A great deal of speculation preceded the visit of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to this country, some of it reflecting a tenor of considerable disquiet. Three things were immediately noted about it, the first being which nations he had selected for this distinction; the second being how close it was to the American presidential election; and the third being the fact that ExxonMobil had had major oil finds drilling in our waters. It didn’t take commentators long to observe that with one exception, the favoured nations, i.e. Colombia, Brazil, Guyana and Suriname, had borders contiguous with those of Venezuela, so that Caracas was almost certainly the focus of the visit.
This perception was reinforced by the fact that one of the critical states which President Donald Trump would need to win if he is hoping for a second term is Florida, with its large contingent of Cubans and Venezuelans who are implacably hostile to Mr Nicolás Maduro. The hypothesis was, therefore, that with the Venezuelan head of state as firmly rooted in Miraflores as ever, the White House needed some demonstration that effective action was being taken in order to persuade this constituency that a Republican president was the one most capable of evicting him. As for the ExxonMobil factor, that speaks for itself, since the universal assumption is that the US would want to protect its own companies, especially given that on one occasion the Venezuelan navy had intercepted one of the oil giant’s vessels.
While this is mostly about Venezuela, the nature of the conversation Mr Pompeo will have with Brazil and Colombia will not necessarily be the same as that with Guyana and Suriname. The context for all of this is drugs, and the categorization of Venezuela as a state under the control of those engaged in the drug trade. In March this year President Maduro and other members of his administration were charged with narco-terrorism by the US, and a poster was even issued by the DEA offering a reward of US$15 million for information leading to the Venezuelan head of state’s arrest. Washington’s charges aside, no rational person can deny that Venezuela exports narcotics on a huge scale from Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, and that the trade has corrupted high level officials.
A week later at the beginning of April President Trump announced that in order to combat illegal drugs in the Caribbean, the US would be “[d]eploying additional navy destroyers, combat ships, aircraft and helicopters, Coast Guard cutters and Air Force surveillance aircraft, doubling our capabilities in the region.” In pursuit of its objective Washington clearly wanted to have access to the territorial waters of Venezuela’s neighbours, and be able to patrol their EEZs with their cooperation so it would not appear as if it were operating unilaterally and in an imperial mode.
So now we know that the main purpose of the visit here was the signing of what is commonly referred to as a shiprider agreement, which would involve joint maritime and air patrols between the US and Guyana to interdict drugs. These, the public was informed, would begin as early as tomorrow. Permanent Secretary Audrey Waddell said that operations would not be carried out in Guyana’s waters unless permission had been granted by the Government of Guyana. Likewise, she said, overflight requests for law enforcement activities would be granted after reasonable notice and communication channels had been provided to the Guyanese authorities.
For his part President Irfaan Ali also told the media that the government had raised with Secretary Pompeo the matter of radar coverage of this country’s EEZ, which he described as “critical at this time.” In a more general sense he commented, “I think we welcome any help that would enhance our security … [and] would enhance our ability to protect our borders, and importantly, enhance our capability and ability to ensure that we go after criminal elements.”
Most Guyanese must be thinking how are joint patrols possible when Guyana has no aircraft capacity, and its Coast Guard is hardly better? In an official statement issued prior to Secretary Pompeo’s arrival, the US listed the ways in which it had been helping this country’s various maritime agencies and the GDF, and referred to “recent donations of [US]$200,000 in equipment and interceptor boat parts to strengthen Guyana’s ability to patrol its territorial waters.” That may be so, but no one is persuaded that a local Coast Guard vessel is the equivalent of a US cutter, let alone of a navy ship.
The answer is that the joint patrols are being instituted under the Shiprider agreement with this country dating back to 2001 when George W Bush was in the White House. What obtained under that agreement was the placement of local officials on board US vessels. As a matter of historical interest it might be mentioned that while various Caribbean territories had agreed to this in the 1990s, Guyana had originally held out against it for four years. The various signatory nations to the agreements also allowed the overflight of US aircraft in their airspace and the entry of US ships into their territorial waters.
The US Secretary of State dismissed suggestions that President Trump’s administration is using the agreement as a means to oust the Maduro government. On its own it certainly could not do so, which is not the same thing as to say that Washington does not harbour larger hopes that a range of approaches will not undermine the government in Caracas, one of which involves casting it as a narco-terrorist organisation. Undoubtedly from Guyana’s point of view the agreement does afford infinitely greater protection where our maritime space is concerned. In addition to the case of the ExxonMobil vessel mentioned earlier, there was the notorious incident in Guyana waters involving the interdiction of the Technik Perdana, an exploratory vessel which had been hired by the American company Anadarko, and was escorted to a port in Margarita by the Venezuelan navy.
And no Guyana government can forget that Venezuela issued Decree 1787 on May 16, 2015, which was later amended by Decree 1859. Under both those proclamations our neighbour to the west illegally claims almost all of this country’s maritime space, while under the first, it also took in the EEZs of various Caricom territories, including Barbados and Suriname, in addition to Colombia. Since the Americans presumably want to afford some cover to ExxonMobil’s operations, the current Shiprider agreement will give the Venezuelans pause for thought before they engage in aggressive acts in our waters.
President Ali has said that the agreement would not put the country at risk of Venezuelan aggression, which as mentioned above may be true, and that it would not have a negative impact on the border controversy case currently before the ICJ. In terms of its rationale it is an agreement related to drug interdiction that resuscitates the original – either amended or unamended − from 2001, and which was drafted with confronting the narcotics trade, not Venezuela, in mind. There can be little argument that today Guyana is a significant trans-shipment point for drugs.
Unsurprisingly Mr Pompeo had something to say about democracy in Venezuela – and Guyana it should be added, as well he might, considering the role he played in its restoration here. President Ali was suitably careful about how he expressed himself when addressing this issue: “We support and respect the need for free and fair elections in our hemisphere. With urgency, we believe the democratic values and principles should be respected in Venezuela as well,” he said. He was also commendably diplomatic when referencing the role of the Lima Group, of which Guyana is a member. He reiterated that this country remained committed to the principles guiding its involvement in the Group, especially its “concern about the ongoing and protracted humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.”
It might be noted that although a member of the Lima Group, Guyana has been cautious about how it has exercised its vote there. In January this year, for example, it joined other members in condemning the use of force to prevent Venezuelan deputies from accessing a National Assembly session, but in February it declined to join the majority in urging the Venezuelan military to support Mr Juan Guaidó.
The Shiprider agreement was not the only outcome of the Secretary of State’s visit. There was the announcement of the allocation of US$5 million to help Venezuelan refugees in Guyana, which would certainly take some pressure off limited Guyanese resources, as well as the signing of a Growth in the Americas Memorandum of Understanding. While exactly how this will work is not altogether clear yet, Mr Pompeo’s office said that Washington was committed to helping Guyana build an attractive investment climate with the right regulations and protections in place. It went on to say that the Memorandum sought “to draw more US private sector investment to build Guyana’s physical infrastructure, energy sector, and digital economy, and to do so transparently.”
However that works out, it is the Shiprider agreement which is the major product of this unexpected visit.
