Most of us breathed a sigh of relief, that we would be spared war, after the Argyle Declaration of Dec 14, especially since the first point declared, “Agreed that Guyana and Venezuela, directly or indirectly, will not threaten or use force against one another in any circumstances, including those consequential to any existing controversies between the two States.” This, however, is because we think of “war” in the traditional sense of two armies facing each other with their troops massed, and launching all the “force” – be it catapults or battering rams – they could amass against each other. The application of superior force by one side in his war of attrition would convince the other side to surrender, which was what power was all about: to make the other party bend to your will.
But after the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th century, the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz summarized his thoughts on the nature of war in a pithy and prophetic statement: “War is a simple continuation of politics by other means.” Power, of course, is the currency of politics and war. So, while WWI saw the end of wars of attrition, with fixed positions that had to be defended, one could discern other means that applied power on the enemy that was not confined to the classical use of “force” amassed through traditional sources of power – population, territory, colonial power etc. Alliances, technology and economic strengths became more important.
Twenty years later, when Germany used its Panzer tanks to wheel around the Maginot Line protecting Belgium in WWII, we saw a new war of mobility, that also involved civilian centres being attacked from the air and even with missiles fired from hundreds of miles away. The application of the force was changing, with technological advances intended to neutralize and overcome the strengths of the other side. But it was the Cold War that followed WWII that we witnessed the widening of the nature of force now including psychological warfare, economic warfare, guerrilla warfare, and informational warfare coming to the fore. As such, we experienced the PPP Government of 1961-1964 being removed without a war being declared by the US, but by that Government using clandestine means to change the Government.
Today, therefore, we have to understand war as being conducted not just as a confrontation between two armies, but encompassing all means — diplomatic, ideological, moral, economic (DIME) — designed to make an adversary submit to the will of the aggressor. And we arrive at the state of affairs between our nation and Venezuela. In 1962, that nation went before the United Nations and insisted that they would no longer accept the Arbitral Award of 1899 that delineated our boundary. They were using diplomacy to bend us to their will. It was an act of war, and remains so to this day.
In 1966, they used physical force to annex our half of Ankoko Island, which they retain to date; and subsequently, in 2012, they seized an Anadarco survey ship in a block off our Atlantic waters licensed to them. These are forceful acts of war, yet they were allowed to get away with it, and they became emboldened. They have used the ideological argument that we are tools of the “imperialist” USA, which appears to have convinced some of our “progressive” friends, even as Venezuela woos USA oil companies that would repatriate their profits to strengthen “imperialism”. After we participated in training with a British patrol boat, Venezuela raised the moral argument that the old “imperial” power was threatening it, and amassed one-quarter of its armed forces in response, with the clear intention of intimidating us.
On the economic front, Venezuela committed an act of war when they protested the then PNC Government’s 1970s attempt to construct the Upper Mazaruni HydroElectric Project that would have given us energy independence. Their present declaration of annexing our Essequibo and giving the companies we have licensed notice to leave are also acts of economic warfare.
If we are to remain a “zone of peace” as the Argyle Declaration proclaims, Venezuela must cease these acts of war.
