Legally speaking, the desire to take things into possession which are not ours, like any other mere thought of transgression, are not punishable. Not even dreaming to kill your own partner is. What we punish at court are committed or attempted crimes. Thoughts are free. Morally speaking, most crimes start with an evil thought. I am neither a religious scholar, nor even a fervent practitioner of my faith, but I’d say that most of the 10 Commandments can be deducted from the moral imperative not to harbour sinful desires in the first place.
International law is a set of unenforceable, yet accepted rules of behaviour for nation states, which only gain currency through adherence over time. It postulates that national borders have to be respected and must not be violated by military action. To safeguard its validity and observance, it is accompanied by the – often testing – rule, that interference with another country’s domestic agendas, like civil war or violence against minorities, is inadmissible. This is morally dubious. How can we look on idly when atrocious crimes are committed? Our moral predicament is the high price we have to pay for the avoidance of intra-state conflict.
To justify the unjustifiable, historic claims are most commonly employed. “We were here before.” The world map would indeed look differently if we reshaped it according to the outlays of the Roman, Ottoman or British empires, for instance. Most land grabs in the recent past deviously stress “history” when violating internationally settled borders. What we should adhere to for the sake of peace are UN accepted borders. Very often alas, the ‘right of the stronger’ prevails, ignoring international law and peace-saving conventions. To wage war rightfully, it has to be based on an UN resolution, like the First Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait for instance and a US-led coalition successfully expelled him. The right of self-defence too is an internationally accepted convention, unlike first strikes.
Countless conflicts since then were anything but legal. The US campaign in Afghanistan, the Second Gulf War ousting Hussein, the ousting of Libya’s strongman Gaddafi, or the bombing of Serbia by the Clinton government, rightfully shocked by the atrocities committed by Serbia in the Kosovo, were yet legally wrong. It was, alas, the beginning of the unravelling of the international order. Thou shall not interfere with domestic affairs of another country.
We saw over the last years land grabs and border wars which evidence the corrosion of international law: Putin’s Ukraine conquest; China’s military expansion into the Philippine and South China Seas and its border skirmishes with India, itself interfering in Pakistan; and Israel’s unbridled conquest of the West Bank and its plans to resettle Gaza Palestinians into the Sinai desert are but a few examples. Meddling into the affairs of other countries, often violently, is sadly considered normal by the US. And, completely unnoticed, the US – self-declared, yet failing standard bearer of the international order – has extended its maritime possessions in the Arctic and the Bering Sea by one million square kilometres. No wonder other, smaller countries try to follow suit: Hungary in Romania, or Ethiopia in Somaliland.
While the aggression of the bullies Russia, China and the United States are tragic examples of trampling the international order, last month saw the almost comical preparation of a planned land grab in Latin America. Nicolas Maduro, autocratic leader of Venezuela, asked his impoverished, malnourished population in a referendum whether his people would like to grab two-thirds of their neighbour Guyana. It’s the equivalent of a Maltese construction company asking its workers if they agreed taking over pristine ODZ land for yet another high-rise. Who would refuse the boss? In defence of Venezuelans, it has to be said that only very few people bothered to join in the exercise. The result was preordained, alas.
We saw over the last years land grabs and border wars which evidence the corrosion of international law- Andreas Weitzer
A border, recognised since 1899, was put into question, citing history, of course. Guyana is a country almost unpopulated. Its 800,000 people live at the coast, half of them in the capital Georgetown. The rest is pristine, unspoilt rainforest, out of reach by most means of transport. Guyana Esequiba, the challenged territory, is pure wilderness too. Beautiful, but economically unproductive. What stimulates Maduro’s desires lies offshore: 2015 Exxon Mobil stumbled on one of the largest oil finds in a generation. The oil deposits in the coastal waters of Guyana are estimated at 11 billion barrels, the equivalent of China’s total reserves.
The stand-off pits Venezuela, a country of 30 million people and a land mass of 916,000 square kilometres, with an army of 320,000 soldiers and 600,000 reservists, against an almost unpopulated neighbour with an ‘army’ of 4,000 soldiers. This means four soldiers for every kilometre of the shared border with Venezuela. Armed and financially supported by China and Russia, Venezuela can in theory act as it deems fit. Venezuela is one of the most ill-administered countries on Earth, though. It’s oil riches – the country sits already on the world’s largest known oil reserves, vaster than Saudi Arabia – have not served it well. Almost 20 per cent of the population, seven million, ran away, storming the US border on a regular basis. It is deeply corrupt, utterly poor, suffers from hyperinflation, and is rife with crime. Every 21 minutes, someone gets murdered, not counting political “disappearances” on scale.
Maduro country is, besides a flourishing drugs export, subsisting on its meagre oil exports, which comprise 30 per cent of its GDP, despite a crippling US embargo (Trump). Entangled with Russia and the war in the Middle East, Biden hoped to lighten the Trump embargo in exchange for “free elections”.
Tensions with Iran, the known troubles in Libya, Houthi battles at the Horn of Africa, and the embargoes on Russia’s fossil exports are all choke points. It is easy to understand why the US wants to go softer on Venezuela, yet hard to understand why Maduro covets yet another oil field, no matter how vast, when his nationalised oil industry is already on the ropes, his people lacking milk and flour, and living of remittances. His hope must be that by endangering Exxon Mobil’s most lucrative oil deal in the last 50 years, he will gain a bargaining chip without delivering fair elections as promised. He may be right.
Exxon has pulled Guyana over the table, true. It pays no income tax in the country, has bargained an exploration allowance, a decommissioning allowance, pays merely two per cent royalties, and splits the remaining profit 50:50. It has broken its promise not to flare released natural gas with impunity and continues to do so. No other country would have been more generous with the oil major. Maduro’s move can be economically painful.
I have no idea how this grotesque situation will play out. The US, gambling away its soft power recklessly, militarily stretched and politically too impotent to even support a single war, as we can see in Ukraine, is hardly in a position to take sides with Exxon. No sympathy points to gain either with such a move in the Global South, in Asia and the Middle East. It will be up to Exxon how to best approach Maduro. Comical as it may be, the Guyana crisis is yet another example of the consequences of the dereliction of a rule-based international order. From a moral standpoint, we ourselves should at least hesitate before we move a fence post. For us retail investors, oil majors are still a sadly promising investment, regardless of the climate.