It’s a time of ad­ven­ture in­to the set­tled ter­ri­to­ry of sov­er­eign states by next-door neigh­bours. There is al­so the quest by the mil­i­tar­i­ly pow­er­ful, al­ready il­le­gal­ly and un­con­scionably in oc­cu­pa­tion of land which does not be­long to them, to fur­ther greed­i­ly gorge them­selves on the land of oth­ers.

Is­rael’s con­tin­u­ing bru­tal oc­cu­pa­tion of Pales­tine, Rus­sia’s ad­ven­ture in­to Ukraine to achieve im­pe­r­i­al ob­jec­tives, Chi­na’s in­sis­tence on Tai­wan as part of the Re­pub­lic, the 1947 con­test be­tween In­dia and Pak­istan over Kash­mir, and close to home, Venezuela’s strate­gi­cal­ly-timed re­newed claim to two-thirds of Guyana are mere­ly the most high-pro­file of the in­ter­na­tion­al land-grab­bing binge; they run in­to scores.

If the vast ma­jor­i­ty of such con­flicts and con­tentions are out­side of our scope of im­me­di­ate con­cern, Venezuela’s claim to por­tions of Guyana, the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, said to be a rich re­serve both on land and off­shore, is in our (Cari­com) back­yard ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, and part of our geo-po­lit­i­cal, fa­mil­ial and re­gion­al broth­er­hood/sis­ter­hood of states.

Venezuela is sev­en miles off T&T’s south-west­ern coast and very much part of the wider Caribbean. The fam­i­lies on both sides of the Ser­pent’s Mouth share long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ships with gen­er­a­tions go­ing back and forth; the con­tem­po­rary mere­ly ex­em­pli­fies the past.

From British Guiana (BG) the peo­ples of T&T and Guyana have had per­haps the clos­est fa­mil­ial and his­toric in­ter-re­la­tion­ships, in cul­ture, sport and diplo­mat­ic in­ter­ac­tion amongst all Cari­com states. Many of Guyana’s bright­est in­tel­lects and states­men and women have con­tributed to T&T and Cari­com’s de­vel­op­ment.

To­day, since the dis­cov­ery of what has been de­scribed as a very sig­nif­i­cant find of oil and gas in Guyana, and with T&T’s long his­to­ry as a pro­duc­er and proces­sor of hy­dro­car­bons, the neigh­bours have be­come even more in­ter­ac­tive. Many T&T busi­ness­es and pro­duc­er/man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies have found and are look­ing for nich­es in an emerg­ing Guyanese econ­o­my and so­ci­ety.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, T&T’s and Guyana’s his­tor­i­cal, Cari­com and in­sti­tu­tion­al to­geth­er­ness, eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion and for­eign pol­i­cy co­or­di­na­tion weigh heav­i­ly in favour of our loy­al­ty to Guyana as part of our fam­i­ly of na­tions in this area of the Caribbean.

That said, how­ev­er, T&T’s eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests in re­la­tion to the planned joint ex­ploita­tion of oil and gas and col­lab­o­ra­tion to process the gas down­stream in some form of co­op­er­a­tion with Venezuela are high on the list of plans by the Port-of-Spain ad­min­is­tra­tion to feed the en­er­gy-de­pen­dent econ­o­my here.

Those con­sid­er­a­tions notwith­stand­ing, the Port-of-Spain ad­min­is­tra­tion is very much part of the firm Cari­com po­si­tion that the ju­di­cial process on Venezuela’s land claim en­gaged at the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) must be await­ed. The re­al­i­ty is that le­gal ar­bi­tra­tion at a world court is the on­ly hope of sur­vival for “the sar­dines swim­ming amongst the harks”.

The Gov­ern­ment here is al­so on board with the Cari­com view that the pro­posed grant­i­ng of Venezue­lan pass­ports to Guyanese na­tion­als res­i­dent in Es­se­qui­bo has no ba­sis in in­ter­na­tion­al law.

It is in­struc­tive that Pres­i­dent Maduro’s plans are sim­i­lar (not ex­act) to Pres­i­dent Putin’s, who is­sued pass­ports to Ukraini­ans liv­ing in the Don­bas re­gion of their coun­try. If the pass­port of­fer has wide­spread ac­cep­tance by Guyanese na­tion­als in Es­se­qui­bo, will that give Venezuela the right to in­ter­vene in Guyana on be­half of Venezue­lan pass­port hold­ers?

A neg­a­tive out­come of the ma­noeu­vres of Pres­i­dent Maduro is the re­al and po­ten­tial im­pact they can have in mak­ing Guyana an un­at­trac­tive en­vi­ron­ment for di­rect for­eign in­vest­ment.

That can al­so ap­ply to in­vestors from around Cari­com, T&T in­clud­ed, who are al­ready in Guyana tak­ing a punt on the spin-off com­mer­cial and pro­duc­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties from the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Guyanese, who have been re­turn­ing home to be part of their coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment ef­fort must al­so be in a quandary as to whether or not to give up jobs and fam­i­ly to­geth­er­ness abroad to come home in this cli­mate of un­cer­tain­ty cre­at­ed by Venezuela.

It may be ar­gued that what the Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent is do­ing with his quest for the ac­qui­si­tion of parts of Guyana is on be­half of his peo­ple who now feel a sense of be­ing dis­en­fran­chised by what they claim to be their own.

Back in 1975, T&T’s his­to­ri­an prime min­is­ter, Er­ic Williams charged Venezuela for hav­ing colo­nial de­signs on Caribbean lands in­clud­ing Guyana and is­lands off the coast of Trinidad and Do­mini­ca. He analysed Venezuela to be the threat to the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.

If ul­ti­mate­ly, notwith­stand­ing present state­ments to the con­trary, the Maduro Gov­ern­ment ex­pects to con­fis­cate through some means, Guyanese lands, is he con­scious that the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom gov­ern­ments will not sit still and do noth­ing? Or does he have in mind an of­fer to those coun­tries to sway them to Venezuela’s side–per­haps en­tice­ments be­yond that which now ex­ist to the en­er­gy gi­ants of the US and the UK to ex­plore and ex­ploit the re­sources of Es­se­qui­bo?

As is well un­der­stood, the na­tion­al in­ter­ests of a coun­try, weighed in the bal­ance, are su­pe­ri­or to eth­i­cal and oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions. In the world of to­day, as de­scribed above, it is dif­fi­cult to pre­dict that the wrong­ness of the ac­tions of a state will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly draw cen­sure and pun­ish­ment.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter and cur­rent af­fairs host at TTT, news Di­rec­tor of CN­MG and AVM Tele­vi­sion, cor­re­spon­dent to the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice, the As­so­ci­at­ed Press and cur­rent colum­nist for the Sun­day Guardian.