Securing Guyana

The phrase “geography is destiny” suggests that a person’s, city’s, or nation’s physical location, climate, terrain, and natural resources largely shape their history, economy, culture, and future success. While there is no question that geography indeed shapes a country’s choices, the President Irfaan Ali Administration is demonstrating that it need not dictate its destiny. For us, the challenge has always been to protect an extensive but underpopulated territory of 83,000 square miles, with limited resources, while finding opportunities beyond the constraints of size. Recent developments suggest a Government increasingly determined to widen those opportunities.
President Ali’s recently-inked enhanced defence partnership with the United States, discussions on broader military cooperation with Brazil, and the reported expansion of the Guyana-led Global Biodiversity Alliance to more than 140 partners deserve to be considered together. They represent different avenues towards greater security, influence and national development.
The American declaration provides for defence expertise, training, combined exercises and improved monitoring of our airspace. The Brazilian discussions concern expanded training, officer development, information sharing and border security. Neither public announcement establishes an automatic military guarantee, but both offer practical means of strengthening the Guyana Defence Force.
With Venezuela refusing to accept the ICJ’s jurisdiction conferred by the Geneva Agreement to settle the controversy they initiated sixty-four years ago and continuing to claim our territory, such cooperation is consequential. We cannot secure our borders by matching them soldier for soldier – but we can improve surveillance, prepare our forces and cultivate relationships that increase the diplomatic costs of intimidation or aggression and give pause to Venezuela’s revanchism.
Brazil adds an indispensable regional dimension since it shares an immediate interest in stability along our southern frontier, where illegal mining, trafficking and criminal networks also threaten national authority. Cooperation on these matters was already advancing through established military exchanges before the latest US declaration. When Maduro had embarked on his adventurism of annexation of Essequibo a few years ago, Brazil had moved troops into their Roraima state to foreclose an invasion through that route into Region Nine.
These partnerships should give Georgetown greater confidence and more options, but they also require judgement. Washington has placed its cooperation within a wider hemispheric agenda that includes opposition to military influence from outside the region, and we must understand those expectations while preserving the freedom to maintain constructive relations with China and other partners.
The growth of the Global Biodiversity Alliance adds another important dimension to this diplomacy since the alliance now has more than 140 partners worldwide. Its forthcoming Georgetown conference seeks agreement on an approach to valuing and protecting biodiversity, with the ambition of carrying that work into international processes. This, however, is a coalition of partners and should not be confused with an alliance of 140 sovereign states.
Here, we are helping to shape an international agenda since our forests and biodiversity give us a substantial interest in ensuring that conservation attracts financing and supports development. Bringing Governments, communities, scientists, and investors into that conversation creates opportunities for influence that military cooperation alone cannot provide.
There is also a practical connection between these initiatives because protecting remote territory helps safeguard forests, rivers and communities from destructive illegal activity. Effective environmental stewardship, in turn, strengthens the credibility on which our biodiversity diplomacy depends.
Petroleum has undoubtedly increased the attention paid to our country, and the Government is right to use that opening to build relationships whose value can endure beyond the immediate oil boom. But international prominence must produce measurable benefits such as better security, stronger institutions, credible conservation finance and improved livelihoods. While our environmental standing will depend on rigorous safeguards, meaningful Indigenous participation and transparent results, our defence partnerships must similarly deliver trained personnel, reliable equipment and greater national capability.
President Ali deserves kudos for pursuing this broader engagement that combines the protection of our sovereignty with the ability to contribute ideas and leadership abroad. Our growing presence should leave us better able both to defend our interests and to help shape the decisions that affect our future.