The U.S. pressure on Venezuela may backfire on Guyana    

Mar 27, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- The world is full of unintended consequences, those sly little gremlins that slip into the machinery of statecraft and gum up the works just when we think we’ve got everything running smoothly. The latest example of this immutable law of human affairs is unfolding in the Caribbean, where the Trump administration’s tightening of the screws on Venezuela may, in the end, squeeze Guyana harder than anyone intended.

Recently, the U.S. revoked a license that allowed Chevron to export Venezuelan oil to American refineries—a small but telling turn of the economic vise. Chevron now has until the end of May to end the exports to the United States from Venezuela. Venezuela, despite its well-documented troubles, was, until recently, the third-largest supplier of crude to the United States.

Now, with this market abruptly closed, the already faltering Venezuelan economy will shudder anew. And when economies shudder, people flee. Where to? Guyana, of course—the small, English-speaking neighbor to the east. The problem for us is that we are already straining under the weight of tens of thousands of Venezuelan migrants who have crossed the border in search of work, food, and a reprieve from despair.

Guyana is no stranger to hardship itself. But its recent oil discoveries have lent it a precarious sort of optimism—a sense that prosperity, though uneven, might at last be within reach. Yet, prosperity, like a shy animal, is easily startled. The sudden arrival of more Venezuelans—desperate, jobless, and in need of shelter, medicine, and schooling for their children—threatens to overwhelm Guyana’s modest social services. Hospitals may wilt under the strain, schools may be overstretched and seriously challenged to cater for non-Spanish speaking persons, and the patience of locals, though considerable, is not infinite. There is already a backlash against certain occupations being pursued by some female migrants.

But the trouble does not stop there. The Trump administration is never one to leave well enough alone. It is now threatening to slap 25% tariffs on any country that buys Venezuelan oil. This measure is presumably aimed at China, which has been a steady customer of Caracas. China, of course, can afford to shrug off such penalties, but the real damage will be to Venezuela’s already crippled oil industry, which needs every dollar it can muster to keep the lights on. Without the means to revive production, the country’s economic death spiral will only accelerate.

And here we arrive at the most dangerous possibility of all: a cornered regime, its economy in tatters, its people in exodus, may well seek to distract from its failures by picking a fight with its neighbors. Guyana, with its vast, sparsely populated Essequibo region—a territory Venezuela has long claimed as its own—makes for an easy target. Just last year, Caracas revived its historical grievances over the area, staging a dubious referendum to assert its supposed rights. It is now threatening elections for this area on 25th May 2025, something that can only be achieved through a full-scale invasion. While that does not seem possible right now, should Venezuela’s rulers feel the walls closing in, they may decide that a little nationalist fervor is just the thing to rally the masses and divert attention from empty stomachs and empty treasuries.

The irony, of course, is that the very U.S. sanctions meant to weaken the Venezuelan government may end up destabilizing the region in ways that hurt Guyana far more than they hurt Caracas. It is a curious thing, this habit of powerful nations to apply pressure without quite calculating where the cracks will spread. One does not need to sympathize with the Venezuelan regime to see that starving it into submission may produce consequences far beyond what was bargained for.

Guyana, for its part, is doing what small nations do when caught in the crossfire of larger powers: it is trying to stay out of the way. But geography is merciless. The flood of migrants will continue so long as Venezuela’s crisis deepens, and the threat of territorial mischief will linger so long as Caracas finds it useful. The United States, in its zeal to punish a hostile government, may inadvertently punish a friendly one instead.

One wonders, as so often in these matters, whether there might not be a better way—some approach that considers not just the immediate target of policy but the wider ripples it creates. For now, though, the gremlins are loose in the machinery, and Guyana, innocent bystander that it is, may yet pay the price.

(The U.S. pressure on Venezuela may backfire on Guyana)   

(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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• Caribbean, Trump administration's, Venezuela, Venezuelan Migrants

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