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Soriek  5mo ago (text post)   845 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 29

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Venezuela

Venezuela held a referendum last Friday on whether or not to claim sovereignty over the Essequibo region of Guyana. Essequibo is mineral rich, and the exclusive economic zone contains quite a bit of oil, which Guyana has been busily contracting off to multinationals to Venezuela’s frustration.

Venezuela has always considered Essequibo as its own because the region was within its boundaries during the Spanish colonial period, and it has long disputed the border decided by international arbitrators in 1899 when Guyana was still a British colony.

That boundary was decided by arbitrators from Britain, Russia and the United States. The US represented Venezuela on the panel in part because the Venezuelan government had broken off diplomatic relations with Britain.

Venezuelan officials contend that Americans and Europeans conspired to cheat their country out of the land and argue that a 1966 agreement to resolve the dispute effectively nullified the original arbitration.

For reference, this is an area about the size of Greece (as Guardian helpfully points out) and equivalent to straight up two thirds of the territory of Guyana. Claiming the region amounts to essentially promising to invade and conquer most of the nation, so the Guyanese are understandably a little upset that the referendum has been approved. The linked article kind of suggests the >97% vote itself was fraudulent, or at least that observers didn’t see the kind of long lines and busy polling stations that the reported 10.5 million votes would have suggested. Ironically, this seems like the least interesting question to me; the anti-Maduro opposition also recognizes Essequibo as rightful VZL clay so it seems to be an idea with fairly popular support. The real question is: what happens next?

“Furthermore, Venezuelan military officials announced that Venezuela is taking concrete measures to build an airstrip to serve as a ‘logistical support point for the integral development of the Essequibo,’” she said.

The 61,600-square-mile (159,500 sq km) territory borders Brazil, whose defence ministry said earlier this week it has “intensified its defence actions” and boosted its military presence in the region as a result of the dispute.

Maduro is at least acting like he's serious:

Maduro said he would “immediately” proceed “to grant operating licenses for the exploration and exploitation of oil, gas and mines in the entire area of our Essequibo.” He also ordered the creation of local subsidiaries of Venezuelan public companies, including oil giant PDVSA and mining conglomerate Corporación Venezolana de Guayana....

In addition to the announcement regarding the exploitation of resources in Essequibo, Maduro announced Tuesday the creation of a new Comprehensive Defense Operational Zone, Zodi in Spanish, for the disputed strip, similar to the special military commands that conduct operations in different regions of the country.

But is Venezuela really about to invade Guyana? I would guess no, at least not while they have other issues and priorities they’re also focusing on (like becoming less of a regional or international pariah).

Meanwhile, can they even physically act on this? Guyana’s long term strategy in case of Venezuelan invasion has to be as un-invadable as possible, so a long time ago they designated the area on the border as a national park and left it extremely wild and overgrown. This makes traditional overland invasion difficult, so a hypothetical invasion could even require movement through Brazil, which is why Brazil itself is fortifying its own defenses. Lula has restored relations with Maduro, but he isn’t going to aid Venezuela in a hostile overland annexation of a long-time Brazilian ally by force.

So there probably isn’t a ton of will or means to act on this referendum. Most likely this is a way for Maduro to boost support in advance of the election.

And what about that election? In theory America’s lifting of the sanctions are contingent upon Venezuela lifting its ban on opposition leader Maria Machado from running in the election by the end of November. Well, it’s December now and things still look uncertain:

Opposition candidates barred from public office in Venezuela will be able to appear before the country's top tribunal, which will rule on their bans, the country's government and opposition said in a joint statement late on Thursday.

The announcement comes on the day of a United States deadline for the government of President Nicolas Maduro to take steps to remove the bans or risk the renewal of recently relaxed sanctions.

This is vague, but enough of a bone thrown that America isn’t going to reinstate sanctions right away, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. On the other hand, the top government prosecutor has suddenly accused several opposition of figures, so this is all somewhat two steps forward, three steps back. Ironically they are accused of trying to undermine the referendum on Guyana, which the opposition supported, and which is a largely amusing accusation given that the near 100% favorability results were quite likely fixed by the government anyway.

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