President Ali’s preplanned ‘victory’

Dec 25, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

‘Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him.’ So said the formidable Cardinal Armand Richelieu, the chief minister of France from 1624 to 1642. This is one of my favourite quotations and hopefully it will provide some solace to President Irfaan Ali given the torrent of negative opinions that have followed the Argyle Declaration.

By the caption I am suggesting that the president was not defeated but was forced by the logic of his context to accommodate himself to his opponent’s preplanned reality. In other words, as planned by Miraflores, President Ali was forced to extricate President Nicolas Maduro from the corner that – on my reading – he self-interestedly backed himself into.  In this sense, the outcome was a win for Maduro’s planners but not a loss for Ali, who merely did the required and inevitable.

Two weeks ago, I argued that Maduro’s historical context and current requirements make it unlikely that his intention is to invade Guyana. Venezuelans have been weaned on the belief that Essequibo is theirs and Maduro is using this situation to bolster his plunging popular support in time for the coming 2024 elections. But to be successful he will have to appear to be making good on his commitments; hence his threat to annex Essequibo, warning off investors, etc.  However, once one accepts this possibility, it follows that careful thought and planning went into this process and the perception of political recklessness on the part of the Venezuelan authorities some critics assume is baseless. Even if all we have been fussing about was not carefully choreographed, the planners would certainly have designed a way out of their self-imposed cul-de-sac.

Even if the government of Guyana suspected that Maduro was bluffing, there is no way that the government of a small, weak, and ethnically divided country like Guyana could have, while making diplomatic, military, and other arrangements, not in the interest of peace follow one of the primary maxims of negotiations and international relations: once it would not be too costly, seek to find and give your opponent a way out. The planners at Miraflores also knew this and the Argyle declaration fits the bill.

The declaration has not placed Guyana at any serious disadvantage: its case is still intact before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Notwithstanding Guyana claiming that the matter before the court is a ‘controversy’, the court itself in its response to Guyana’s complaint about Venezuela’s proposed referendum stated: ‘[P]ending a final decision in the case, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela shall refrain from taking any action which would modify the situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute, whereby the Cooperative Republic of Guyana administers and exercises control over that area.’

Indeed, the court took jurisdiction over both what Guyana would like to understand as a controversy – ‘the validity of the 1899 Award’ – and ‘the definitive settlement of the land boundary dispute between Guyana and Venezuela.’ Also, one of the judges of the court, in a minority comment, said that Guyana had been disadvantaged by the final phrase in the above sentence that speaks of ‘control over’ rather than ‘sovereignty.’

If so, it appears to me that there are substantial concerns as to the precise implications of these formulations as the case proceeds. I accept that, perchance it occurs, the matter cannot be left at the stage where the court simply declares that the 1899 Award is invalid, for in such a hiatus, as Thucydides observed ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’. If it has not already been done, these are substantive matters that require a level of elucidation.

By way of the Argyle Declaration the Venezuelan authorities have in the most public of manner once again committed themselves to the peaceful settlement of the border controversy/dispute, and this is good. But one must not overlook that what it means by peace appears to include the decades-long harassment and seizure of Guyana’s property. Guyana must take nothing for granted and must develop an inclusive, comprehensive national response that assumes the possible use of force.

In terms of the latter, recently Dr. Andre Brandli, (SN:09/12/2023) called upon Guyana to consider joining the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio pact). If it is possible, I endorse this advice. In 2015, during an incursion of Venezuelan forces into the Cuyuni River I made a similar suggestion (‘Should Guyana join the Rio Pact?’ SN: 30/09/2015).

The Rio Pact. which included all the countries of the Americas except Canada and the colonies of the British and other colonial empires, was established in 1947. Since then, of the ex- British colonies, Trinidad & Tobago joined upon independence in 1967 and the Bahamas joined in 1982. Venezuela had a territorial dispute with Trinidad & Tobago and its then prime minister, Dr. Eric Williams, was very suspicious of its ‘imperialist’ ambitions in the region.

According to the Rio Pact’s founding treaty, ‘The High Contracting Parties agree that an armed attack by any State against an American State shall be considered as an attack against all the American States and, consequently, each one of the said Contracting Parties undertakes to assist in meeting the attack in the exercise of the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.   … The provisions of this Article shall be applied in case of any armed attack which takes place within the region … or within the territory of an American State’ (Article 3 of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (Rio Pact).

Article 9 states, ‘In addition to other acts which the Organ of Consultation may characterize as aggression, the following shall be considered as such:    a. Unprovoked armed attack by a State against the territory, the people, or the land, sea or air forces of another State; b. Invasion, by the armed forces of a State, of the territory of an American State, through the trespassing of boundaries demarcated in accordance with a treaty, judicial decision, or arbitral award, or, in the absence of frontiers thus demarcated, invasion affecting a region which is under the effective jurisdiction of another State.’

The Pact was invoked many times during the 1950s and 1960s, including to unanimously support the United States’ naval blockade during the Cuban missile crisis. Argentina invoked the treaty during the Malvinas/Falklands war with Britain, but the United States decided that Argentina was the aggressor and supported Britain.  After 9/11 in 2001, the US invoked the treaty, but only four Central American countries contributed troops while two countries (Colombia and Panama) became members of the US inspired ‘coalition of the willing’.

Sincerely,

Dr. Henry Jeffrey

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• Argyle Declaration, Cardinal Armand Richelieu, Dr Henry Jeffrey, Dr. Andre Brandli, President Nicolás Maduro

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