Desperation and recklessness when walls close in

Jan 25, 2019 Editorial

The reports from every area are grim and unrelenting. And when bad news proliferates, leaders are known to strike out in reckless desperation, if only to find a way to ease the pressure and distract; and to galvanize the dwindling band of loyalists. This is the increasingly visible tightening vice that clamps on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. That could be ominous for little Guyana, with its alluring, irresistible oil voluptuousness. A few examples from history should enlighten.
First, the Japanese were locked out of the rich oilfields and mineral wealth of Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, and Asian holdings of the British Empire. Its oxygen and lifeblood drained. This prompted its calculating leaders with their own colonial calculations, to lash out in the reckless gamble called Pearl Harbor, from which it could not emerge whole or triumphant.
Bushido code, warrior ethos, cult of the divine emperor, all duly accounted for and highly respected, were not enough. It could be said, with the hindsight of 20/20 vision, that the holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki possessed a certain inevitability about them. Closer to the 21st century, there was Richard Nixon, a man backed into many a dark corner and saddled with his own darker side, responding through his escalations and forays into Cambodia, and then the debacle that became Watergate.
Moving forward, there was Bill Clinton and his Tomahawk missiles unleashed at some supposedly menacing pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. That was highlighted as a desperate ploy to distract from his mounting domestic pressures over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. There is some consistency of leadership failure in these.
From the above random smattering of leaders and attendant circumstances, it is undeniable that serious misjudgments occur when leaders feel threatened by thickening thunderheads of dissent; or that they are losing control; or that they can turn the tide by taking the offensive.
It is but a short step for such misjudgments to deteriorate into the misleading.
From a Guyanese perspective, those Norwegian ships engaged in seismic mapping, and since interrupted, were one aspect of rash, provocative misjudgments on the part of a besieged neighbouring leader, which were then further extended by misleading postures about location from that same source. Now the noose around the political jefe, Señor Maduro’s, governance existence continues to tighten inexorably.
There is this continuum of intense big power pressure that signals an unmistakable commitment by the northerners to pull out all the stops in a swarming, full court press to unnerve him first, strip him of assets second, and last, cripple and render him a sitting duck. Stronger men and wiser leaders have reacted poorly and dangerously in situations involving lesser degrees of squeezes, as history has testified. There is this ominous convergence of developments that demands vigilance on the part of Guyana, and zeal in mustering its own allies and sensible reliance on its relationships, as the unanticipated could come into play. To begin with there are those sanctions, comprehensive and maiming; it seems that they have been there forever. The savage irony is that this well-endowed country is reduced to virtual beggary, and more and more a pariah.
Recently, there is this ever-growing cascade of catastrophes from one vicinity after another. In no particular order, elections results are not recognized; assumption of presidential reins is roundly denounced; the opposition leader is singled out in powerful capitals as the national chief; military officers have reportedly revolted; and the British hold tightly to significant gold deposits.
As the walls encircle, the roof is caving in at the same time, and the floor is threatening to give way. Taken together, this is more than enough to drive any leader off the deep end. That could be perilous for Guyana. As pointed out, leadership insecurities have led to the gamble of costly foreign adventures, which are designed to distract from domestic calamities. The Maduro encirclement poses problems for tiny Guyana, especially with its confirmed, but disputed oil riches.

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