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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has dramatically raised the stakes in his country’s border dispute with Guyana, ordering state-owned companies to exploit disputed oil and mineral deposits and redrawing official maps after claiming an “overwhelming” mandate in a referendum last Sunday.
Maduro’s bellicose speeches have alarmed Guyana and raised fears that Venezuela could use force to seize the remote Essequibo area, which accounts for two-thirds of its neighbor’s territory, as well as a major offshore oil field owned by U.S. oil company ExxonMobil.
Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali said late Tuesday his country’s defense forces were “on high alert” and vowed to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council. “Venezuela has clearly declared itself an outlaw nation,” he added.
A conflict between two oil-rich countries in the Americas would be a nightmare for Joe Biden’s administration, which has eased economic sanctions against Venezuela in the hope that Maduro could be persuaded to hold free and fair elections next year and improve global ones contribute to oil supplies.
But most experts believe a military conflict is unlikely in the near future. They say that revolutionary socialist Maduro’s main motive for running a patriotic referendum campaign was to distract voters from his own unpopularity and apparent support for the main opposition candidate in next year’s presidential election, María Corina Machado.
“It’s probably a bluff in my opinion,” said Evan Ellis, a professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College. “It is probably an initiative by Maduro to distract from the presidential election and US pressure for democratic reforms.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (center) “is an expert in sleight of hand and grand gestures that mean nothing,” said one observer © Pedro Rances Mattey/AFP/Getty ImagesOfficials in Caracas demanded a majority of more than 95 percent on five referendum questions on Essequibo, including the creation of a new Venezuelan state encompassing the remote area.
However, independent observers questioned the official turnout of 10.5 million – which, if true, would exceed the number who voted for Maduro’s popular predecessor Hugo Chávez in the 2012 presidential election – and noted that many polling stations only were sparsely attended.
Venezuela has long challenged an international arbitration tribunal’s 1899 decision to award Essequibo, an area the size of Greece, to then-colonial British Guiana. It was Exxon’s 2015 discovery and subsequent exploitation of one of the world’s largest recent oil discoveries off the coast of Essequibo that reignited Caracas’ interest.
Exxon is now building production from the offshore Stabroek block, which the Venezuelan government has used to portray Guyana as a US puppet.
The US State Department reacted cautiously to Sunday’s vote, calling on Venezuela and Guyana to “continue to pursue a peaceful resolution of their dispute.” “This will not be settled by a referendum,” it continued.
Brazil, which borders Venezuela and Guyana, has sent additional troops to the border area and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he hoped “common sense will prevail on both sides” of the dispute.
Venezuela this year announced plans to build a military airstrip, school and training range near the border with Essequibo. A senior government official posted a video on social media after the vote showing a group of indigenous people allegedly lowering a Guyanese flag in Essequibo and raising a Venezuelan flag in its place.
Some people in Guyana fear that their country of 800,000 people may not be able to withstand an invasion by its much larger neighbor. “People are [very] “They’re scared, they’re very worried,” said Mike Singh, a telecommunications investor who runs a Georgetown-based consulting firm.
“Guyana has nothing to defend itself with except bluster like we hear from the Vice President [Bharrat] Jagdeo and the people know it’s just nonsense. He is incapable of doing anything.”
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Nonetheless, Nicholas Watson, Latin America managing director at consultancy Teneo, believes the Venezuelan regime’s hawkish stance toward Essequibo “reflects domestic political considerations rather than signaling the immediacy or likelihood of military action.”
“We don’t know what it really means or what they’re actually going to do,” he said. “Maduro is an expert in sleight of hand, in grand gestures that mean nothing.”
Any military conflict would heavily favor Venezuela, whose Russian-equipped forces vastly outnumber and outgun Guyana’s tiny forces. “Venezuela has Sukhoi fighter jets, MiG attack helicopters, decent naval equipment, including equipment from Iran, and Russian tanks,” Ellis said.
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But Maduro’s forces are in poor shape to occupy the difficult Essequibo jungle area, Ellis added. Sending Venezuelan forces into battle would be fraught with risks for Maduro, who has relied heavily on military support to stay in power and has rewarded senior officers with highly lucrative businesses in drug smuggling and illegal gold mining, they say US officials.
Phil Gunson, senior Andes analyst at the International Crisis Group in Caracas, said: “Maduro is only in power thanks to the military high command, and if they think he is losing it, things could get very serious for him.”
Gunson added: “Maduro claims a broad mandate to recover the Essequibo, and there is no clear path to achieve this.”
As tensions rise, some see parallels to the early 1980s, when an unpopular Argentine military government launched an invasion to resolve a long-standing territorial claim. The unsuccessful war for the Falkland Islands, or Malvinas as Latin America calls them, ultimately proved to be the junta’s undoing. Gunson believes Venezuela is unlikely to go to war over Essequibo now.
“The more likely scenario is that at some point Maduro will see fit to inflame tensions on the border and perhaps provoke some skirmishes with the Guyanese military,” he said. “I don’t think it will lead to an all-out war, but the problem is that once it comes to an armed conflict. . . This can escalate very easily.”