It’s an old show tune that came out in 1946 right after WWII – and while it was just a playful banter between the sharpshooters Annie Oakley and Frank Butler, it did seem to summarise the just-launched Cold War rivalry between the US and USSR – “Anything you can do, I can do better.” While the two then-aspiring superpowers had asserted that the line applied to their prowess,
countries across the globe exploited their competition and played them off against each other to extract the most benefits for themselves!! If the US and the West could build the Volta Dam to generate electricity in Ghana…hey!! then the USSR would do the same for Egypt with the Aswan Dam!!
Anyhow, with the USSR having faded away after 1989, the US was left as the lone superpower standing. But evidently, the logic of the state-system that evolved over the last 400 years seemingly dictates that such a circumstance inevitably would be challenged by one upstart or another!! Think Athens and Sparta, Rome and Greece, and then England and Germany!! So now we have the US and China glaring at each other across the continents and seas – ready to draw guns like the cowboys of Annie Oakley vintage!! What’s of interest to your Eyewitness is knowing the history of international relations, the US built up China into the economic behemoth it’s become today!!
And with China’s historic conviction that it’s the “Middle Kingdom” that straddles and pivots the world, who’s surprised that the Chinese have parlayed their economic power into political, social, and now even cultural power!! Unlike the older empires, they haven’t resorted to conquering other countries, or cowing them into fiefdoms, but, using that economic power, have put together their “Belt and Road Initiative”, which controls other countries in an embrace of loans and grants, using the greed of some rulers – who think there are things in this world that are free – to lure them under the Dragon’s Wings!!
So, here you have China giving Guyana – barely an insignificant speck a decade ago, but now flush with oil, and taking the lead in the 15-member Caricom Caribbean bloc – the full court press. What’s the US to do?? Well, Secretary of State Blinken just invited Pres Ali, VP Jagdeo, and the top of their cabinet up to Washington to tell them, “Anything China can do, we can do better!!” They started out with a US Ex-Im $2 billion credit facility – which can be used to finance Guyanese purchases of American goods.
The US VP’s homily on “promoting inclusive democracy, economic development, and security for all Guyanese” was the moral line to justify the economic and strategic imperatives!!
…there’s always another
The Opposition elements at home and abroad were all hot and sweaty, labelling the President’s visit to Washington as a “Summons” – so they’d be “dressed-down” by the Biden Administration. Now, who’s gonna pretend that big powers with smaller countries in their “sphere of influence” don’t try to tell the latter what to do? Don’t we see the US trying to convince not just the European countries, but the rest of the world, to take their side on the Ukraine War against Russia?
But the Americans now use the carrot more than the stick. On the same day that Blinken met Pres Ali and team, for instance, he also met the President and Prime Minister of Kosovo. They’d helped Kosovo become independent after the vicious civil war following the breakup of Yugoslavia. And Kosovo hadn’t forgotten – as the President reminded Blinken when they met, they were the first to impose sanctions on Russia following the US request.
They were invited to Washington to discuss joining the EU!!
…the new bank can also do
The African Guyanese-owned New Hayven Merchant Bank – just licensed by the Bank of Guyana – should settle one source of tension: the claim that African Guyanese are discriminated against by banks in getting loans.
