The ongoing conflict between the United States and Venezuela has cast a spotlight on the urgent need for Guyana to bolster its national security, experts warn. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, in a virtual feature address at the 136th Annual Awards Presentation of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Thursday night, stressed that security is central to economic stability—a lesson particularly relevant for Guyana given its porous borders and ongoing territorial sensitivities with Venezuela.
Describing Guyana as “an exceptional bright spark” in a challenging global space, PM Mottley emphasised that “security is not cost. It is in fact the greatest investment that we can make in our economic future for the wellbeing of our citizens, because without stability, prosperity is a mirage.” She cautioned that the outdated notion of treating security as a necessary cost while assuming growth will eventually follow “is possibly dangerous,” particularly in volatile geopolitical contexts like the U.S.-Venezuela conflict.
PM Mottley has repeatedly highlighted the dangers posed by external military interventions in the region. In October, she urged Caribbean leaders to reject U.S. military strikes and extrajudicial killings of alleged drug traffickers, calling the situation “extremely dangerous and untenable.” At her party’s 86th Barbados Labour Party Conference, she warned, “As a small state, we have invested tremendous time and energy and effort in establishing and maintaining our region as a zone of peace. Peace is critical to all that we do in this region, and now that peace is being threatened, we have to speak up.”
The U.S.-Venezuela conflict poses a direct concern for Guyana, whose porous borders with Venezuela could be exploited amid escalating regional tensions. Amanza Walton-Desir, leader of the Forward for Guyana Movement and Member of Parliament, has emphasized that the unfolding situation has dire implications for Guyana, highlighting the immediate need for proactive measures to secure the nation’s territory and safeguard citizens.
International watchdogs are also expressing alarm over U.S. actions in the region. Human Rights Watch criticised recent U.S. strikes, citing potential human rights violations, and called on governments including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands to assess whether intelligence-sharing arrangements with the United States could implicate them. The organisation urged these governments to “make public any internal legal assessments as to whether the US strikes are violating international law, use their bilateral relationships to raise concerns directly with US officials, and push for individual criminal accountability for those responsible.”
While some Caribbean governments, including Trinidad and Tobago, have signalled openness to allowing the U.S.–Venezuela confrontation to unfold in the Caribbean Sea—Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar declaring that the Caribbean is Not a Zone of Peace”—Mottley’s intervention stands in sharp contrast. Her position reinforces a long-standing regional consensus that militarisation and external conflicts threaten small states disproportionately, eroding sovereignty, destabilising economies, and placing civilian populations at risk.
Mottley’s warning lands at a moment of heightened geopolitical danger, where unresolved territorial disputes, porous borders, and escalating global rivalries converge in the Caribbean basin. Her message is unmistakable: security can no longer be treated as an abstract policy debate or deferred concern. In a world where peace is increasingly fragile, safeguarding stability has become the defining investment of this era—without it, economic ambition, regional integration, and national progress collapse into illusion.
