Guyana has become a washcloth for empire

Mar 08, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – There was a time when the voice of Georgetown carried the moral weight of the Non-Aligned Movement, when Cheddi Jagan could lecture John F. Kennedy on the sins of colonialism and Forbes Burnham could nationalise the bauxite and sugar industry without asking permission from the State Department.

That Guyana is now dead. In its place stands a supplicant state, a washcloth for American imperialism, so thoroughly wrung of its historic principles that it now issues foreign policy statements that read as if they were dictated through a speakerphone in the Oval Office.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation’s recent condemnation of Iranian retaliatory strikes—while maintaining a sepulchral silence on the American and Israeli bombing of Iran—represents not merely a diplomatic inconsistency but a moral bankruptcy so complete that it deserves its own chapter in the sad history of Caribbean sellouts.

Let us be precise about what international law actually provides, for the government seems to have misplaced its copy of the UN Charter. Article 51 is unambiguous: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs.” The International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua case affirmed that this right exists not only against attacks on a state’s territory but against military forces and installations directly involved in aggression, even when located abroad.

When American B-52s lift from bases in Gulf states, those states through complicity or incapacity placed their territory at the disposal of aggression. Iran’s strikes on those facilities were not the act of a rogue state but the exercise of a sovereign right recognised by customary international law.

Yet Guyana, which built its postwar foreign policy on the bedrock principle of non-intervention—a principle etched into the very charter of the Non-Aligned Movement—now parrots Washington’s talking points as if they were scripture. The Ministry issues statements condemning attacks by Tehran while averting its eyes from the wholesale destruction of Iranian sovereignty. It speaks against hostilities only when the victims are American bases, not when Iranian civilians, including school children, are dismembered by Israeli bombs.

The hypocrisy is staggering. And it does not stand alone.

This is the same government that quietly terminated the bilateral medical agreement with Cuba, bending the knee to Marco Rubio’s visa-threat diplomacy while pretending the decision was merely administrative. “We pay the doctors directly now,” the government explains, as if the mode of payment were the issue.

The issue is that Guyana—a nation that has benefited from Cuban generosity for decades, that sent its students to Havana when no one else would train them for free—has allowed itself to become an instrument of the very blockade it once condemned at the United Nations.

When President Ali stands on the sidelines of CARICOM meetings and declares that sending oil to Cuba is “not humanitarian aid,” one wonders what he imagines humanitarian aid to be. Perhaps he should ask the United States, which is now sending fuel to Cuba through “charities” while strangling the island with the other hand. The Americans understand the game perfectly: you tighten the siege with one fist while extending a crust of bread with the other and call it mercy. Guyana, once a voice for genuine solidarity, now provides the moral cover for this.

The tragedy is compounded by the absurdity of the government’s position on self-defense. If Iran’s strikes on American bases in the Gulf were illegitimate, then by what logic does Guyana remain silent when American and Israeli warheads rain down on Iran? If sovereignty is inviolable, why is Iranian sovereignty violable? The Ministry cannot answer because there is no answer—only the embarrassing reality that Guyana’s foreign policy is now appearing as if it is drafted in Washington and merely stamped in Georgetown.

CARICOM watches in bewilderment. Our sister Caribbean states, long accustomed to balancing Western pressure with Southern solidarity, see clearly what is happening: a nation with newly acquired oil wealth, with historic moral authority, with every reason to stand tall, has chosen instead to stoop. The progressive foreign policy for which Burnham and Jagan fought—different paths, same destination of genuine independence—has been traded for the temporary comfort of imperial favour.

Trump believes he can bully nations into submission. He may yet learn that the world no longer tolerates bullies. But the more immediate question for Guyana is whether it can tolerate itself.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has given its answer. The question is whether the Guyanese people will let that answer stand.

(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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• Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham, Georgetown, Peeping Tom, washcloth

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