Negotiating with a superpower

Jul 10, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – “Let me be very clear, this was no walk in the park, our partners are sitting here, negotiating with ExxonMobil is like negotiating with a superpower” (KN July 3). The speaker was President Ali addressing a gathering of Cabinet ministers, business people, and oil executives, and which was brightened by the presence of foreign diplomats. “A superpower” he said, getting that part right in properly identifying Guyana’s oil nemesis. Because it has become clearer and clearer that our young, struggling leader struggles with matters at these heights, and needs a helping hand, we give him a pass. We also extend a much-needed assist in the ways of the real world, the very big people at the top, like Exxon that he most accurately labelled “a superpower”.

ExxonMobil is, indeed, an oil “superpower”, an American one. It is a projection and expression of American power, without a single gunboat in Guyana’s waters, one supersonic fighter aircraft from its vaunted fleet flying over Guyana’s skies. ExxonMobil is American imperialism and, in many subtle ways, American colonialism in action in the age-old manner that both operate, and with which older Guyanese are familiar, given their former over-a-century-long British experience. When ExxonMobil sits across the table to listen contemptuously, if it does any listening at all, it is not the only powerful presence in a conference room of woefully mismatched negotiators. There is always, and Guyanese should be wise enough from bitter experience to recognise by now, the invisible and inaudible, but always incomparable presence of the United States Government in the shadow of its resident chief diplomat. As a reminder, it was why a figure as officially towering as the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, could have winged his way here, to give us a boost during our stormy, dispute-ravaged elections of 2020. Secretary Pompeo was not on a mercy mission to charity case Guyana in the noble interests of democracy, and the rest of such American style marketing. The man was dispatched from the White House with oil featuring highly on his mind.

To give both precedent and context, former President George Bush had offered to intervene on behalf of ExxonMobil with Russia’s Vladimir Putin when the American company encountered troubles there. It was disdainfully disregarded. The point is twofold: first, ExxonMobil is a superpower in its own right, at least in its own head; and second, the company knows that it has a guarantee of national and presidential backing when the fight gets a shade sticky. It is an unbeatable combination that our own President Ali and his people should have studied, and put their arms around, as to what they are up against with ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil has the skills, the resources, and it has the resolve and the reserve of the American Government when push comes to shove. And don’t forget where one ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, ended up.

But, having recognised the superpower status of ExxonMobil at the negotiation table, we recommend to Guyana’s President that he and his people look back at recent history and reacquaint themselves on how one small, peasant society fought to a standstill, and stood up to, another superpower and the mighty armada of tools at its disposal. North Vietnam is a name that was daily on the lips of the PPP of before, now vanished. It is appreciated that the North Vietnamese had Red China and the old USSR in its corner, but it’s likely that they would not have capitulated without the most gruelling resistance. It is why the likes of Xuan Thuy and Le Duc Tho stood up the American superpower, and generals like Harriman and Kissinger, in the boardroom battlefield of the Paris peace talks.

Nothing was off-limits in the discussions for the North Vietnamese, including the shape of the conference table. President Ali should remember that with this oil superpower. Though he doesn’t have Russia or China on his side, he has nuclear options via delaying production, frustrating pending approvals, and unmuzzling the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to compel superpower ExxonMobil to its senses. We are no superpower, but we can be super smart in the nuanced ways that we whittle away at ExxonMobil’s potency, grind down its stubbornness.

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