The future shape of Guyana’s foreign policy

Jul 11, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – When I was at the University of Toronto, one of the widely recommended articles on foreign policy by the Department of International Relation was “The Big Influence of Small Allies” by Robert Keohane (Spring, 1971).
Keohane argued that in the vortex of a relentless Cold War, small states can benefit from their gargantuan (my word) big brother by playing a game of cat and mouse. If they pretend to be independent, big brother prevents that direction by offering more goodies.
Zaire in Africa, Guyana in the Caribbean and Yugoslavia next to the USSR were some of the countries that played that game astutely in the seventies. With the rise of American unipolarity due to the collapse of the USSR and communism in Eastern Europe, small states were literally devastated.
The most conspicuous victim of unipolarity was Cuba. Here in the CARICOM Region, Grenada, seen by the Americans as of geostrategic and geopolitical value to the extent that they invaded the island in October 1993, was left “in puris naturalibis” (Latin for stark naked) as the Americans lost interest in its small allies.
The triumph of the West after the disintegration of the USSR brought about severe economic hardship for Third World friends of the West. The WTO replaced GATT and globalisation meant the West no longer paid special prices for Third World agriculture. Third World economies collapsed. The Cold War generosity of the West by was replaced by South American drug lords.
When global communism died, Francis Fukuyama, basing his theory on Hegelian dialectics, promulgated the “end of history,’ the title of his magnum opus. The book became an overnight success. It argued that there is no dialectical process that will take life beyond liberal capitalist democracy thus history has ended.
But while International Relation experts were singing praise to Fukuyama, scholars in philosophy rejected such a naive approach to the philosophy of Hegel. The philosophers argued that history does not end the way Fukuyama thinks it will.
They were right. There is no triumph of liberal democratic values. Liberal democracy in the 21st century lost ground in India under Modi; Brazil under Bolsonaro; the USA under Trump with Turkey, Hungary and Poland, the Philippines not far away. Then came the bombshell the West and Fukuyama couldn’t see – a sharply rising resentment of the British mind against its EU friends. The world now is in uncertain times because Brexit does not auger well for international relations.
Small States are now seeing an economic advantage that can be wrested from big brother once more. The Cold War died in 1989. But several Cold Wars have been born in the 21st century. 1- China and the US are behaving like in the days of USSR versus USA. 2- Germany and France see an unsettling alliance being formed between Russia and China and want to make overtures to Russia.
3- Brexit will see a geopolitical/geostrategic rivalry between the UK and its former EU allies. 4- Turkey, a geostrategic ally of the West is going in directions that will see it reaching out to Third World countries. In these four scenarios outlined above, we are back to 1971 when Keohane wrote his seminal piece.
There is wide room for small states to do what Keohane described them as doing in his 1971 article. When it comes to Guyana, its maneuverable space will not be as large as other CARICOM nations and Third World countries. The US, Canada, UK, EU and the OAS were the crucial factor in Guyana defeating attempts to rig the March 2020 general election. These countries were relentless in their support for democracy during the five months of the rigging.
Had it not been for Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, the US, Canada, Barbados, Trinidad and Suriname we would now be facing a deluge of fleeing Guyanese. It has not been made public, but the APNU+AFC were not prepared to concede defeat. Mr. Pompeo spoke to President Granger in words that were absolutely no-nonsense. The rest is now history
It is difficult for Guyana to manoeuvre between these Cold Wars because the friendship with the US is a close one. How Guyana can seek to benefit from the China-US rivalry, the West’s rivalry with China and Russia and walk tightly between the nascent rivalry between the UK and the EU will not be easy.
But still the lessons to be learnt are in Keohane’s article. The Third World and Guyana because of their underdeveloped economies need to wrest as much generosity as they can from very wealthy developed countries that are caught in new Cold Wars and want the Third World on their side. History is now repeating itself.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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