In March 2025, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Guyana and held discussions with President Irfaan Ali. By the end of that visit, Guyana and the United States had signed a Memorandum of Understanding intended to deepen security cooperation and address regional challenges. Its publicly identified objectives included combating narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering and other forms of transnational organised crime, improving information-sharing and strengthening military-to-military cooperation. President Ali described the United States as Guyana’s “trusted partner,” while Secretary Rubio was considerably less diplomatic about Venezuela’s territorial ambitions: an attack upon Guyana or its offshore petroleum operations, he warned, would be a very bad decision for Caracas. President Ali went further in describing the relationship as one grounded in “shared values, mutual trust” and commitment to international law. Eighteen months later, Guyanese are entitled to ask exactly what was secured.
The question has acquired new urgency because Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez has now taken Caracas’s territorial claim to one of the world’s most visible diplomatic platforms. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly this week, Ms Rodríguez outrageously restated Venezuela’s claim to the Essequibo, called upon Guyana to return to bilateral negotiations under the Geneva Agreement and did so while wearing a brooch depicting Essequibo as part of Venezuela. This act by Venezuela’s acting President should not be dismissed as mere symbolism. When the head of a neighbouring State appears before the United Nations wearing its territorial claim upon another country, the object becomes political messaging. Caracas is telling its domestic audience, Guyana and the international community that whatever else may have changed in Venezuela, its position on Essequibo has not. And this is where Guyana’s increasingly close security relationship with Washington deserves considerably more scrutiny.
The March 2025 agreement was concluded against the backdrop of heightened Venezuelan pressure. Mr Rubio’s warning was explicit. The United States Ambassador had similarly declared that Washington stood “100 per cent” with Guyana against Venezuelan aggression and would stand “shoulder to shoulder” in defence of Guyana’s territorial integrity. Yet since then, Guyana’s western frontier has experienced repeated incidents involving attacks upon GDF patrols from the Venezuelan side of the Cuyuni. Those incidents did not trigger any publicly identifiable security response resembling the deterrent posture Guyanese might reasonably have understood from Washington’s earlier language.
If deterring Venezuela formed a meaningful component of the strategic rationale, what does the arrangement contemplate when Venezuelan aggression occurs below the threshold of conventional war? What happens when Guyanese soldiers are fired upon from Venezuelan territory? What does “military-to-military cooperation” provide at that moment—intelligence, surveillance, logistics, equipment, diplomatic intervention or merely consultation? If none of these incidents activates anything beyond the ordinary diplomatic support Guyana enjoyed before the agreement, then Government should explain what additional security the country acquired through it. The question has become more complicated still because Washington’s relationship with Caracas has fundamentally changed.
The United States that warned Venezuela in March 2025 is now engaging directly with Rodríguez’s administration. Following the American operation that removed Nicolás Maduro in January, Washington and Caracas have been developing cooperation involving petroleum, investment and Venezuela’s economic recovery. Ms Rodríguez engaged American and international officials in New York, while President Donald Trump has also moved toward direct engagement with her. None of this necessarily means Washington has abandoned Guyana. States routinely maintain relationships with countries that have disputes with one another. But it does mean that Guyana cannot formulate its national security policy on the assumption that American and Guyanese interests will always coincide. That is precisely why Ms Rodríguez’s UN appearance matters. It has now become a question about strategicautonomy.
Guyana is entitled to cultivate the closest possible relationship with the United States. A country of its size, facing a territorial claim from a much larger neighbour, would be foolish not to develop strong international partnerships. But partnership is not the same thing as dependency, and diplomatic language is not the same thing as a security guarantee. The more Guyana relies upon Washington as its principal strategic partner, the more important it becomes to understand what happens when Washington’s interests shift—as interests between States inevitably do. That moment may already be arriving.
The Irfaan Ali administration should therefore tell the country considerably more about the agreements signed with Washington: What exactly constitutes a threat to “Guyana’s security” under these arrangements? What assistance becomes available if Venezuela violates Guyanese territory? What commitments, if any, relate specifically to Essequibo? What happens if Washington’s developing relationship with Caracas produces priorities divergent from US-Guyana’s agreements? What is Washington’s position on the political messaging deriving from Ms. Rodriguez’s brooch? Has Washington informed where it intends to stand following the ICJ’s ruling? And what independent diplomatic and defence capabilities is Guyana developing so that its sovereignty never becomes dependent upon the foreign-policy calculations of another State?
Those questions are particularly urgent as the ICJ approaches its judgment. Guyana’s official position remains that the Court’s eventual decision will be legally binding upon both States. Venezuela has made equally clear that it rejects the judicial route and continues pressing for bilateral negotiation. A favourable judgment would therefore represent an enormously important legal and diplomatic achievement, but implementation and respect for international law will ultimately depend upon more than the existence of a judgment.
This is the strategic dilemma confronting Guyana. Washington can be a valuable partner, perhaps Guyana’s most important one, without becoming the custodian of Guyanese sovereignty. Venezuela’s position has remained remarkably consistent even as its leadership and relationship with Washington have changed. American interests, meanwhile, are evolving. Guyana therefore needs more than warnings delivered at press conferences and agreements described in broad language. It needs to know with what it can defend itself, what its partners have actually undertaken to defend, and what happens when those two are not the same. Sovereignty is safest when friendship strengthens national capacity—not when friendship becomes a substitute for it.
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