On 9 May the US military flew two ‘Super-Hornet’ jets over Guyana’s capital city, Georgetown. Directed by its Southern Command (SouthCom), this was a warning to Venezuela: the US will defend Exxon-Mobil and its extraction of oil in the disputed Essequibo territory at all costs. Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino has accused the US of installing 12 CIA and 14 secret SouthCom bases in the disputed region, a claim so far rejected by Guyana. Regardless, the expansion of US and NATO in the Americas is undeniable.
Escalating tensions over Essequibo
Venezuela and Guyana have disputed the Essequibo zone since 1841, after Britain redrew the borders of colonial ‘British Guiana’ to claim the resource-rich land for itself. Guyana won independence from Britain in 1966 and a UN framework for resolving the dispute was agreed. Whilst a solution was never reached, a treaty prohibits both nations from advancing the issue except through the UN Charter. Flouting this, from 2008 onwards Guyana permitted US multinational Exxon-Mobil to prospect for oil and then to drill in the offshore Stabroek bloc after the discovery in 2015 of the equivalent of 11 billion barrels of profitable light crude. Today Stabroek oil fields produce over 650,000 barrels per day and are predicted to soon account for a fifth of Exxon-Mobil’s total output. British oil firms Shell, JE Energy and BB Energy have won rights to market Essequibo oil. A string of top US officials has visited Guyana in the last six months including SouthCom’s director of strategy, General Juliet Nethercot; Assistant Secretary of State Brian A Nichols; USAID deputy Marcela Escobari and CIA director William J Burns. In May, SouthCom also signed a military cooperation agreement with neighbouring Suriname. Meanwhile in January, Britain sent warship HMS Trent to Guyana and held its fourth ‘UK and Caribbean Heads of Defence Conference’ in Georgetown. Venezuela has pushed back, passing a new law for the defence of ‘Guyana Essequiba’, launching military exercises along the border and building a temporary bridge over the Cuyuni River to the disputed Anokoko island. The capitalist press has lambasted Venezuela for this ‘belligerence’, while inevitably remaining silent on the escalation of imperialist intervention in the oil-rich region.
Each year, SouthCom operates Tradewinds, a major military exercise in the Caribbean. This May, 1,200 foreign troops from 26 nations were deployed to host country Barbados (Guyana hosted Tradewinds 2023). US troops are often present for months before and after Tradewinds whilst SouthCom also ensures the US Fourth Fleet and Coastguard continually patrol the Caribbean. Britain, France and the Netherlands all have overseas territories across the Caribbean and remind the world of their presence through similar multinational military exercises including France’s Caraibes 2024 and Event Horizon, led by Jamaica and Colombia with the participation of Canada and the Netherlands. Ostensibly, these exercises are focused on disaster response, nevertheless they present an opportunity to dispatch and test military hardware.
Argentina and beyond
At the other end of the continent, on 4 April, the US announced the construction of a base in Ushuaia, Argentina, where the Pacific meets the Atlantic over Antarctica. The US already uses ‘integrated’ military bases in Argentina including in Misiones, on the border with Brazil and Uruguay, and Neuquen, conveniently next to a giant oil field and China’s deep space ground station. As a reward, SouthCom has given Argentina F-16 fighter jets and a C-130 Hercules transporter plane, promising 250 Stryker armoured vehicles to come. Britain continues to occupy the Malvinas Islands (Falklands). Much to the chagrin of most Argentinians, right-wing maverick President Milei has called off the annual grand ‘Malvinas day’ parade which reiterates Argentina’s claims to the islands. Rather, he has requested for Argentina to join NATO and praised former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who dispatched military forces in the 1982 war. Today Britain maintains 2,000 military personnel on the islands alongside fighter jets, radar stations and a deepwater port. Further south, the British Rothera research station monitors Britain’s ‘Antarctic Territory’ and HMS Protector patrols British territories, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands. Britain shores up NATO’s presence through this ‘strategic triangle of control’.
As SouthCom’s General Richardson affirms, Latin America and the Caribbean are crucial to US interests, as the area ‘accounts for $740 billion in annual trade with the US; contains 60% of the world’s lithium and 31% of the world’s fresh water; and has the world’s largest oil reserves’. Accordingly the US has 76 bases in the region including 12 in Panama, guarding the canal, 12 in Puerto Rico, nine in Colombia and eight in Peru. Large bases include Guantanamo Bay in occupied Cuba (6,100 US military and civilian personnel) and Soto Cano in Honduras (1,000). Meanwhile, Britain maintains a significant RAF airbase on Ascension Island and 144 NATO submarines patrol the oceans, many of them in the Pacific and Atlantic.
The US recently signed a joint military co-operation agreement with Ecuador and deployed troops to Peru in 2023 to back the coup government of Dina Boluarte. ‘Humanitarian’ cooperation boosts military capability either directly in the case of joint US-Chile bases (‘Resistencia’ and ‘Colon’), or indirectly as in crisis-ridden Haiti where the US is currently commandeering Kenya to send a ‘security peacekeeping force’ of imperialist allies to get boots on the ground. Training the region’s police and army, National Guards of 18 US states carry out joint training exercises with 24 Latin American nations. The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation, which succeeded the notorious School of the Americas, accounts for 100,000 military graduates. The US ‘International Law Enforcement Agency’ in El Salvador trains central America’s repressive police forces and Britain’s National Crime Agency spent £2.3bn training Colombia’s militarised police between 2015-2020. The US, Britain and NATO cite the need to counter China’s increased role and isolate the influence of ‘Anti-American’ (read anti-imperialist) states: Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia. Though China has no military bases in Latin America, 21 of the 31 countries in the region have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and Chinese investment is pouring into deep-water ports, space research and telecommunications. However, anyone acquainted with Latin American history knows China is just the latest justification. From the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine to the bloody Operation Condor of the 1980s, the song remains the same: control resources, control trade routes and crush any popular resistance.
Imperialism out of Latin America!
Sam McGill
