welcomed a statement from the UN Security Council following its meeting last week to address Venezuela’s law creating a new state in Essequibo. The government’s diplomatic response notwithstanding, it has to be said that the Security Council statement hardly represented an unequivocal endorsement of Guyana’s position. But then perhaps President Irfaan Ali who had requested the meeting was overly optimistic about its possible outcome when he was advised to go that route.
The members of the Council expressed concern about the possible escalation of tensions between Guyana and Venezuela and exhorted the two countries to exercise maximum restraint. They also reminded them of their obligations under the provisional measures issued by the ICJ on December 1st last year. The statement went on to emphasise the importance of ensuring that Latin America and the Caribbean remained a zone of peace, and commended the regional efforts which had resulted in the Argyle Declaration.
Following on from this the two nations were urged to resolve their differences via peaceful means and uphold their obligations under international law and the UN Charter. In their final paragraph the members did underline the importance of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as for the prohibition on threatening or using force in relation to the territorial integrity or political independence of another state. However, Venezuela was not named in this connection; all that was said was “by any party.”
This statement was surely not what the Government of Guyana had in mind when the decision was made to have recourse to the Security Council. It holds the two nations accountable for maintaining a zone of peace and calls on both to refrain from the use of force or the threat of it in respect to the territorial integrity of ‘another state.’ It is Argyle writ large, and fails to hold the only guilty party, i.e. Venezuela, to account.
It may be that it was thought in Georgetown that if non-permanent members could be persuaded of the merits of this country’s case prior to the meeting, then there would be an overwhelming majority in its favour when three of the five permanent members with veto power were taken into account. Exactly what the view of all the nine non-permanent members was (Guyana is the tenth), is not known. Only Switzerland has come out in public about it and it at least adopted a position in harmony with that of Guyana.
However, the maggot in the sapodilla is the permanent member, Russia, which would have adhered unreservedly to a pro-Venezuela stance. It is a critical player in the arc of nations under sanction which include Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Syria and North Korea. In addition there is China which would probably sit on the fence, or in other words, make sure that no reproof was issued to anyone. It might be noted that China has recently issued its latest national map showing its territorial boundaries, something that has produced strong protests from India, Malaysia and the Philippines. It is no stranger itself, therefore, to Venezuelan-type moves.
As things stand, it would have been impossible to secure a unanimous statement from the Security Council which would have reflected the reality of Venezuela’s aggression and illegal behaviour where this country’s territory is concerned. One would have thought that the government would have taken this into consideration before they requested the closed-door meeting, so it has to be asked what the nature of the recommendations to the Presidential Secretariat from Takuba Lodge really were. Or is it that the Secretariat doesn’t take advice from Foreign Affairs? Alternatively, does the Ministry have the analytical resources nowadays it once had?
In interviews with various news agencies President Irfaan Ali has stressed our reliance on our friends such as the US, the UK, France and Canada when asked about the enormous military disparity between Venezuela and Guyana. While hopefully, although not necessarily, that might cause Miraflores to think twice before engaging in adventurism here, it is not the only front on which President Nicolás Maduro is waging war. He has an enormous propaganda machine working for him, whose efforts have penetrated even some reputable media outlets in the absence of Guyana hammering home its own accurate historical account in the international arena.
When this country does speak what it has to say rarely extends further back than 1899, allowing agencies like the AFP to write that Caracas argues that the Essequibo River should be the natural border, as it was in 1777 during the Spanish empire. And this is without the true story being provided alongside this nonsense. The success of Venezuela’s campaign can be seen with any casual trawl of the internet where even North American PhD students in international affairs sometimes lazily toss off as background the assertion that Venezuela has entitlement to Essequibo before moving on to how the matter could be settled. The point is that if at some stage President Maduro does decide to make a move on any part of that county, he wants the world fully primed first that it is his country’s right to do so.
Venezuela’s claim is utterly irrational, but the methodology employed to buttress it is anything but. The first thing that the President and his officials have done is expropriate Guyana’s language in relation to the issue. Their declarations in support of Venezuela, therefore, are peppered with words like sovereignty, territorial integrity, defence, justice, victim, birthright and historical truth or right. This is our vocabulary used against us. When talking of Guyana, in contrast, Caracas speaks of aggression, warmongering, threats and provocations. It is like a totally inverted world dreamed up in a scifi novel.
Our neighbour’s head of state for example makes comments on the recent annexation law such as stating that his government is taking “legitimate moves to ensure national sovereignty.” At other times he speaks of the “protection of ‘Guayana Esequiba’” and the “defence of Venezuela and its territory,” or that “Venezuela was the victim of dispossession.” Venezuela’s right, he insists, “is historical and based on justice, truth … it is about rescuing and recovering what genuinely belongs to Venezuela for history.”
Painting Guyana as an unalloyed aggressor is harder work for the Miraflores propagandists when the Venezuelan military totals something like 351,000 personnel, and Guyana’s somewhere in the region of 4,000 including reserves, according to the FT. But nothing daunted this country is described as a “false victim” that is waging a “campaign of aggression against Venezuela”. Then there are the hostile, militaristic and arrogant statements” from Georgetown and its “warmongering rhetoric.” “The dogs of war bark from Guyana” ran one particularly inspired headline.
This is all woven into a story where ExxonMobil, it is said, not President Ali, governs Guyana, and the latter is just a “puppet” who does what he is told while the oil company steals Venezuela’s patrimony. According to President Maduro this arrangement is supported by “CIA nuclei” and Southern Command, which has secret bases here. Denials from the US about the bases probably make little impression on Caracas, even although they know very well there are none, because this is an essential part of their militaristic narrative. The idea is to paint Guyana as a case of neo-imperialism, an account which will have little credibility in the West, although it will probably play well with the left wing in Latin America as well as anti-colonial governments in the global South.
Of course, in addition to all this Venezuela’s propaganda gladiators have not failed to deluge the world with distortions of the facts along with plain historical untruths. The government has made some effort, for example, to counter what is being said about the Geneva Agreement, although how much impact it has made is not clear. However, one cannot help but feel that the Guyana government needs a much more sophisticated approach to disseminating their story, and a much more thorough and consistent one to counter Venezuelan propaganda wherever it rears its head across the globe. ‘Reliance on our friends’ when confronting Venezuela will not help us when dealing with its propaganda; we have to do that ourselves. And a systematic information campaign across the world will bring in more benefits in relation to our cause than going to the Security Council.
