Samuel Braithwaite | Bridgetown agreements and the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy

In recent weeks there have been rumours of an impending Venezuelan invasion of Guyana’s largest county, Essequibo. The spectre of a Venezuelan military invasion was a quick headline grabber in a world where wars in the Ukraine and Gaza have occupied the news to the point where the death and destruction in those theatres of war have become normalised. A new conflict, a new unfolding story, was therefore greeted with great interest and concern.

The more I listened, read, and reflected on the issue, it became clear to me that there is little chance of a military invasion. I arrived at this view a few weeks before Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, was able to secure a meeting between presidents Irfaan Ali of Guyana and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. Indeed, if Maduro were seriously intent on invading Guyana, he was unlikely to have agreed to the Argyle Meeting (St. Vincent and the Grenadines on December 14, 2023). The noises of war emanating from Caracas were really the utterances of a president desperate to remain in office, a president desperate to raise his domestic profile ahead of the 2024 presidential elections.

BRIDGETOWN MEETING

Various reasons have been given as to why Venezuela is unlikely to invade Guyana, surprisingly, however, I have seen no discussion on the Bridgetown meeting (Barbados, October 17, 2023) between the opposition and government of Venezuela as it relates to the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy. This meeting occurred about two months before the Argyle Meeting, and was an important geo-political moment especially for Venezuela, but also for Guyana.

At the Bridgetown Meeting, representatives of the government and opposition of Venezuela signed the partial agreement on the promotion of political rights and electoral guarantees for all. The parties to the agreement have agreed to the holding of elections in the second half of 2024; the invitation of technical international observer missions – the Carter Center was explicitly mentioned; the updating of the electoral registry; and audits of the Venezuelan electoral system among other measures. The agreement was mediated by Norway with support from the governments of Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Colombia, France, Mexico, Russia, the European Union, the Netherlands, and the United States.

The Bridgetown meeting was birthed out of negotiations between representatives of presidents Biden and Maduro, where the sanctions placed on Venezuela were relaxed; this includes Venezuelan assets which have been frozen in the United States and Europe and the reopening of oil and gas production by US interests. Given these developments, which are likely to bring significant relief to an ailing Venezuelan economy, does it make sense for Maduro to invade Guyana, thereby threatening the economic activities of foreign companies, including ExxonMobil?

At the Bridgetown meeting, representatives of the government and opposition of Venezuela also signed the partial agreement for the protection of the vital interests of the nation. This agreement required all parties to abide by the rules of international law as they relate to resolving the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy. While the first agreement indirectly promotes peace in the region, the second agreement directly speaks to a peaceful resolution of the controversy, to breach same would have direct economic repercussions for the Maduro government. I imagine this would have been made clear in the “back channels” between Caracas and Washington.

ARGYLE MEETING AND HMS TRENT

The Argyle Meeting was met with a mixture of support and derision in Guyana and the wider Anglophone Caribbean. The opposition leader of Guyana, Aubrey Norton, was invited by President Irfaan Ali to attend the Argyle Meeting; he quite rightly declined the invitation. While I have no issue with the lack of an agenda ahead of the meeting, I do not see what role the opposition leader could have played. Instead, the shadow minister for foreign affairs should have represented the opposition parties at the meeting.

There is also the issue of St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Petrocaribe debt (US$70 million) being written off in 2022 by Venezuela and the suggestion that the Argyle Meeting was a concomitant quid pro quo. It seems that the 50-per-cent Petrocaribe debt “haircut” (US $1.5 billion) granted by Venezuela to Jamaica in 2015, in addition to similar relief granted to Antigua & Barbuda and Dominica, has been forgotten by those who seek to discredit and diminish the work of Gonsalves. I am happy that both Ralph Gonsalves and Mia Mottley are friends of Guyana, and they also happen to have friends in Venezuela. It would have been remiss of me to expect some grand outcome; Ali and Maduro meeting and talking was enough.

The United Kingdom has given orders for the patrol vessel HMS Trent to visit Guyana after the Christmas holidays. The HMS Trent, a patrol vessel, was already in the Caribbean region with the primary assignment of combating drug smuggling and was reassigned to Guyana as a show of “defence diplomacy” also called “military diplomacy”. A 2014 article by Gregory Winger ( The Velvet Gauntlet: A Theory of Defense Diplomacy) describes “defence diplomacy” as “the nonviolent use of military forces through activities like officer exchanges and ship visits to further a country’s international agenda”. While the timing of the arrival of the HMS Trent is noteworthy it is not an escalation. Notwithstanding the Argyle Declaration, it is reasonable to surmise that the United Kingdom was not going to send a lone warship to Guyana if there were ever a real military threat.

Dr Samuel Braithwaite is a lecturer in the Department of Economics, at The University of the West Indies, Mona. The views in this article are not necessarily the views of the faculty or the Department of Economics, UWI, Mona. Send feedback to braithwaite.samuel@gmail.com.