Guyana must not confuse access to Trump with protection from Trump

Guyana must not confuse access to Trump with protection from Trump

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar September 2026 

Trump’s UN threat against Iran exposes the peril of diplomacy by domination

Donald Trump’s appearance at the United Nations was not an argument for diplomacy so much as a demonstration of its inversion. From a podium built for the language of peace, cooperation and international law, the US president presented Iran with a choice: accept terms set in Washington or face national destruction.

The provocation matters not only because of its target, but because of its setting. The UN general assembly is often dismissed as ceremonial theatre, yet its central premise remains that even bitter adversaries must be addressed through rules, negotiation and mutual restraint. Trump’s message suggested something very different: that military supremacy confers the right to decide which states may survive, prosper or rebuild.

President Irfaan Ali may believe that closeness to Donald Trump offers Guyana strategic cover at a perilous time. With Venezuela’s claim to the Essequibo still unresolved, a larger US security presence can appear not merely useful, but essential. Guyana has every right to pursue defence partnerships, protect its territorial integrity and seek international backing against Venezuelan aggression.

 Donald Trump came to the United Nations with a message that inverted the purpose of the institution whose podium he occupied.  

“I have a big decision to make,” Trump told the General Assembly. Iran, he said, could be permitted to rebuild into a “far greater country” — or the United States could destroy the Islamic republic before it had another chance to threaten its neighbours.

It was a remarkable formulation even by Trump’s standards. The General Assembly is a forum created from the ruins of world war, designed to give states, large and small, a place to settle disputes without submitting them to force. Yet the most powerful military leader in the room used its stage to speak of erasing another country.

That does not make the Iranian government beyond criticism. Tehran’s repression at home, its treatment of women and dissidents, and its role in armed conflicts across the region have rightly drawn international condemnation. But a US president’s threat to drive an entire nation “into hell with no chance of survival” is not a strategy for protecting civilians or securing peace. It is collective punishment dressed up as resolve.

Trump’s speech also revealed a world view in which power is both the instrument and the reward of foreign policy. While presenting Iran’s future as a choice to be granted or denied by Washington. The language is transactional, but its logic is imperial: resources, security and sovereignty are treated as possessions to be bargained over by the strongest state.

He celebrated American military action in Venezuela as a means of expanding US access and control over that country’s oil reserves. He hailed himself as a peacemaker in Gaza even as Gaza remains shattered and the political conditions for a durable settlement remain absent.

That approach carries consequences well beyond Tehran. America’s allies have long tolerated; and at times enabled — Washington’s inconsistencies. But Trump’s open embrace of coercion poses a more fundamental question: whether the United States can still be relied upon as a partner bound by commitments, rules and predictable interests, rather than the personal impulses of its president.

That should trouble Guyana.

Guyana’s case against Venezuela’s claim to the Essequibo is rooted in law, history and the 1899  Arbitral Award. It is before the International Court of Justice, and Guyana should continue to insist that the border controversy be settled through international law, not intimidation, military threat or political theatre. The country needs friends. It needs defence capacity. It needs intelligence cooperation, regional solidarity and an unmistakable deterrent to adventurism.

Yet Guyana must be careful about the kind of friendship it embraces, and the price that may eventually be demanded for it.

The United States has strategic interests in Guyana that go beyond defending democratic values or supporting the rule of law. Guyana possesses rapidly expanding offshore oil production, sits on Venezuela’s eastern flank, and has become an important piece on the strategic map of the Caribbean and northern South America. Those interests may overlap with Guyana’s own security needs. They do not automatically become identical to them.

Trump’s glorification of US control over Venezuelan oil should be read in Georgetown not as a distant episode, but as a warning.

If access to another country’s resources can be presented as the fruit of military intervention, then oil-rich small states must ask hard questions about the character of the power whose support they seek.

A country may welcome investment, security assistance and diplomatic solidarity while still guarding against dependency, unequal bargains and arrangements that erode national control over its wealth.

Guyana cannot afford a foreign policy built on flattery, photo opportunities or personal warmth between leaders. It needs a policy grounded in national interests, parliamentary scrutiny and clear limits. Any security agreement with Washington must preserve Guyanese command of Guyanese territory, safeguard the country’s decision-making authority and be disclosed sufficiently for citizens to know what commitments their government is making.

This is especially urgent because the boundary controversy is real. Venezuela’s threats cannot be waved away. President Nicolás Maduro’s government has repeatedly sought to use the Essequibo controversy for domestic mobilisation and geopolitical advantage. Guyana’s government is right to demand international support and to strengthen its defences. CARICOM, the Commonwealth, the Organisation of American States and Guyana’s international partners have all played important roles in reinforcing the principle that borders cannot be altered by force.

But partnership must not become subordination.

A small state survives in a dangerous neighborhood by widening its circle of friends, not by placing its fate in the hands of a single powerful patron.

Guyana should deepen ties with CARICOM, Brazil, the Commonwealth, Canada, European partners, the United Nations and countries across the global south. It should sustain relations with the United States, but not make Washington the sole pillar of its security or diplomatic strategy.

There is also a larger moral issue. Guyana cannot credibly invoke international law to defend the Essequibo while remaining silent when powerful states threaten to destroy weaker ones, seize their resources or bend sovereignty to their will. The rules that protect Guyana are the same rules Trump mocked in his threats against Iran and his celebration of US power in Venezuela.

The Ali administration should remember that a handshake from a superpower is not a guarantee. Today’s strategic partner can become tomorrow’s demanding patron; today’s security commitment can become tomorrow’s leverage over oil, contracts, ports, airspace or foreign policy.

Guyana should engage the United States confidently, respectfully and pragmatically. But it must never confuse being useful to Washington with being safe from Washington.