London’s Council on Geostrategy published an article in its “Broadside” magazine on June 19 titled “Ukrainian Lessons for Guyana. How Guyana Could Defend Itself against the Venezuelan Navy.” The Council’s “Broadside” is a joint production with the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre.
Its intent is to trigger—under British hands-on direction!—a war in South America, whose aim goes far beyond Venezuela. The immediate target of the intended war is BRICS leader Brazil, the building of the Brazil-Peru “bioceanic” railway connecting to Peru’s Chancay Port, and the growing participation of the Ibero-American and Caribbean nations with China in the Belt and Road Initiative.
Author H.I. Sutton assumes that Venezuela will eventually invade the Essequibo, disputed territory which has been under Guyana’s administration for over a century, in order to seize the offshore oil fields which abut it. In December 2023, only the skillful intervention by Brazil kept war from erupting over this border dispute, one of hundreds of such timebombs created by British imperialism to be detonated when deemed useful.
Sutton projects that a Venezuelan invasion will likely start “with significant naval action at sea.” Therefore, Guyana’s (almost infinitesimal) navy should be revamped, “almost overnight,” by absorbing the lessons learned from Ukraine—that is, by “adopting and developing uncrewed technologies” (i.e., maritime drones). Being inexpensive, and requiring little training to deploy, “these Ukrainian-style explosive USVs would be ideal for Guyana,” the author asserts. “Some of the development could be publicized—to create the deterrent capability—and some kept secret for maximum impact in combat.”
The parallels to “Operation Spider Web” and the Mossad’s recent Iranian assassination operation are unavoidable. Sutton writes that these drones “could be stored far inshore, and only brought to water and launched for missions. Narco-submarine construction, not entirely unknown in Guyana, shows how easy it is to hide boat sheds in jungle tributaries,” he also notes.
It is well-established that it was Great Britain which took over and ran the operation to rebuild Ukraine’s navy in 2018, as part of “Operation Orbital,” and Britain which still deploys Ukraine’s naval assets with the intent of driving Russia out of the Black Sea. (See the Council’s policy paper, "Deepening British-Ukrainian Relations in a More Competitive Era.")
The Council of Geostrategy is a relatively new creation as far as British institutions go, established in 2021 as a thinktank dedicated to promoting “Global Britain,” the strategy to restore the U.K. as the global power of its imperialist heyday. The Council hosts the First Sea Lord’s Sea Power Conference, and established a “Sea Power Laboratory, in close partnership with the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre,” the editor of its “Broadside” explains; it is “your one-stop source for everything to do with the Royal Navy, the British maritime sector and the big sea power issues facing the U.K.”
