Western powers evaluated Jagan based on their self interests
I refer to Dr. Joey Jagan’s letter, “Dev should not have quoted the US’s distortions on Jagan” (SN 3-4-24) to say I agree with his assertion that Dr. Cheddi Jagan “was sincere, honest, humble and totally dedicated to the welfare of the Guyanese people, regardless of race, religion or class.” But surely he was not perfect? Could he have heeded that caution of his own lieutenants like Dr. Fenton Ramsahoye on his stance towards the west? Quoting the US officials’ opinions of Dr. Jagan should remind us that in the affairs of nations, leaders will invariably be evaluated based on the interests of the countries doing the evaluation and they will make decisions based on those evaluations. We have to be realists domestically and internationally.
So, for instance, as a Guyanese evaluating Venezuela’s Maduro, his intemperate claim to annex our Essequibo colours my assessment. In a recent encounter, however, we saw that St Vincent’s Ralph Gonsalves clearly assesses Maduro differently, since Maduro is not only a socialist like he is, but wrote off St Vincent’s PetroCaribe debt. His interests are different from ours, even though we may all want a “peaceful region”.
More to the point, like Dr. Jagan, we are once again caught in the cross-current of American hegemonic interests conflicting globally with nations like China and Russia and regionally, with Venezuela. Our present leaders should understand that to the leaders of these nations it does not matter whether they are seen as “nice and sincere guys”: what matters to them is how our country aligns with their individual interests. And they will make decisions about our country based on their assessments. It had been long known from the declassified files that the Americans found Dr. Jagan pleasant and sincere and Mr. Burnham racist and ambitious. But in the end, they went with Burnham because they evaluated him more aligned to their interests – then to keep out the Soviets from this hemisphere.
In the present global conjuncture, our leaders have to evaluate issues pertinent to nations that have conflicting interests based solely on our interests. For instance, I have suggested we should create a military base in Essequibo to facilitate our armed forces waging an asymmetric defensive war against Venezuela. But to repel Venezuela’s overwhelming standing armed forces if necessary, we should also allow the US to have access to such a base because of our need for powerful military allies whose interests coincide with ours.
To the critics who invoke the risks of US entanglement based on the proximate dangers of them preemptively launching attacks on Venezuela to secure the latter’s oil, I believe checkmating the sword of Damocles from Venezuela’s Essequibo controversy outweighs the risks. Coloniality’s hierarchies of race, culture and economics inhere no less in Russia, China or Venezuela than the USA.