President Ali blazing a path on global leadership

Dear Editor
If you read any textbook on International Relations (IR), you will walk away with the impression that small states, and especially developing countries, cannot have any impact on world affairs. This bias is rampant in most scholarly approaches that explain the structure and workings of the International System. Guyana’s strong leadership under President Ali is proving this to be dead wrong.
IR is dominated by the realist school, which argues that the key factor in the International System is power. In this approach, states are focused on using their power to compete with other states. Since Great Powers have the most power, they are the ones that shape the rules of the game, and they can cause or prevent change in the global balance of power.
A related school that goes by the name neo-realism holds the view that it is not power per se that matters. Rather, it is the distribution of capabilities that counts. In this case, small states must only be concerned with basic survival through protection by a Great Power.
Classical liberals think that, while power is important, international institutions can play a vital role in helping to foster cooperation. The United Nations system is the most elaborate institutional expression of how cooperation might be structured and operationalised. In the economic realm, the IMF, World Bank and WTO have played key roles. In international security, the UN Security Council has the responsibility to look after world peace. In all of these arenas, small states are supposed to be only followers.
Notwithstanding the above, we are finding that small states can indeed have a voice. Guyana is playing a remarkably forceful role in the Americas and further afield, and this is due to strong leadership. This was demonstrated at the several high-level forums at the recently-concluded 78th United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York.
President Ali made a noticeable impact by illuminating the concerns of the developing world. He has been pressing key issues well before that on matters related to development financing, climate change, and regional security. He has been passionately advocating the Bridgetown Initiative, which is focused on liquidity support, debt sustainability, reform in the governance of IFIs; and, inter alia, a structured finance mechanism for the carbon sequestration services provided by states with tropical rainforests.
President Ali is quickly emerging as one of the leading voices in the world on food security. While in New York, he noted that Guyana will soon not only be self-sufficient in corn and soya, but that Guyana would extend that capacity for the rest of the Caribbean.
Earlier this year, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) named President Irfaan Ali the first recipient of the IICA Award for Contribution to Food Security and Sustainable Development.
And while he was in New York for the 78th UN General Assembly meeting, he was honoured by the African Leadership Organization for his global advocacy on behalf of the developing world. It is also worth noting that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken singled out Guyana as a key partner for Caribbean regional security, with special attention to Haiti.
While IR theory is biased towards the Great Powers, and leaves little room for small states like Guyana, our leadership is demonstrating that small states do have a significant role to play. President Ali is rapidly emerging as a powerful voice for the global poor and powerless. The world saw this clearly when the Guyanese President told two British journalists “we do not want your palace; what we want is the justice owed to us”. He had in mind reparations for the descendants of African enslaved peoples. Small countries, too, can lead!

Sincerely,
Dr Randolph Persaud