The spec­u­la­tion about the in­ten­tions of Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro to il­le­gal­ly take Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion is at an end. He has named a gov­er­nor for the two-thirds por­tion of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry, he is invit­ing the en­er­gy multi­na­tion­als to bid for rights in the rich re­serve of Es­se­qui­bo, giv­en those which have had rights through the gov­ern­ment in George­town three months to clear out, and in­struct­ed his na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­ny, PDVSA, to bid to ex­plore in Es­se­qui­bo.

To achieve and se­cure those in­ten­tions, Pres­i­dent Maduro has ap­point­ed a gov­er­nor for the Es­se­qui­bo In­te­gral De­fence Zone with the mil­i­tary ca­pac­i­ty to en­force de­ci­sions tak­en in Cara­cas. To leave no doubt in the mind of any­one and or in­sti­tu­tion, the “mil­i­tary is ac­count­able to the civil­ian au­thor­i­ties,” which is Pres­i­dent Maduro.

Pres­i­dent Maduro has had a new map of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic drawn up, in­clu­sive of the Es­se­qui­bo, and is ready to grant Venezue­lan iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards to Guyanese cit­i­zens liv­ing in the re­gion.

The ba­sis of Pres­i­dent Maduro’s de­ci­sions and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for them is in the ref­er­en­dum of this week, which is re­port­ed to have ob­tained a 98 per cent vote for tak­ing what gen­er­a­tions of Venezue­lans be­lieve to be theirs - Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo.

To en­sure no one is left in doubt about Venezuela’s in­ter­na­tion­al stance on the le­gal­i­ty of his in­ten­tions, Pres­i­dent Maduro has re­it­er­at­ed that his coun­try is not a mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice and there­fore not bound by any de­ci­sion it makes on the dis­pute.

In the wake of Venezuela’s de­ci­sions to con­fis­cate ter­ri­to­ry, Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali has called up­on the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to pre­vent the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic from car­ry­ing out its stat­ed in­ten­tions and to await the judg­ment of the ICJ. So too has he alert­ed the Com­mon­wealth, the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States and the USA, of Venezuela’s in­ten­tions.

Guyana, with­out the mil­i­tary ca­pac­i­ty to ward-off Venezuela’s takeover and oc­cu­pa­tion, is des­per­ate­ly de­pen­dent on the in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tem, found­ed for the ex­act pur­pose of pro­tect­ing the weak from the strong.

“The Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil can re­sort to im­pos­ing sanc­tions or even au­tho­rise the use of force to main­tain or re­store in­ter­na­tion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty,” Ali has said. And the Guyanese Pres­i­dent has made known his coun­try’s de­sire for the re­gion to re­main a zone of peace.

There is a long his­to­ry of UN Peace­keep­ing Forces de­ployed in dozens of coun­tries in con­ti­nen­tal Amer­i­ca, Africa, Asia and Eu­rope with dif­fer­ing de­grees of peace-keep­ing and peace-mak­ing suc­cess.

The ques­tion is what is like­ly to be the ac­tion of the over­all 11 mem­bers of the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, and most crit­i­cal­ly, how will the five per­ma­nent mem­bers of the coun­cil: the USA, Rus­sia, Chi­na, the UK, and France, vote if such a mo­tion is put for­ward?

Log­i­cal­ly, the three west­ern mem­bers of the coun­cil will vote to pre­vent yet an­oth­er il­le­gal in­va­sion of a coun­try by a su­pe­ri­or force, in an at­tempt to keep in­ter­na­tion­al law alive. Chi­na and Rus­sia, with their own in­volve­ment in claim­ing sov­er­eign states, will like­ly have oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions.

The con­se­quences of such po­ten­tial in­ac­tion will al­low for a re­turn to the law of the jun­gle, as is cur­rent­ly the case in Ukraine and Is­rael. It will, how­ev­er, be an­oth­er fail­ure of the in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tem.