The dispatch of a British offshore patrol vessel to Guyana for bilateral drills amidst its former colony’s newly heated territorial dispute with Venezuela prompted the latter to respond by ordering its own such drills. Some observers worried that this could undermine the agreement from earlier this month to resolve their feud over Essequibo through purely peaceful means, but the fact of the matter is that both side’s soft power interests are cynically served through these tit-for-tat drills.
Guyana presumably requested the UK to redirect its nearby vessel in the region for impromptu drills in the aftermath of Venezuela’s referendum on their disputed region in order to show that it has the tangible military support of two major countries for its claims after its recent air drills with the US. The UK happily complied because it always supports the US out of principle, plus London wants to present itself as a global power despite the decline of its worldwide influence after Brexit.
As for Venezuela, while it would prefer that neither the US nor the UK carried out any drills with Guyana in Essequibo (including the region’s offshore territory), its muscular response to the second of those two suggests that Caracas doesn’t expect London to escalate at the level that Washington could have. If each side’s respective drills go off without a hitch, then they can spin it as though the other backed down, which can further galvanize their public in support of the state and its policy towards this dispute.
Guyana can claim that Venezuela was deterred from any speculatively secret military campaign in Essequibo, which the UK can claim partial credit for as supposed proof of its restored global influence, while Venezuela can say that it deterred them from a supposedly secret military provocation against it. The first’s public would feel more confident with their claims, the second’s would be more inclined to believe in the post-Brexit vision of “Global Britain”, while the third’s would rally more around Maduro.
Each of these are important goals since tiny Guyana would struggle to fend off much larger Venezuela on its own if those two came to blows, the British public remains divided over their country’s foreign policy, while Maduro is preparing for elections sometime next year. These soft power imperatives suggest that more such tit-for-tat drills can be expected, and Venezuela might be searching for a major country partner whose participation it can present as support for its claims like Guyana has with the US and UK’s.
Thus far, however, no country anywhere in the world has come out in support for Caracas. Both the Chinese and Russian Foreign Ministry spokespeople reaffirmed their country’s support for a peaceful resolution to this dispute, and they conspicuously didn’t lend any credence to Venezuela’s claims. This is a pragmatic stance from their perspective since they can’t meaningfully support their partner in any war over Essequibo for simple geographical-logistical reasons even if they wanted to (which they don’t).
Nevertheless, even if Venezuela only continues carrying out its own drills in response to the ones that Guyana organizes with whoever else, it’ll still reap the soft power dividends of these tit-for-tat dynamics. The optics of increasingly frequent drills in and around Essequibo could contribute to concerns about the region’s militarization, however, thus leading to worries that its two claimants’ security dilemma is spiraling out of control. Both must therefore be careful not to cause a war by miscalculation.
