With Florida Senator Marco Rubio named as Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, the Guyana government expects strong support from the upcoming United States administration in its border row with Venezuela.
“We’re very pleased also that Senator Rubio will be the Secretary of State… We expect strong solidarity from him and President Trump, the US administration on the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy which is now before the [International Court of Justice].” Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said at a November 14 press conference in Georgetown.
The case concerns the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Award, which determined the boundary between the two South American nations more than a hundred years ago. In 1962, some 63 years after accepting the boundary, Venezuela claimed the Award was null and void, reanimating a claim for two-thirds of Guyana’s territory. After years of discussions between the two countries under the United Nations Good Offices Process failed to deliver a resolution, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres referred the matter to the ICJ in 2018.
Rubio, who met with President Irfaan Ali in September last year, has advocated for the Biden administration to give more robust support to Guyana so it can freely benefit from its resources. The discovery of vast oil and gas reserves offshore Guyana is widely credited as a major reason for the recent resurgence of Venezuela’s campaign for Guyana’s territory.
President Nicolas Maduro late last year ran a referendum to ask Venezuelans whether the government should refuse the jurisdiction of the ICJ and create a new state called ‘Guayana Esequiba’ on the coveted land. The ICJ, in the lead-up to the referendum, ordered Venezuela not to take control of the territory administered and controlled by Guyana. As tensions wrote, regional leaders worked with Guyana and Venezuela on the signing of the Argyle Declaration, which included an agreement by Presidents Ali and Maduro that the States would not use force against one another. Venezuela had built up a military presence near Guyana’s northwestern border.
In a January Informe Orwell Op-ed, Rubio said, “If we’re going to maintain America’s strength throughout the 21st century, we need allies like Guyana to be free, dictators like Maduro to be deterred, and supply chains in their entirety, from the mine to the assembly line, to be secure.”
Senator Rubio, who has held his seat since 2011, ran unsuccessfully for the Republican party’s nomination for President of the United States in 2016.
In a November 13 statement, Rubio said “Under the leadership of President Trump, we will deliver peace through strength and always put the interests of Americans and America above all else.”
Rubio also strongly advocated for the “completion of a peaceful, free and fair electoral process in Guyana” in March 2020, following attempts to rig the vote in favor of the then governing coalition led by President David Granger. Rubio also joined with a bipartisan group of Senators urging Granger to let international observers back into the country to observe a national vote recount. The administration had refused one such request from the United States Embassy in Georgetown, citing COVID-19 measures.
Senator Rubio also, in 2022, criticized the Biden administration for its 2021 veto of a US$180 million Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loan to Guyana Shore Base Inc. (GYSBI) so it could develop facilities in support of Guyana’s oil sector. The decision was seen as a fulfillment of Biden’s environmental mandate not to lend to the oil industry. Guyana is currently seeking a loan from the United States Export-Import Bank of over US$600 million to support the construction of a natural gas power plant.
