Another Conflict In Which The Left Has No Interest: Venezuela/Guyana

December 05, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian  34 Comments

The response by Israel to the October atrocities of Hamas seems to have roused the international Left into a furious frenzy. Widespread demonstrations supporting the Gazans’ slaughter continue on a daily basis in major cities around the world and, especially, on university campuses. The demonstrations feature thinly- or not-so-thinly-veiled calls for elimination of Israel as a state, and for violence against Jewish people. The demonstrators call the Jews every horrible thing they can think of, the very worst in their vocabulary being “settler colonialists.”

Meanwhile, other comparable conflicts go on around the world without even a hint of interest from the same international Left. In this post on October 11 I discussed the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, where at that very moment the Azeris were in the process of completely expelling a large community of Armenians from their historical homeland in a section of the Caucasus region called Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenians have apparently continuously occupied the area since well before the time of Christ, and converted to Christianity as a nation in 301 A.D. Encyclopedia Britannica dates the arrival of the Azeris (Muslims) from Central Asia around the 9th to 11th centuries A.D. Doesn’t that make the Armenians “indigenous” and the Azeris “settler colonialists”? You will be hard pressed to find a handful of news articles covering this situation, let alone even one tiny demonstration on a college campus.

And now consider the conflict between Venezuela and Guyana. Are you even aware that such a conflict is going on? This dispute is instigated by one of the most thuggish losers on the international stage, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, against his peaceful neighbors the Guyanese. Does the Leftist outrage meter register even the slightest vibration? Not that I can find. But then Maduro is a “socialist” in good standing, while Guyana is in the process of making the huge error of getting rich via capitalism.

To be a little fair, the Venezuela/Guyana dispute has roots that go back deep into colonial history. Here is a brief history from a site called Dialogo Americas. The gist is that Britain set boundaries in the region, including the Venezuela/Guyana border, back in the mid-19th century. Venezuela did not agree to the boundaries, and laid claim to a region of the Guyana it calls Essequibo — which is actually the majority of Guyana by land area. The matter went to an arbitration panel back in 1899, and the panel ruled in favor of Guyana. Venezuela did not officially accept that result, but the matter was largely dormant from then on. In 1966 the two countries entered into a Geneva Agreement by which they committed to either resolve any further dispute peacefully or, failing that “they shall refer the decision as to the means of settlement to an appropriate international organ upon which they both agree or, failing agreement on this point, to the secretary-general of the United Nations.”

But in recent months, suddenly Venezuela has started rattling sabres and threatening military action to press its claim to Essequibo. To ramp up pressure, Maduro scheduled a referendum supposedly to ask the Venezuelan people if they support the takeover of Essequibo. The referendum was held Sunday December 4. Here is a report from the Miami Herald. According to the Herald, Maduro claims that 98% of the voters favored invading Guyana. But the Herald goes on to say that “many question referendum results.” This was a typical example of what passes for “voting” in Venezuela. As an example, from the Herald:

[T]he reported participation did not match the empty voting stations seen during the day and was more than twice as high as that of independent exit polls.

So what is really going on here? Maduro is almost five years into a six year term, and he has completely run Venezuela into the ground since taking office initially in 2013. While there is no meaningful opinion polling from Venezuela, his popularity is thought to be deep in the toilet. Meanwhile, his next-door neighbor Guyana is turning into an incredible success story on the capitalist model. Something must be done!

Let’s look at just a few statistics. Venezuela could be the worst story of economic failure for any country in the world over the past couple of decades. (Maybe North Korea is worse, but there are no usable numbers at all from that prison state.). With the caveat that all economic statistics coming out of Venezuela must be viewed with skepticism, here are some from Venezuela. From Statista.com, Venezuela’s GDP per capita has fallen from a peak of $12,688 in 2011 to $3,474 in 2023. The same statista.com website gives Venezuela’s 2023 inflation rate as 359%, which to be fair is a substantial improvement from the 65,374% registered in 2018. Meanwhile, production of Venezuela’s key product, petroleum, has plunged from over 3 million barrels per day in the early 2000s, to under 800,000 barrels per day today, as corruption and incompetence by Maduro cronies have destroyed productivity in the state-owned oil monopoly. Here is a chart of Venezuela’s oil production since 1998 from Trading Economics:

In Guyana it is, shall we say, the opposite. Here is a piece from CNBC on September 26, 2023, headline “This is the world’s fastest-growing economy, and it could grow an ‘explosive’ 100%.” Excerpt:

The world’s fastest-growing economy may be on track to grow by more than 100% by 2028, largely fueled by profits from its oil production and export sector, according to one analysis. Guyana, a country in South America with a population of about 800,000 people, is projected to grow 38% by the end of the year — an “extremely fast” pace, according to recent gross domestic product forecasts by the International Monetary Fund.

So how has that happened? Easy: Guyana leased some offshore territory for exploration by an international group of private oil companies led by Exxon. And sure enough they made huge discoveries, that are just now ramping up into major production:

BMI [a unit of Fitch] sees oil production in Guyana to jump from around 390,000 barrels per day this year to over a million barrels per day by 2027 as new offshore fields in the country’s Stabroek Block are opened by a consortium led by Exxon.

To its credit, the UN appears at least for now to be standing by Guyana on this one. When Venezuela started its recent campaign, Guyana referred the matter to the UN. According to PBS here, last Friday, the UN’s International Court of Justice issued a ruling “order[ing] Venezuela not to take any action that would alter Guyana’s control over a disputed territory.” But as yet the ruling is only a preliminary one, pending a full trial later, possibly years from now.

Meanwhile, don’t expect any activity from the leftist outrage machine. That outrage is reserved for the likes of the United States and Israel who defend themselves and stand up for Western values.