Zone of peace

Dec 21, 2025 Editorial, News

Editorial

(Kaieteur News) – Zone of peace in the region has now seemingly joined the ranks of an extinct species. Those who were once taking what appeared to be firm positions for that same peace have since crumbled. Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali was in the thick of that kind of healthy talk. He is now caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, he did take a stand for the region to be a zone of peace, which was a position to be commended. On the other, the Guyana Government has just signed a Statement of Intent with the US for ‘expanded’ military exercise in Guyana’s waters. There’s a contradiction that cannot be denied, since zone of peace and expanded military drills or exercises are not the friendliest of neighbors. They coexist, if that is what it is, suspiciously and nervously.

President Ali had made his voice heard early about a zone of peace in this area. That noble call and vision has since been pushed to the edge of official considerations and releases, with only opposition or civil society voices echoing here and there. Though meaning well, the voices are weak, don’t reach far, and then lack the power to gain any traction, and from that a groundswell of energy. Circumstances considered; peace has seemingly fled in the face of the tightening stranglehold on Venezuela. Now the ultimate objective of the US is the ouster of neighboring dictator, Nicolas Maduro. Needless to say, the job would be incomplete, unless a US-friendly replacement for him is arranged in Caracas.

The stranglehold is unrelenting, with war materiel already lined up from as far away as Puerto Rico with a stopover in Santo Domingo, then with clearance to use facilities in Trinidad and Tobago. That is pressure to capitulate, an intensifying psychological drama, if not war, that captures the attention of the world, and frightens the people in this region. From the perspective of Washington, the latter is inevitable, an unavoidable byproduct of preparations for war, and actual war. The US is an old hand at war, while this region that includes Guyana has known mostly peace, which looks increasingly likely to be turned on its head, given the developments that are in the public domain.

The aerial campaign against so-called narco-boats and terrorists have had fitful pauses, only to resume in sporadic bursts with lethal effect, and to the dismay of a world that watches on largely silently, as standards and conventions are trampled upon by the US unilaterally. More recently, an oil tanker carrying about two million barrels of Venezuelan crude was seized by the US. To add a local touch to that seizure, the Skipper was allegedly falsely flagged (Guyana) when it was intercepted. It could very well have been so, but Guyanese are well-advised to recall the lessons of history, and the pretexts employed by the US in the past. There was Vietnam and the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, where Vietnamese guns fired on US ships. The US went to war in Iraq, after it had scared the daylights out of the world about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. In both instances, history has revealed that the US is not above manipulating circumstances to suit its objectives, i.e., war by any means necessary. Now out of the White House comes the next step in this formidable series of escalations, the buildup of tensions in this region. It is a ‘total and complete blockade’ of sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers. If nothing else, the US has been successful in identifying vulnerable spots in Maduro’s armor, then tearing them apart, piece by piece, with the end result sought being his departure.

Maduro has had his hands full from American pressure, so there has been some easing relative to his war of words against Guyana. There is that utility to US action directed against Venezuela. But it is doubtful that there is any easing up of anger and aggressive intentions against Guyana. In a time of the race to war, and disappearing Guyana Government postures about zone of peace, this country is precariously perched. The US is all over the place today. Where is Guyana when they leave?

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Editorial, Irfaan Ali, Nicolás Maduro, Zone of Peace

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