Venezuela's Enhanced Border-related Brinkmanship and Focused Guyanese Action

Nand C. Bardouille

Manager of The Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean in the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies (St. Augustine Campus), Trinidad and Tobago

_{24 March 2025   |  #25.03 |    The views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and may not reflect those of UNU-CRIS.}

In the latest sign of strong bilateral relations between the United States and Guyana, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to travel to this Anglophone South American country. Guyana is one of three countries anchoring his official visit to the Caribbean — scheduled to unfold during the week of March 24th.     

In the works since last month, Secretary Rubio's reported visit to the United States' third border includes Jamaica. America's top diplomat will meet with several leaders of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), as well as with this bloc's Chair. The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, currently serves in that capacity.   

Secretary Rubio then travels on to Guyana and Suriname — the southern Caribbean's emergent petrostates.

In Guyana, Secretary Rubio and Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali will hold their first-ever in-person meeting. It will take the form of a wide-ranging discussion, marking the start of a new era of U.S.-Guyana relations.

Border Games

Importantly, the expectation is that this engagement will send a clear message to Venezuela — which is playing a high-risk, border-related game with Guyana. Concerns about Guyana's sovereignty and territorial integrity will likely take centre stage in these talks, then, presenting Washington with an opportunity to reaffirm its unwavering support of and commitment to Guyana's statehood.

That Caracas has, once again, recently run afoul of Washington also factors into the timing of the Secretary's visit to Guyana. It takes place at a time when Washington is tightening the screws on Caracas, echoing the Venezuela-targeted "maximum pressure strategy" of Donald Trump's first term as U.S. president.    

Yet mistrust of Venezuelan intentions vis-à-vis the Guyana-Venezuela border dispute runs deep, as Caracas continues to take steps that fly in the face of international law and diplomatic norms.   

In its bid to foment a border crisis with its easterly neighbour, Venezuela continues to up the ante. In the wake of a serious border-related provocation it instigated earlier this month, Caracas dubbed President Ali the 'Caribbean's Zelenskyy'. 

The wider backdrop: The Essequibo subnational region is the centrepiece of Guyana-Venezuela relations, constituting the epicentre of the long-running border dispute between these two countries. This dispute contextualises major hydrocarbon considerations, centring on Venezuela having the largest proved oil reserves in the world and Guyana (now primed to develop offshore gas) having become a "key contributor to global crude oil supply growth." In 2015, ExxonMobil announced a significant oil find off the Essequibo coast. This find and its subsequent development, helmed by U.S. capital, have propelled Guyana into the upper echelons of the world's petrostates — impacting strategic and tactical calculations both in Caracas and Georgetown. Notably, at Georgetown's initiative, the border dispute is currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Among the cards left for Georgetown to play, this one is crucially important.       

What Gives?

Suffice to say, increasingly acrimonious relations between these two South American neighbours are now the norm. More broadly, flexing its military muscles repeatedly, Venezuela's advantages in military force are raising the (geo)political temperature. In such a scenario, and with increasing frequency, Caracas is engaging in pronounced sabre-rattling in a bid to get its way. These efforts suggest a change in Venezuelan strategy.

This is a state of affairs that combines Venezuela's traditionally strong focus on hard power — Guyana being in the crosshairs — with the rhetorical dimension of Venezuelan soft power. (Another well-known element of Venezuelan soft power is petro-diplomacy, which is synonymous with the late President Hugo Chávez's foreign policy.) At least three pertinent points stem from this insight.

First, insofar as this state behaviour is constitutive of border breaching acts and/or firing off unfounded accusations of Guyanese wrongdoing, it is a broader  and protracted Venezuelan test of Guyanese resolve. In the last decade, Venezuela has brought increased pressure to bear on Guyana. Caracas' tactics qua stances are geared toward sewing a mix of fear, doubt and confusion for this small state, which is a founding member of CARICOM.   

Essentially, Venezuela's intention is to gauge Guyana's mettle relative to a metaphorical Venezuelan boot on the neck of its geographically contiguous easterly neighbour. This Venezuelan posture seeks to put one over on stakeholder communities in respect of its Essequibo-centred territorial claim.

Successive Guyanese governments have made plain that they would have none of it. Yet Venezuela seems more central than ever to Guyanese sovereignty, effectively bringing to the fore the salience of dominant narrative perceptions in influence-bearing diplomatic outcomes. The President Ali as the 'Caribbean's Zelenskyy' diplomatic campaign is a case in point.

Second, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's regime likely drew up plans for this campaign by leaning into soft power thinking, which some scholars underscore is "the postmodern variant of power over opinion." Instructively, such scholars contend that soft power "is increasingly important in the global information age, and that in an environment with multiple transnational linkages the loss of soft power can be costly for hard power."      

This newly-minted thread of propaganda conveys diplomatic messages in real-time and in a highly coordinated manner — including across social media platforms — apparently receiving widespread attention. This could give Caracas an edge in what amounts to a narrative war with Georgetown that is playing out in the public domain, targeting various audiences.

Such digital technology-enabled communication primarily targets foreign audiences in certain jurisdictions — spanning foreign policy mandarins, others in officialdom and a variety of constituents in the general public. Message delivery in English is a dead giveaway that this is the case. Indeed, most of the CARICOM regional grouping's membership comprises Anglophone states.

Third, on the face of it, this new propagandistic messaging appears to be channelling the Kremlin's Russo-Ukrainian War talking points — which distort reality. The Kremlin would have us believe that, as the victim of three-plus years of Russia's full-scale war of aggression, Ukraine bears responsibility for the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.   

Indeed, with the disputed Essequibo in its rhetorical sights, Caracas' propaganda has flipped the script in relation to renewed tension between Guyana and Venezuela.  

But my recently published article (titled 'President Volodymyr Zelenskyy comes to Guyana — as a Moniker') on this matter argues Washington and Kyiv's souring relations have, albeit wrongheadedly, become fodder for Venezuela's show of force directed at its Guyanese territorial claims. It analyses the widely reported March 1st Venezuelan naval incursion into Guyana and the political fallout, tallying why Caracas' propaganda in respect of President Ali as the purported 'Caribbean Zelenskyy' does not hold up to scrutiny.  

What also comes through in this analysis is that, seemingly emboldened by some key dynamics of the Ukraine War, Caracas not only looks to but has moved further in the direction of Guyana-focused hybrid warfare. 

In today's wars, whether in the 'Gray Zone' (i.e. below the threshold of armed conflict) or in situations of kinetic operations, information warfare in digital spaces is par for the course.

From the March 1st naval incursion and its rhetorical aftermath, the Guyanese national security, defence and foreign policy apparatuses will likely have learned that Venezuela is doubling down on leveraging the so-called disinformation space (or, colloquially put, 'fake news') in its border-related feud with Guyana. 

Eye On The Ball

The inescapable conclusion is that this bet on disinformation and propaganda as weapons of war requires a systematic, institutional Guyanese response.

In order to marshal support from a cross-section of the international community in relation to the high-stakes border dispute, Guyana's political directorate and foreign policy establishment have come to rely on conventional diplomacy. Moreover, it aligns with the country's ICJ-related legal manoeuvring. However, harnessing the state-to-state and state-to-international organization channels and processes therein can't win the associated narrative wars alone.

After all, reaching an understanding about the turn of events — at any given moment — hinges on a number of factors; none more important than who frames (or otherwise drives) what narrative, when and among whom.

The digitalisation of diplomacy and the emergence of so-called "complex webs of diplomacy" have transformed the conduct and management of international relations, offering lessons for how to capitalise on public diplomacy. It is a modern diplomacy-anchored rhetorical imperative, which may well shape the future of the said wars.

The subject of renewed attention since the March 1st naval incursion, Essequibo-centric public diplomacy is an immediate imperative for Georgetown, which can do more to consolidate a broad-based narrative drive and seize opportunities to maximize its effect. Stepping into such an endeavour, taking a whole-of-government approach, promises to further the interests of Guyana.  

Most notably, this would be a clear signal of Guyana's resolve. To Guyanese leaders, such resolve is especially important when facing Caracas in precarious moments.       

In sum, considering the palpable change in tone from Venezuela following its most recent Essequibo-based provocation, there is reason for Guyana to scale-up integrative public diplomacy vis-à-vis its foreign policy. Now, more than ever, a key factor on which foreign policy success in the digital age most depends is to get out ahead of the informational  competition and hold it in check. In short, a shift in attention toward a fit-for-purpose soft power strategy is needed. Georgetown can ill afford to fall short in that regard, given the openings this would create for Caracas' rhetorical and coercive logics of statehood.    

Guyana's partners, including the United States, can play a part in supporting a comprehensive Guyanese response.