In the history of quarrels about borders, the Guyana situation appears quite unusual in that one state is trying to overthrow an arbitral award that has stood for over a century. And it is attempting to do so based upon its dissatisfaction with what it was awarded by an arbitration process that it insisted upon and freely agreed to, and upon a flimsy posthumous claim!
In a most interesting recent study, Krista E Wiegand argued that enduring territorial controversies such as ours are particularly problematic because they cause continual bilateral, regional, and international security problems. Even when armed conflict does not occur, the ‘negative peace’ of an enduring dispute is quite distinct from the ‘positive peace’ between states that have no disputes. On the contrary, peace between former border adversaries provides many benefits for the parties, for example helping with ‘the emergence of democratic regimes and increased trade’ (Enduring Territorial Disputes: Strategies of Bargaining, Coercive Diplomacy
