More foreign affairs in a crazy, mixed-up world

Deputy sheriff talks big in Guyana and Suriname on first Caribbean tour, angering China

How much good will actually result from the three-country Caribbean tour by Marco Rubio, the gullible new deputy sheriff at the State Department, remains to be seen. From my vantage point, the prospects are dim. But if angering China, threatening Venezuela, and disrespecting Cuba were at the top of his to-do list—while reassuring nervous Caricom nations about dealing with lost U.S. aid and the looming deportations of 15,000-plus illegal migrants lagged far behind—he accomplished that much, anyway.

After his first stop in Jamaica—to be discussed at a later date in these columns—the stopover in Guyana snagged the biggest headlines, with China visibly disturbed by Rubio’s characterization of its recent infrastructure work there as “a terrible job. Not a bad job, a terrible job,” particularly on building an airport highway, “on which we almost got concussions.” [See “Guyana in middle of US-China cold war,” March 28, https://www.caribbeanlife.com/guyana-in-middle-of-us-china-cold-war/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=caribbeanlife-pm&utm_term=Caribbean%20Life%20Daily%20Newsletter .]

Rubio did not name the specific highway he found so objectionable, although an Associated Press report identified it as Heroes Highway, part of the airport road which connects Georgetown with the Cheddi Jagan International Airport 25 miles to the south. But many local politicians disputed his account in one respect: the new road is in terrible shape, they agree, but it was actually rebuilt recently—under the current Ali administration—by a local consortium of contractors, not by the Chinese.

“It opened in 2023, and even today, they’re still patching it,” opposition leader David Patterson, a former Public Works minister, told Stabroek News. “Of course, the Chinese had nothing to do with it. Even they would be ashamed of this.” [See “Road that Rubio criticized wasn’t built by Chinese,” March 28, https://www.stabroeknews.com/2025/03/29/news/guyana/road-that-rubio-criticized-was-not-built-by-chinese/ .]

Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali, and his new BFF. Photo courtesy Bert Wilkinson

An easy mistake for the very naive Rubio, who had never set foot in Guyana before—and even waited until he got to neighboring Suriname to criticize the road, perhaps for fear of upsetting his Guyanese host. After all, he knows next to nothing about the South American country except, perhaps, lurid fantasies about the almost unimaginable wealth projected from its offshore oil drilling—and perhaps, fleeting memories of the Jonestown massacre that occurred when he was still in short pants—and assumes if anything is substandard these days, it automatically has to be of Chinese origin.

But like his boss, who hasn’t a clue about history, ancient or recent, Marco simply doesn’t know the backstory involved, and much of what he swallows as gospel is rumor and hearsay. Not was he there long enough to tour anything else, including the six regional hospitals China is building in Guyana—or the new Demerara Harbor Bridge, China-Guyana Joe Vieria Park, and the East Coast Demerara road project.

Back in 2022 and 2023, President Ali himself had nothing but praise for Guyanese-Chinese relations as “imperishable. Inseparable ties with China have brought tremendous development gains, have brought our people closer together,” he said, saying that

… cooperation between the two countries [has] straddled almost all areas of national development, including agriculture, culture, defence cooperation, education, health, information communication technology, infrastructural development, private investment, security, sport, trade, and transportation.

[See “President Ali’s China visit,” July 27, 2023, https://inewsguyana.com/pres-alis-china-visit-chinese-company-huawei-to-establish-ict-college-research-centre-in-guyana/ .]

Remember that when he starts praising the United States to the skies …

A page back in time ... is a reader-supported publication.
To receive new posts and support my work,
consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

* * * * * * *

I am no apologist for China, a thuggish country at best that kills its own (Wyghur) people in concentration camps with reckless abandon and underwrites Russian aggression with coldhearted glee, all for the instability it causes in Western ranks. Its much-vaunted Belt Road Initiative is hardly a philanthropic enterprise, either—it is more about power and global advantage, pure and simple, with a pragmatic twist: give the people what they need, and they will follow your lead.

Given his sudden shift in focus towards Washington, Guyana’s Irfaan Ali may now be coming to regret being quite so fulsome about Chinese partnership back in the good old days. Perhaps the bills have finally come due, with compounded interest, and he is regretting the terms he once agreed to—with oil and gas revenues still lagging.

Still, Beijing’s BRI was once widely welcomed. The worldwide push to improve substandard infrastructure in struggling countries of Africa, the Caribbean, and South America, was often financed with Chinese loans, on what seemed generous terms—with a catch. That is half the story. It carried strings—China often imported its own workers—and the work itself is often substandard, especially in Africa, which Rubio holds up as proof of Xi Jin Ping’s treachery.

In all, 10 Caribbean nations—the three Rubio visited, plus Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, Grenada, Barbados, Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, and the Dominican Republic—had willingly become Belt Road clients by 2022, in part because no similar assistance was available elsewhere. [See “China heads for the Caribbean,” March 18, https://www.caribbeanlife.com/china-heads-for-the-caribbean/ .]

Irfaan Ali, in office since 2020, had been notably reticent about criticizing China or reject its investments before Rubio’s visit. Much of the work is ongoing. By 2022, Chinese investments in Guyana had already totaled more than US$3 billion, and has been enhanced significantly since then—including a much-ballyhooed upgrade of its nationwide communications network.

But according to a Jamaica Gleaner report, Ali was surprisingly eager to embrace the new Trump administration—and possibly turn his back on future Chinese investments and loans—during Rubio’s visit, telling a news conference that “Guyana would treat the US preferentially in exchange for support in development, economic expansion, security and defense.

I will say very boldly that such friends must have some different and preferential treatment because a friend who will defend me when I need a friend to defend me must be a friend that enjoys some special place in our hearts and in our country, and that will be the case. [Italics the author’s]

[See “China displeased with US, Guyana talks,” March 29, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/world-news/20250329/china-displeased-guyana-us-talks .]

In its 2022 regional report on the Caribbean, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee detailing Chinese investment and loans since 2002 to the Caribbean totaling some US$10 billion in just six countries, with Guyana in second place, “focused on the tourism, transportation, extractive metals, agriculture, and energy sectors … China is a member of both the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and an observer at the Organization of American States (OAS). … China is the third largest shareholder at the CDB with 5.6 % of overall shares.”

[See “China Regional Snapshot: The Caribbean,” https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/china-snapshot-project-the-caribbean/#:~:text=China's%20Investment%20in%20Caribbean%20Infrastructure&text=More%20than%20a%20billion%20dollars,of%20the%20Port%20of%20Kingston.&text=The%20China%20Harbour%20Engineering%20Company,gas%20from%20Trinidad%20and%20Tobago .]

In responding to Rubio’s most recent criticism, China officially cited its $1.4 billion in annual trade with Guyana and a string of major infrastructure projects that Chinese firms are undertaking, some secured by Chinese loans. [See “China bristles at growing ties,” March 28, https://apnews.com/article/china-guyana-us-rubio-oil-f41d342bbdcf39bf1ae244bfab9f2fa6 .]

Rubio discreetly made no public mention here of his recent angry rhetoric over Cuban medical missions in the Caribbean, perhaps made aware in advance of Ali’s strong feelings on the subject. Last week, before Miniscule Marco arrived, the Guyanese president stated flatly that “the presence of Cuban health workers is an essential part of the Caribbean health system,” and “I don’t see the possibility of abandoning Cuba on this issue.” [See “Guyana highlights the value,” March 23, https://www.thecubanhandshake.org/guyana-highlights-the-value-of-cuban-medical-cooperation/ .]

Even terminally witless politicians know when to shut up on an unpopular subject, apparently. But switching gears like the opportunist he is, Rubio changed the subject, reserving his sharpest criticism—this time, while still in Guyana—for neighboring Venezuela, his other bogeyman, which he accused of posing a regional threat “based on illegitimate territorial claims by a narcotrafficking regime. … There will be consequences for adventurism. There will be consequences for aggressive actions.” [See “Rubio vows stern response,” March 27, https://apnews.com/article/rubio-caribbean-guyana-migration-drug-trafficking-b9e39a83abca23e42a5e1afcfb5c574f /]

The Department of State transcript of his briefing expanded on his complete disdain for the Maduro regime in Venezuela, which he believes is about to attack Guyana’s oil-drilling projects—financed largely by U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil, and ironically, in part by China—in the offshore Stabroek zone:

It will be a very bad day for the Venezuelan regime if they were to attack Guyana or attack ExxonMobil or anything like – it would be a very bad day, a very bad week for them. And it would not end well for them.

I’m not going to get into details of what we’ll do; we’re not big on those kinds of threats. I think everybody understands, and I want it to be clear – we’ve made this clear repeatedly – I think the U.S. Navy today is making it clear and demonstrating our ability to – we have a big navy and it can get almost anywhere … in the world.

And we have commitments that exist today with Guyana. We want to build on those and expand on those. And we’ll leave it for the appropriate time … We will not allow illegitimate territorial claims to be an impediment to your dreams and to your right to develop this country into a symbol that I hope will inspire others to follow the example you set, Mr. President.

[See https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-and-guyanese-president-irfaan-ali-at-a-joint-press-availability/ .]

Not coincidentally, Rubio’s warning of U.S. backing for Guyana assumed substance the same day as his briefing, when Guyana’s government announced the start of joint naval exercises with the U.S. Navy. “The Guyana Defense Force (GDF) said the exercises, which began this week in the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), will involve the US Navy Cruiser USS Normandy and local vessels and are aimed at safeguarding Guyana’s maritime sovereignty and enhancing regional security through collaborative training. This engagement also reflects the strong and growing military-to-military relationship between Guyana and the United States,” the military stated.

[See “Guyana-US in joint naval exercises,” March 29, https://www.caribbeanlife.com/guyana-us-in-joint-naval-exercises-near-american-oil-assets/ .]

Naval exercises next door are one thing. Ground or air attacks are another. Rubio did not promise when details of such a future U.S. attack on Venezuela’s territory itself —if it persists in seeking to annex a wide swathe of Guyanese territory—would be made public. But he left open the possibility, at least, that “unclassified attack plans” might be discussed first on a future Signal group chat for China, Venezuela, and everyone else in the world to hear, especially if fellow cabinet member Pete Hegseth is involved.

Signing a military agreement to protect Guyana in a war with Venezuela is a foolhardy mission Rubio may well come to wish he had not undertaken. Guyana is the only English-speaking country on the South American continent, but beyond that, is a fair-weather friend at best, until the next elections; it has limited strategic importance, if some commercial attractiveness as a market for U.S. goods. According to the International Trade Association, the United States is Guyana’s largest trading partner—three times that of China—and the trade deficit clearly favors them. “Guyana’s largest imports from the United States are fuels and lubricants, equipment, and cement. Guyana’s major exports are oil, gold, rice, fish, timber, and sugar.” [See https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/guyana-market-overview .]

The idiotic notion that Guyana might become a U.S. state—popular in some minority minds down there—is a nonstarter. By promising to risk American lives to protect purely Guyanese interests, Miniscule Marco betrays both his gullibility and, sadly, a touch of terminal blockheadedness.

* * * * * * * *

As a “reformed” Foreign Service Officer—I walked away from the State Department in 1997—I keep my eyes out for unusual and outrageous events occurring in countries of interest to the United States, particularly those I have served in or visited. This occasionally includes analyses of U.S. actions affecting those countries, whether wise or effective—or neither, as here—and in some cases, simply puzzling.

Rubio’s shorter visit to Suriname, where I served 30-odd years ago, was marked by no complaints about the Paramaribo-to-Zanderij Airport road—a somewhat more comfortable :motorway,” if you can call it that—but was instead devoted to sucking up to another new BFF: President Chan Santokhi, facing a difficult reelection fight in May.

When I was posted in Paramaribo in 1989 and 1990, that highway was the bane of our daily existence—an hour each way, for pickups of incoming personnel and deliveries and dropoffs of departing personnel, and most dangerous at night, when almost all flights landed and bandits were not uncommon. Two of my Foreign Service colleagues were nearly killed in a nighttime ride down that road, when the sleepy U.S. driver crashed into a previously wrecked vehicle around an unlighted curve. One of our unluckier Soviet colleagues was later carjacked and shot to death while traveling alone at night on the same road—by brain-dead henchmen of Bouterse’s who wanted his Mercedes, it was later reported.

Dangerous even by day, travel back and forth from the airport at night was further complicated by the then-ongoing range war between rebel forces, led by Santokhi’s rival, current vice president Ronnie Brunswijk, and the incompetent government theoretically led by former president Ramsewak Shankar, but guided by the late former dictator and part-time drug trafficker Desi Bouterse. Commander of the Surinamese military at the time, he dismissed Shankar by telephone in December 1990, and later became president himself for a decade; he died in December of liver failure, brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse and worsened by cocaine, after being a fugitive from justice for the last year of his life.

Construction of at least part of a new airport “motorway, “ Suriname’s first—named, at least initially, in honor of Bouterse himself, before he left office in disgrace—began in 2017, and opened in May 2020. According to a United News report at the time, the highway link was “9.5 kilometres long and 30 metres wide with two lanes,” including a new bridge over the Parakreek, and “part of the national Natural Infrastructure Program.” [See “Official opening Zanderij-Afobakaweg,” May 10, 2020, https://unitednews.sr/officiele-opening-highway-zanderij-afobakaweg-op-15-maart/ .]

The road may have been improved a bit since I left, but I doubt the perennially corrupt government has been able to raise much foreign capital to extend its pitiful road network (from anyone except China) since defaulting on its massive foreign debt shortly after Generous Benefactor Bouterse was voted out in 2020. It took four years for that deal to be worked out, and the terms with China were especially humiliating.

More embarrassing, however, for Rubio is the fact—not mentioned at his brief press conference with Santokhi—that China’s spending on Surinamese infrastructure continues full apace these days: US$773 million, second only to its Jamaican projects, according to a 2023 account by Forbes Magazine. [See “China’s engagement in the Caribbean,” January 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/earlcarr/2023/01/27/chinas-engagement-in-the-caribbean-and-the-united-states-response/ .]

This figure was recently augmented by Suriname’s half of the cost of a brand-new US$236 million bridge—3.1 kilometers long—spanning the Corentyne River, between Suriname and its western neighbor, Guyana. It will be built by China Road & Bridge Corporation (CRBC), under terms of a deal announced in November, with both countries borrowing the money from China. [See “Guyana and Suriname Seal $236 Million Deal,” December 8, 2024, https://www.ctol.digital/news/guyana-suriname-china-bridge-corentyne-river-deal/ .]

Proposed design of the Corentyne River bridge. Illustration courtesy Guyana Times

China’s array of recent investments in the struggling Surinamese economy include a string of casinos in the capital and gold-mining operations in the interior, along with a huge $1.5 billion loan negotiated by Bouterse in his second term to finance, among other things, the extravagant building of low-income housing and the upgrade of Suriname’s dilapidated telephone system by Huawei, the roundly-denigrated Chinese telecommunications manufacturer, according to a report in National Interest:

While the infrastructure and mining part of Chinese economic statecraft seeks to portray a win-win approach, China maintains its more hard-nosed leverage on the country by being Suriname’s largest sovereign debt holder. … While Suriname defaulted on its debt in 2020, it was not until November 2024 that the two countries settled the matter. Under the agreement, Suriname agreed to pay off the $476 million (of which $140 million is in arrears) it owes the Chinese state-owned Exim Bank (Export-Import Bank).

According to Suriname’s debt management office, payments to China’s Exim will be paid in two tranches. Additional debt owed to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China of $68 million will be paid in one tranche. Suriname’s total debt as of December 31, 2023, was estimated at $2.7 billion.

[See “Suriname, China, and the New Cold War,” January 18, 2025, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/suriname-china-and-the-new-cold-war .]

Just in case you were curious, the national debt figure of $2.7 billion represents about 80 percent of Suriname’s current nominal gross domestic product [GDP] of $3.5 billion, according to Worldometer.org.

The ITA view of Suriname is far less promising than that of Guyana. Suriname is a “small commodity-based economy that depends heavily on the export revenues from crude oil, gold, rice, fish, timber, and bananas.” In 2022, the top import country was the United States, followed by the Netherlands, Trinidad, China and Japan. [See https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/suriname-market-overview .]

While its economic importance may yet grow, in the new oil-and-gas market, its political instability remains a huge question mark behind all speculation. What Miniscule Marco expects to be able to offer the Santokhi regime immediately is anybody’s guess—but it probably involves nothing more than extorting initial promises of investments from U.S. firms terrified of alienating the Trump administration by saying “no” to his grandiose plans for buying support from abroad.

Rubio noted that U.S. companies are not taking advantage of investment opportunities in the region, echoing similar remarks by Santokhi. “Not all the countries are showing up,” Santokhi said. “We are inviting investors. My invitation to (Rubio) was that we need the private sector of the United States.”

You betcha, Chan. Kiss our butt and we’ll send you some MAGA hats. Courtesy Associated Press

Any plans for a Huawei revamping, Guyana-style, of the telecommunications system radiating from Paramaribo may be an obstacle, however. For as Rubio warned Ali privately in Guyana, further involvement by either country with Huawei—especially its vaunted but highly suspicious 5-G wireless technology—may simply stop many American companies from investing, at least if he has anything to do with it. [On Ali’s visit to Shanghai in 2023, he confirmed that an information and communication technology (ICT) college and research center would be set up in Guyana, hinting that nationwide 5-G (fifth-generation) technology was not far behind.]

Rubio has warned for years of the danger he sees as posed by Huawei. In an October 2024 op-ed for the Miami Herald, while still a U.S. Senator, he warned Latin American countries especially “against Huawei’s 5-G technology, urging regional partners to reject its predatory tactics and seek alternatives.” Huawei’s involvement “will enable the Chinese government to infiltrate and manipulate communications infrastructure in free nations.”

In Suriname, Rubio rephrased that warning in even blunter terms. “If you’re going to have a telecommunications system that is controlled by Chinese companies, you’re going to have trouble having American investors come in. Because they don’t want all their stuff stolen. They don’t want all their stuff yanked out by some back door that the Chinese have installed in their telecommunications system.”

Santokhi, for his part, appears to have been listening closely and nodding, however reluctantly. In his closing statement at the joint press briefing, he expressed his “hope that more United States company will offer themselves and come to Suriname. We’ll offer them all the incentives, and I think Suriname is a very close country to the United States of America.

They don’t have to look for opportunities in the Far East or in Africa. Here we are. Here we have the oil and gas, and we are very happy to welcome the opportunity. We are very happy to welcome Halliburton, we are very happy to welcome Schlumberger, and we see more and more U.S. companies coming to Suriname to invest, and they are very welcome.

[See Department of State transcript, March 28, https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-and-surinamese-president-chandrikapersad-santokhi-at-a-joint-press-availability/ .]

Used to promising incentives for votes, Santokhi recently promised a check for US$750 to every citizen of Suriname, when the oil and gas dollars start rolling in. That could actually happen—one day, if not this year—but Chan Santokhi will probably not be around to pass them out if and when it starts.

* * * * * * *

If Guyana is a fair-weather friend, Suriname has only recently become a distant second, with Santokhi’s appearance on the scene after 10 years of a Bouterse-controlled parliament. The future of U.S. investments in Suriname may now hang on the outcome of the tight May parliamentary elections, which some observers predict will probably be won—either outright or in coalition with Brunswijk’s minor party—by Bouterse’s old party, the NDP, which controlled the parliament from 2010 to 2020. That means Santokhi would almost certainly not win a second term in the soon-come parliamentary election of the country’s president.

Rubio’s next visit—with a new president, conceivably either Ronnie Brunswijk or Bouterse’s widow, former First Lady Ingrid Bouterse-Waldring, both old hands at having their palms greased—may not be quite so enthusiastically received. She had no compunction about taking home $48,000 a year simply for being married to a murderer. He had no problem robbing Suriname’s ancient rain forest to sell it abroad.

Brunswijk has recently opened his campaign of pot shots at Ingrid—who disappointingly declined to invite him to her husband’s funeral—with a puzzling charge in a recent speech that “she does not behave as one might expect from a widow, but dances happily.” Maybe his real meaning was lost in translation … [See “Brunswijk criticizes the attitude of Ingrid Bouterse,” in Dutch, March 25, https://www.dbsuriname.com/2025/03/25/brunswijk-bekritiseert-houding-ingrid-bouterse/ .]

But for Ronnie, ever the clown, it is like the scum-of-the-earth drug-dealer bothering to call anyone else a pejorative name. It simply won’t stick. He has already has the market cornered on ridicule. But they don’t call it the “silly season” in America for nothing.

President-in-waiting Ingrid Bouterse-Waldring, perhaps smiling too broadly? Courtesy Facebook

Only time will tell which corrupt politician will inherit the post once held by her husband. And going forward, a warning to all well-wishers to Ingrid or anyone else: remember that corruption dies hard, in a country where a handshake often means nothing without folding money—large U.S. bills preferred—in it.

Next time: More foreign affairs in a crazy, mixed-up world