As we attempt to forge a national unity to counter the Man on Horseback on our Essequibo border, we should be reminded that, as a much smaller nation than Venezuela by almost all criteria, we need to deploy a strategy that checkmates those advantages. And that raises the question as to the available options in such a situation. There is, first of all, the very bleak advice of the great power Athens to the minnow state Melos, as recounted by Thucydides, the “realist” Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War: “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
So, does this mean that we must cave in to Maduro’s bullyism? During the Peloponnesian War, Melos simply wanted to be neutral in the struggle between Athens and the other great power, Sparta, and this opens up the facticity that International Relations inevitably involves other powers that can influence the power equation. In our situation vis-a-vis Venezuela, our world now has over 200 states of varying sizes trying to protect their own interests, as has been the case since the Westphalian state system was launched in 1648. This circumstance offers us some other options in devising strategies we may deploy to protect our interests, other than knuckling under.
There is, first of all, the United Nations; to which all states belong, and which is supposed to mediate relations between them in the spirit of multilateralism. But while that seemingly idealistic effort after WWII, when over 50 million persons were killed, began with great fanfare, we have discovered that the Spartan aphorism remains quite relevant. There is the General Assembly, involving all members; but which has to defer to the Security Council, where the five victorious members of WWII have veto powers over the Security Council’s recommendations.
We note for instance that, last week, 187 nations voted for the 31st time for the US to drop its sixty-one-year-old sanction against Cuba. That vote will get nowhere. We should note, also, the gradual diminution in effectiveness of the other multilateral institutions, like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) etc. This means that while we must continue to utilise the UN system, as we have done by taking the Venezuelan Border controversy to the ICJ, ultimately, we will have to win some powerful friends in the state system. The small state of Israel’s ability to count on the support of the still strongest state, US, is the key element in their strategy to not only survive, but prevail up to now against nominally more powerful adversaries.
This is the neo-realist strategy coming out of the Cold War, which focuses on the orientations and actions of the more powerful players in the state system in pursuit of their interests, which jockey to either become hegemonic or attain some sort of balance of power.
As such, we should start by accepting that, for us to be noticed, much less protected by one of these larger powers, we must orient our policies with one of them. No matter how much, like Melos, we attempt to be “neutral”, at best we will be seen as “running with the hares and hunting with the hounds” by one or the other big power that attempts to influence the global state system.
This is our predicament in the present strained relations between the present world hegemon, the US, and its challenger, China. We should note that China is cozying up to Venezuela’s overtures, even though the latter is threatening not only us, but implicitly CNOOC’s 25% interest in the Stabroek Block.
In such a world, of great relevance to us is another neorealist approach that stresses a strategy of alliance formation – either “balancing or bandwagoning”. In the former, one aligns with other states to counter the power of a hegemon – the approach pushed by an apparently reasonable China against the U.S. In its just-released world manifesto, China stresses its desire not to dominate any other country. In bandwagoning, a small state forms an alliance with the strongest power it considers will best protect its interests. We should not kid ourselves that Caricom, or the Commonwealth, or the UN can protect us against a revanchist Venezuela. It is up to us to decide which power has the ability to protect us, and then make ourselves important enough for them to do so.
