Dear Editor,
US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio was unequivocal in the end-of-visit press conference in Georgetown on Thursday. In response to a question from a reporter on a potential invasion of Guyana by Venezuela – similar to a question posed in my earlier article – the Secretary said a number of things about the possibility of an attack from our neighbour to the West. Among them were: after initially saying this would be a bad day, he corrected himself and said it would be a bad week for the regime, thereby giving context to the sustained response, over days, that the US would unleash in retaliation to any aggressive action taken. It should be noted that international law would require any such response of collective self-defence to be necessary and proportionate.
The Secretary was clear that there will be ‘consequences’ whether Guyana’s 83000 square miles, or ExxonMobil assets 100 miles offshore, were attacked; continuing, he said it would not end well for the regime in Caracas, it would be a ‘big mistake’ for them and the US has a big navy that could get to anywhere in the world. Secretary Rubio was also loud in his praise for the partnership between the US and Guyana.
In a reaction seen on Firstpost the next day, President Maduro took the defensive approach of attacking the messenger rather than the message, including name-calling and “smoke and mirrors” rhetoric. That response was however devoid of any jingoistic or sabre-rattling language to which he has on occasion been inclined to resort.
On Saturday 1 March, we were privy to the unauthorized communication between Venezuelan naval personnel and the captain of a FPSO operating on behalf of ExxonMobil off the Berbice coastline in our maritime space, wherein we exercise sovereign rights. Incredibly, it was as if the captain of the Venezuelan navy vessel was oblivious to the fact that the FPSO is located more than a hundred miles to the east of the maritime area off the Essequibo coast which Venezuela illegally claims. Correctly, the repeated response by the captain of the FPSO to the persistent questions from the Venezuelan naval vessel was, “Message received, no comment”.
Hours after that illegal incursion by the Venezuelan naval vessel into our EEZ, President Maduro declared that he would ‘deploy Bolivarian diplomacy’, apparently similarly oblivious that the said incursion cannot in any playbook qualify as an act of ‘diplomacy’. However, in light of his obfuscatory reaction to Secretary Rubio’s unequivocal declaration of intent on Thursday, it is tempting to draw a linkage between President Maduro’s earlier statement to return to diplomatic means of addressing this issue and this more recent deflection seen on Friday.
In the circumstances, as a first step along that path of returning to dialogue, and borrowing from that offshore exchange of four Saturdays ago, the question has to be asked of Caracas, “Was Secretary Rubio’s message received? Do you have any comment?”
Yours sincerely,
Neville J. Bissember
