In its issue of January 18, 2015, the Stabroek News published an article based on an interview with United States Chargé d’Affaires Bryan Hunt which dealt in the main with two issues that are on the front burner of relations between Georgetown and Washington. The first of these has to do with what the US perceives as an alarming proliferation of drug-related activity (and other forms of serious crime) in Guyana and the chronic lack of capacity of agencies – the police and the legal system, particularly – to keep those crimes in check and to secure an acceptable level of convictions through the courts.
With regard to the proliferation of narcotics, the most interesting revelation made by the US diplomat has to do with what he describes as the desire by “a number of South American narcotics organizations… to use Guyanese territory to further their shipments of largely cocaine to a variety of countries including the United States.” That, of course, is an eventuality which would place Guyana in the big leagues as far as drug-trafficking is concerned. What Mr Hunt – perhaps out of a sense of diplomatic sensitivity – did not say was the extent to which Washington believes the South American heavy hitters in the drugs trade may already be quite well-connected here in Guyana and the extent to which they may even have infiltrated those local agencies charged with helping to keep them at bay.
Of course, it did not take Mr Hunt’s intervention to shine a light on Guyana’s connection with the international drug trade. We have heard it all before. Other occurrences, including last year’s discovery of a submarine-type vessel apparently built here with external involvement for the purpose of exporting illegal drugs, have already pointed to Guyana’s tie-in with global drug-trafficking.
Mr Hunt’s remark about likely South American cartel interest in using Guyana to further their shipments to various countries, “including the United States,” points, of course, to Washington’s self-interest in this matter. What he is saying is that US concerns over Guyana’s role in the movement of drugs within and outside the hemisphere are not simply a matter of benevolence but one that is inextricably linked to its own national security. It is that, above all else, that accounts for the various pronouncements made over time by US diplomats here about Washing-ton’s preparedness to help Guyana create an infrastructure that can effectively counter the narcotics trade and its attendant evils.
Which, of course, brings us to the second substantive issue dealt with by Mr Hunt in his interview, that is, Washington’s preparedness to expend finances and human and technical resources to help upgrade those systems that have to do with raising local law-enforcement standards, including better protecting the country against the scourge of drugs and securing a higher level of convictions in drug-related cases and other cases that have to do with serious crime. Here, the US envoy alludes to the “the issue of getting successful convictions,” seemingly linking this particular weakness perhaps to prosecutorial deficiencies, though other critics have gone further, linking the problem to official corruption within the legal system itself.
In this context what Mr Hunt had to say is that it comes at a time when serious crimes, including drug-trafficking, persist and when – if one is to take the old axiom of the punishment fitting the crime seriously – some of the outcomes of narcotics-related cases, cannot be said to be serving as a deterrent. More worrying is the fact that, on the whole, issues of crime and punishment coincide with public discourse about rampant corruption on the part of individuals both within and without the law-enforcement system that might serve to facilitate the drugs trade.
All of these considerations, among others, have shaped US relations with Guyana and if Mr Hunt would have been constrained by the ‘rules’ of diplomacy to be measured in both the tone and content of what he had to say during the interview, we should make no mistake about the seriousness of what he was seeking to get across and the fact that what he had to say represents the way in which Guyana is perceived in the US State Department. As diplomatic language goes Mr Hunt could hardly have been more direct. Guyana’s link to the international narcotics trade poses a threat to US national security interests and that is the primary reason why Washington refuses to let the issue of working with the government and the various institutions to build capacity to fight the problem go away.
All of this is unfolding at a time when wider relations between Guyana and the US and Guyana and the United Kingdom, for that matter, as exemplified in recent exchanges between the resident diplomatic missions and senior government officials here in Guyana, have become progressively more sour, arising as they have out of official postures and pronouncements (by US and British envoys) that have galled the political administration. The flare-ups have had to do not so much with whether local feelings have been genuinely hurt or otherwise, but the decidedly indelicate and undiplomatic means that the government has used to convey its responses.
The fact of the matter is that neither the State Department (in Washington) nor the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (in London) are likely to lose any sleep over the tantrums thrown by the political administration here, since the noises about “sovereignty” and “self-determination” do not change the fact that in the final analysis development assistance to Guyana comes, in large measure, from the US and Britain, either bilaterally, or through the weight that they have with the international lending institutions. In other words, where the interests of the US (in this case) hinge on securing the collaboration/cooperation of the Government of Guyana we cannot hope to deter Washington by insulting or shouting down its Ambassador in Georgetown.
That is an unchanging reality of international relations and there is nothing that the caustic comments of the Cabinet Secretary can do to change that. Washington, whatever the theatrical departures from conventional diplomacy that unfold here, will continue to be preoccupied with the substantive issue, that is, the nexus between what happens here in Guyana and US national interests. That is precisely why Mr Hunt’s interview does not depart from some of the concerns which the US embassy here has been expressing for the longest while about events in Guyana.
No one is suggesting that small states like Guyana should allow themselves to be dictated to on every national issue by big powers though, as has already been mentioned, here and elsewhere, it has to be said that even in circumstances of considerable acrimony there are rules of engagement that apply. It may well be, as well, that our public officials are under the illusion that their public displays serve to persuade local and even external audiences that they are, in effect, standing up for Guyana. If that is the case they do no more than reflect a profound misunderstanding of the realities of relations between and among nations. Sovereign equality as a concept in the study of international relations, notwithstanding, in the real world, there is an undoubted pecking order among states, and the reality is that Washington and Georgetown occupy their very different places in that pecking order.
What has been noticeable about the recent acerbic comments thrown in the direction of US and British envoys by government officials here is that they appear to have lent confirmation to a long-held concern that the conduct of substantive diplomatic discourse between the Government of Guyana and the major foreign missions in Georgetown has been removed entirely from Takuba Lodge and placed in the President’s Office, thereby granting licence to Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon to create what is often unenlightened and offensive language with which to conduct diplomatic discourse. One might, of course, argue that it would be a diplomatic ‘no, no’ to deploy your Foreign Minister in a verbal fracas with a resident Head of Mission. On the other hand and in the broader context of US-Guyana relations trite and downright rude remarks directed at resident envoys – apart from providing a measure of comic relief – point to the fickleness with which the Government of Guyana frequently handles its relations with other countries, including those deemed to be our closest allies. A point has long been reached where our government comes to understand that such antics will get us nowhere.
To return briefly to one of the subjects of Mr Hunt’s interview, narco-trafficking, the reality is that the present drift of international relations point to a strong nexus between the sovereignty on which our officials pronounce so glibly and the various forms of support that we can secure from developed countries, both directly, and through the international organizations (including UN organizations) that they finance and support in various other ways. The recent bauxite ship that sailed through Guyana with almost 200 kilos of cocaine on board would almost certainly have been left untroubled but for the tip off which the government received from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODOC) an organization within which America holds considerable influence.
Mr Hunt’s interview, which comes six months after the tirade directed at the former US Ambassador, serves to put into perspective key elements that underpin the relationship between Washington and Georgetown and should help provide a rudder to guide bilateral relations between the two countries. Truth is that while Guyana is deemed to be a sovereign state under international law those who govern should be counselled by decidedly greater wisdom than is sometimes evidenced in the exercise of that sovereignty.
