October 31, 2023
I think Nicolas Maduro has the balls to actually attack Guyanese interest in to the Essequibo region. What may empower him more is the attention the world, particularly the US, is paying to the war in the Ukraine and even more so the war now in Israel.
US President Joe Biden is clearly preoccupied with other things, even before we talk about the conflicts around the world. He has an election upcoming next year, he has an economic problem and added to that his son, Hunter Biden, has his butt in a sling and bringing shame and disgrace to the household.
These are the ingredients that caused the aforementioned conflicts to happen in the first place. Now that we know the US is not prepared to be a world power, all Venezuela has to do is bomb one oil tanker and shoot a few Guyanese military personnel and we have a problem on our hands in this peaceful Caribbean.
The question would be is: Would the US respond for Guyana? I am not sure. The US is not responding to the crisis in Haiti, and they are partly to blame for the mess in Haiti. They have not been responding to the issues in Central America either. We have a president in El Salvador in a full state of martial law trying to clean up his streets, breaking human rights as he goes along, but the US has not as much lifted a finger to nudge Nayib Bukele in another direction. (Bukele is doing a great job in El Salvador, by the way)
Now that we see what we are faced with in the region, we must take a different route for regional security in the face of a waning USA, it seems. At this time, within the next 24 months, US support for any heavy lifting in the region cannot reasonably be counted on. There must be contingencies. Because an attack on Guyana is an attack on us all.
Guyana, where the head of CARICOM is seated, attacked and brought to its knees would be an insult of the gravest kind.