Guyana is a sparsely populated South American country about the size of Idaho. That alone makes it seem irrelevant — but it has become a giant in the oil world in the past decade. Following Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez’s feud with Exxon, the American corporation found fertile soil in the tiny neighboring country. Exxon has poured tens of billions of dollars into Guyana since 2015.
As investments boomed, so did Venezuela’s interest in the land. The two countries have had a territorial dispute dating back to the colonial era. The Esequibo, as Venezuelans know it, accounts for more than two-thirds of Guyanese territory. Although long obscure in the national consciousness, Venezuela’s claim over the region has been reignited. President Nicolás Maduro’s controversial December 3 Esequibo referendum granted Venezuela’s government a mandate, albeit a contested one, to annex the area.
Maduro appears more resolute than ever. While there are many reasons why Venezuela’s autocratic leader chose this moment to revive a centuries-long dispute — the pursuit of natural resources, the desire for domestic legitimacy — there is another key catalyst: Biden’s perceived weakness.
In October, the Biden administration eased sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector following a “path to democracy” deal reached by the Venezuelan regime and the opposition. In short, after seven rounds of talks facilitated by the Norwegian government, Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the National Assembly and a long-time Nicolás Maduro ally, and opposition leader Gerardo Blyde reached an agreement on October 17. In it, both sides appeared to have accepted close to 80 percent of the action points on the agenda, paving the way (at least theoretically) for free and fair elections in the country.
Following this, Maduro independently unveiled a plan to release some political prisoners, add a few new faces to the electoral authority and allow for the return of legislators to the National Assembly. In return, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control lifted most sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector for six months.
The move was celebrated as a “breakthrough” rapprochement, yet for those following closely, analysts seemed overly optimistic — almost as if they had forgotten whom Biden was dealing with. Yes, a promise was made and the sanctions were temporarily lifted; an act of good faith that could be reversed if Maduro didn’t follow through. Still, the reality is that for all of the talk about diplomacy, the deal didn’t resolve the most serious barrier to fair presidential elections, which is the barring of the winner of the Venezuelan opposition’s presidential primary, Maria Corina Machado.
Less than two weeks after the sanctions were relieved, Maduro’s Supreme Court annulled the results of the opposition’s primary. This can be seen as mockery, but it was also a test. Maduro realized that he could offer breadcrumbs and get rewarded, so he reasonably took advantage of the appeasement. Who wouldn’t? Receiving around $1.4 billion in exchange for a vacuous no-strings-attached promise? That’s the type of bargain only Iran, which unsurprisingly is close with Maduro, knows about.
In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that “if the regime has in fact violated the agreement, then of course we’ll take the necessary action.” Maduro had already blatantly done exactly that, yet the White House remained quiet. Frustrated with the “pattern of failed appeasement,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul sent a letter to Blinken in November, pressing him on whether the sanctions were in fact going to be reimposed. Republican senators, led by Sen. Marco Rubio, made similar demands. Nevertheless, the White House remained committed to playing soft.
As all this happened, Maduro saw in the White House’s feebleness an opportunity to further test the U.S. This time he did so with the Esequibo referendum, a showcase for the façade of Venezuela democracy. This was an attempt to move his strategy from offering breadcrumbs to punching back, considering that annexing Guyanese territory would unquestionably harm the U.S. In a way, the threat of annexation can be read as Maduro telling Biden: “We can harm your reputation and oil industry, too.”
In the lead-up to the referendum, as regional organizations and South American leaders condemned the plebiscite, the White House kept to itself. While the U.S. Embassy in Guyana did signal support, vowing closer military cooperation, in what was evidently an attempt to avoid a PR scandal, Biden tried to keep the issue under the rug. Who can blame him? Another military conflict, this time in the Americas, is not a great look.
Now that the threat is increasingly serious, the White House has been forced to speak up. “We absolutely stand by our unwavering support for Guyana’s sovereignty,” national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on December 7. The problem is that this statement only came after the referendum and after Maduro announced the creation of an “Esequibo division” of Venezuela’s state-owned oil corporation.
As the situation develops, with Maduro continuing to test the Biden administration’s willingness to counter him, Americans should realize that the president is partly responsible for why a war could soon break out in our hemisphere.
Juan P. Villasmil is an Intercollegiate Studies Institute editorial fellow at The Spectator World and a Young Voices contributor.