For the past few months there have been articles in the Venezuelan media suggesting that a decision from the International Court of Justice on the Guyana-Venezuela controversy does not mark the termination of the matter. Given the rapprochement between the US and Venezuela, it is argued, the judicial decision becomes a mere “secondary formality”, in the words of columnist, Humberto González Briceño.
It is true that from the beginning Caracas has insisted that it would not recognise the decision of the ICJ, demanding instead bilateral negotiations with Guyana. The latter approach, they have falsely claimed, is what is required under the 1966 Geneva Agreement. Prior to January 3rd this year, however, there were no realistic options they could pursue if, as expected, the ICJ handed down a decision favourable to Guyana. Outright invasion would have been the only possibility, and it will be remembered that when they toyed with that in 2023, Brazil intervened.
The government here has fallen into a kind of soporific state in the expectation of a positive ICJ ruling early next year, in addition to feeling reassured by the declarations of support for Guyana’s territorial integrity emanating from the United States, in particular Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But if Georgetown has been somewhat somnolent during this Court interlude, Caracas has been busy.
The Venezuelan reality changed at the start of the year with the forced transference of President Nicolás Maduro from what he thought was his secure home in Fuerte Tiuna to altogether less congenial accommodation in a Brooklyn jail. And as a recent opinion piece by Neville J Bissember has pointed out, Secretary of State Rubio’s assurances dated from before January 3rd. It might be added that no such asseverations have come from his boss.
The preparedness of President Trump since then to work with Maduro’s former deputy, now interim President Delcy Rodríguez, as well as retain the personnel and political scaffolding of the old regime is a reflection of the fact that his primary interest where Venezuela is concerned is oil, not democracy.
Nothing has made that more clear than the deal the President announced in August whereby a US-led company will secure concessions over 17 oil fields in Venezuela totalling about a fifth of that nation’s estimated oil reserves. The Office of Strategic Capital which is attached to the Pentagon would own about one third of the company involved.
Never mind that Venezuelan law does not allow for oil deals which have a duration of anything longer than 25 years, or that US law does not permit the Office of Strategic Capital to own shares in companies. And never mind that contrary to President Trump’s claim that the arrangement will generate profit within two or three years, it is more likely to take a decade, according to oil experts. In addition, they say, the oil will not help refill the US petroleum reserve anytime soon as he has claimed.
None of that matters to the US President, of course,who has spoken of the deal as having “re-established the Monroe Doctrine,” in addition to “purging foreign malign influence from our backyard and ensuring American dominance in our hemisphere is never again questioned.”
All of this sits uneasily with the Venezuelan opposition, which would certainly look again at the agreement should they ever accede to office. But then a free and fair election does not appear to be what Mr Trump has in mind for the indeterminate future. Apart from anything else María Corina Machado, who would probably win any such election, was said to have been prevented on several occasions from returning to Venezuela for 10 months, reportedly by the current Venezuelan administration.
Whatever the truth behind the thwarting of her return, she finally did succeed in coming back on Sunday to be received by crowds of elated supporters. The American President for his part sounded less than enthusiastic, being reported as responding, “I don’t know anything about it, but I think she’s a very nice woman. She gave me her Nobel Prize. So how can I say anything else?” He later added, “I hope she’s safe. She’s a very nice woman. But we’re doing really well in Venezuela.”
Even Secretary Rubio, who as the son of Cuban exiles it is assumed would like to see regime change in Caracas wrote on X that the US expected all political actors to support the talks which were currently underway between a segment of the opposition and the Chavista government. Ms Machado’s party is not involved in these talks.
Exactly how the opposition leader’s presence in her homeland will play into the Venezuelan political equation is very hard to predict. And from our point of view it is equally hard to predict what stance she will take on the border. In the meantime there is another dimension to consider. In January ExxonMobil indicated reluctance to invest in Venezuela after having been burnt there twice, but recently it has been reported that the company was now prepared to do business in that country. How serious this commitment is or whether it is a matter of making haste slowly, is simply not known.
Whatever the case, the possibilities that the new concatenation of circumstances open up in relation to the border controversy have recently aroused the interest of Venezuelan commenters and others. Since President Trump is essentially transactional in his approach writers like Briceño speculate on a model of “shared exploitation in the Essequibo.” He goes on to write that, “hemispheric stability ceases to be based on ideological alignments to subordinate itself to the energy security of the United States and the corporate interests of the big oil companies …”
This could break what he calls the “Gordian Knot” of the last 60 years, and produce a scheme which would benefit Guyana, Washington and Venezuela.
J. Gerson Revenales has also written about the transactional realism of the White House untying the ‘Gordian Knot’ of the border controversy. His suggestion is for a blending of the Venezuelan heavy crude of the Orinoco belt which is difficult to process, with the light crude produced in Guyana’s maritime zone (that the writer insists is Venezuelan). An agreement reflecting “transactional logic” would offer strategic advantages, he says. Among these would be the stabilizing of “the operating environment in a region of high geopolitical value.” In addition it would not involve any erasure of sovereign rights – and here he is talking about Venezuelan ‘sovereign rights’!
In the meantime writers like Abraham Gómez whose columns on Essequibo are carried regularly in El Nacional has been writing nonsense about Guyana “not having the slightest historical, cartographic or legal basis” for what is before the ICJ. His so-called historical facts are little more than a figment of his imagination, however he too (hardly realistically) has written, “We hope that the International Court of Justice, within the range of sentencing alternatives to definitively resolve this contention, will urge the parties to agree on a direct negotiation.”
That the current interim government in Venezuela is working towards a post-ICJ determination is implied, not just by Ms Rodríguez’ notorious brooch which she flaunts in public arenas, but the fact she has been engaged in a Caribbean outreach to countries like Grenada, Barbados and Suriname. Her contacts with the last-named country are of particular interest given its New River claims and insistence that it alone will fund the proposed Corentyne bridge.
Then, as Mr Bissember has pointed out, she had what in her words was, “a historic meeting” with President Trump. We would be naïve if on this side of the Cuyuni we believed she did not bring up the matter of our western border with him, stressing the old canard that Venezuela had been defrauded by the shenanigans of the British empire, and suggesting a new approach post-ICJ to the border matter.
One cannot discount too that her officials at least will have been doing the rounds of the foreign embassies in Caracas promoting her nation’s false story.
And it seems from what Gómez has written that he has been travelling periodically around the country including “to almost all its universities” lecturing on his fabrications under the rubric ‘Guayana Esequiba: Historical Litigation and Reclamation in Justice’. His presentations, he said, generated “immense interest.”
And what has Guyana been doing in relation to defending its case? Nothing in particular that anyone knows about apart from waiting for the ICJ to issue a ruling. What does the ordinary Guyanese, unlike the ordinary Venezuelan it seems, know of the matter? Could the average tolerably educated citizen of this land give any reasonably informed account about our western border to a curious foreigner? And are we working in the international sphere to ensure that the diplomats with whom we have contact both here and in all capitals where we have representation are apprised of our rights?
One doesn’t know what will happen in Venezuela now Ms Machado has returned, but we cannot lull ourselves into a state of complacency in the belief that the Venezuelans will give up their claim following a Hague decision. They are already casting around for other avenues to pursue the matter, and Georgetown should take note.
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