It is an enormous and eminently retrograde step when a fledgling Third World country such as Guyana, now riding the crest of a petro-bonanza-generated wave, has to divert and spend an enormous portion of the new windfall on guns instead of food for its poverty-stricken people.

President Irfaan Ali recently announced a host of measures to beef up the capability of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF).

This external military-related stimulus emanates from another Third World country, namely expansionist Venezuela, when, in the post-Cold War era, both countries would have supported the UN disarmament agenda to allow deprived, still-developing countries to focus on allocating financial resources on social, economic and infrastructural development.

Guyana is compelled to beef up its security capability to protect its claim to the vast 83,000-square-mile Essequibo region especially as Venezuela casts coveting eyes from across the border. Guyana also has to defend its 200-mile EEZ (exclusive economic zone), which is the current source of its huge GDP growth of 62 per cent, thanks to the vast newfound reserves of crude oil and natural gas.

The EEZ is also claimed, quite unwittingly and erroneously, by the imperialist Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which is not a party to the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention simply because Caracas objected to the method of maritime-boundary delimitation provided for therein.

Now Venezuela’s Government is quoting chapter and verse from the very 1982 Convention it turned its back on by refusing to host the final convention-adopting session in Caracas.

The primary beneficiaries of this Guyanese shopping spree/splurge for modern electronic defensive weaponry will be the US, UK and Israel. The US and UK will also derive benefits from training and development of Guyanese military to man this new-era weaponry.

Australia, China and North Korea will make a killing in supplying new maritime vessels for the GDF with capability to reach 200 miles offshore.

This is what the illegal, wholly outlandish and indefensible Venezuelan claim over the Essequibo has spawned in the region.

I have no doubt the ICJ (Intl Court of Justice) will throw out the fictitious Venezuelan claim over Essequibo, but Guyana has to arm itself for now to repel any insane attack/annexation by Venezuela that can foment instability and strife on the South American continent.

Brazil has already beefed up its military presence on the borders it shares with Guyana and Venezuela lest the latter invades Brazilian territory in order to easily cross over into the Essequibo.

Venezuela is not only interfering in the internal domestic affairs of Guyana but also in the conduct of its foreign policies, both of which violate the tenets of international law and the UN Charter that incorporates the mores and principles of customary law.

STEPHEN KANGAL

Caroni