From Where I Stand: Re-Imagining Autonomy Begins at the Bottom

Jan 26, 2026 Features / Columnists, News

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By Janelle A. N. Persaud

(Kaieteur News) – When Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke about the fragility of the global order at the World Economic Forum recently, he cracked something open that many of us have long known, but rarely hear articulated so plainly by those in power.

His argument was simple, almost unsettlingly so: systems survive not because they are just or inevitable, but because people accept the illusion that there is no alternative. Small actors, in particular, learn to behave as though they have no choice, until someone proves otherwise.

Carney used the analogy of a shopkeeper who keeps up a sign he no longer believes in because everyone else does. The illusion holds until one person takes the sign down. That single act doesn’t immediately collapse the system, but it cracks and it reveals that compliance, not inevitability, was doing most of the work.

He was explicit in identifying that elusion. For decades, he noted, countries prospered under what was called the rules-based international order. They joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. In return, they could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

But, as Carney acknowledged, this story was only partially true. The strongest actors exempted themselves when convenient. Trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. International law applied with varying rigour depending on who was accused and who was harmed. The fiction endured not because it was accurate, but because it was useful. American hegemony, in particular, provided enough stability; open sea lanes, a functioning financial system, collective security to make participation feel worthwhile.

And so, as Carney put it, countries “placed the sign in the window.” They participated in the rituals and largely avoided calling out the gap between rhetoric and reality. That was the bargain. But, he warned, that bargain no longer works. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

And then he said something even more striking: that many countries are now realising they must build greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, finance, and supply chains. His reasoning was blunt. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

Contextually, this is a lesson in foreign policy. However, the longer I sat with it, the clearer it became that it is just as much a domestic one.

Guyana’s recent response to events in Venezuela makes that tension visible. Faced with a volatile neighbour and a long-standing border controversy, Guyana has leaned toward alignment with the United States, framing its position in the language of democracy, stability, and the rule of law. Given our vulnerability, that posture is understandable.

Protection matters. Ideologically, Guyana historically has stood against imperialist postures, sometimes even paradoxically called out foreign intervention into our own domestic affairs while still receiving aid.  What is striking, however, is not the choice itself, but how narrow the range of acceptable choices appears to be. Guyana, like many other small states, behaves as though it has no leverage at all and I am convinced that is largely because countries like ours have been trained to believe that survival requires deference. The same pattern can be seen across the region. Small states internalise constraints long before a statement is ever drafted.

And yet, that assumption is beginning to be tested. Across parts of Africa, and within groupings such as BRICS, countries are cautiously pushing back against inherited arrangements, experimenting with alternative partnerships and asserting greater control over resources, currency, and policy space. The results are uneven, sometimes messy, but the signal is clear: deference is not the only survival strategy available to small or historically subordinated states. This is where Carney’s point truly lands. Autonomy doesn’t suggest bravado and confrontation. Autonomy in this case, is having enough internal strength; economic, institutional, civic; to act deliberately rather than reflexively. And that strength is constructed.

In Guyana’s case, that construction is uneven. In some respects, we already hold several of the cards Carney named.

We are energy-rich, we possess critical minerals and we have agricultural potential that many countries can only imagine. However, possession is half the job. Of course, oil does not automatically translate into energy independence if it is not converted into a self-sufficient energy system. Food security is not achieved when imports continue to rise and our tastes increasingly shift toward what is foreign rather than what we grow and food inflation is through the roof. Minerals do not build resilience if they are extracted without strengthening domestic value chains. And while finance and supply chains are often discussed, there is still significant work to be done to ensure they serve national resilience rather than deepen dependence.

These are still only one side of the autonomy equation. The other side is cultural and civic and it is here that the work becomes harder to name, and easier to avoid. From where I stand, autonomy is not only about what a country has. It is about what its people believe is possible. I have been writing a lot about re-imagination and revolutionary, outside of the box thinking. Someone asked, “what does that look like?” And ‘How do we begin to re-imagine?”

I will always return to education. I was genuinely saddened to learn that we no longer sing national songs in schools. Not because they were a silver bullet for patriotism -they weren’t- but because repetition matters. They quietly kept the idea of country present. When we removed them, we did not replace them with anything equally grounding. That vacuum was filled instead by pop culture, algorithms, and distraction. None of these things are inherently bad. But left unchecked, they shape us into consumers rather than citizens.

How can you love a thing you do not know?

This question sits at the heart of the work I have been doing through the Before Us project. As I spend time listening to elders, documenting memory, and tracing how our communities have changed, one thing is painfully clear: many of us were never taught who we are in any meaningful way. We inherited fragments of history, stripped of context, resistance, and imagination. What we did not inherit was a deep sense of ownership over the country we live in. A people who do not know their story will struggle to imagine their future. And a society that has not been taught to see itself as capable will always defer to stronger states, louder cultures, and inherited systems; even when alternatives exist.

Re-imagining, then, is an unlearning project. It requires us to consciously undo the ways we were socialised into obedience, gratitude, and smallness, and to replace them with civic confidence, historical clarity, and a sense of responsibility for shaping what comes next.  It is for this reason that I believe Guyana needs a deliberate civic and historical re-education project to complement the more visible efforts underway to strengthen autonomy in energy, food, minerals, finance, and supply chains. This means teaching our history in schools with depth and honesty and restoring civic education that helps young people understand how the state works, what citizenship demands, and what power looks like beyond elections. It also means grounding children in who they are and where they come from, so that autonomy is not something we reach for in moments of crisis, but something we grow into over time. Without this internal work, external autonomy remains fragile; built on resources, but unsupported by people prepared to defend, shape, and sustain it. And we will continue to behave as though we have no leverage, even when real leverage exists.

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• Autonomy, Janelle Persaud, Mark Carney, World Economic Forum

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