Dear Editor,
COLUMNISTS and other opinion makers in the daily papers can say all they want about domestic politics because personal involvement provides an alibi for even the most biased and self-serving claims and propositions.
It is much harder to do this in the analysis of foreign relations because unless you have participated at the highest levels, the only other avenue for providing sensible commentary is through formal training in international relations.

You see this limitation is the elliptical offerings of GHK Lall who thinks that poetry can replace analysis.
In his KN H@rd Truths column yesterday, Reverend GHK Lall gives the impression that he is related to Christopher Columbus by supposedly “revealing” that the Unites States is a hegemonic power that seeks to press its national interests globally.
This is something every student in IR will learn on the first day of class in any respectable university.

Yet, Reverend Lall makes it sound like the major finding of a doctoral dissertation supervised by Jean-Jacques Rosseau. The sad thing, however, is that Reverend Lall does not understand that all Great Powers in history have acted much like the United States.
This is a fact, not a defense of US foreign policy. The conduct of American foreign policy is more based on the structural logic of the international system, rather than on evil spirits of the devil.

If GHK Lall wanted to offer an informed critique of American foreign policy, he could have easily drawn on the Christian Realism of someone like Reinhold Niebuhr.
Professor Niebuhr well understood the paradox of morality and power which is why he drew on Christian theology to theorise the dynamic of power in the international system, without collapsing into “self-righteous purism” (V. Paipais, 2021).
GHK Lall is one of those who believe that the Third World states (used in the spirit of Bandung here) and the peoples of the ‘South’ have no intellectual capacity to understand how great powers think.

More tellingly, he along with Janet Bulkan, Melinda Janki, and Nigel Westmaas are of the view that Third World countries like Guyana have no agency for independent action. They seem to think that only a handful of Moray House elitists can figure out what the Americans want, and how Guyana should react.

Further still, they seem to think that the praise and pat on the back they receive from NGO-class White Cosmopolitan Liberals is of greater value than the efforts expended by Foreign Minister Hugh Todd, Foreign Secretary Robert M. Persaud, and the staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Some key points in GHK Lall column are embarrassingly contradictory. Thus, while he condemns US action in Chile and Panama, only days ago he was calling for President, Dr. Irfaan Ali to emulate Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and General Musharraf of Pakistan.

The former imprisoned, tortured, and murdered thousands; the latter aided and abetted Osama bin Landen. Both received some GHK Lall approved foreign assistance. Lall appears to favour despots from the Philippines and Pakistan over those from Iran, Panama, and Chile. This is a new brand of political realism – a new raison d’ vulgaire.
Let us get back to some basics. The United States is a great power and it is behaving like one. I do not always like or condone many of the policies.

I have written extensively not only describing wrongdoings, but also contributed to the theorisation of Western dominance and hegemony. It is the same vein that I am critical of President Obama’s drone war campaign in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
At the same time, I take seriously that we live in a real world where power is not something I can wish away. I take the position that while small states can do little to repel the play of power-politics, carefully crafted engagement with sound leadership can allow us to extract resources from the regional and international system.

I do not want Guyana to become another Grenada. Do you recall Prime Minister Bishop’s challenge to the American military days before the invasion of his country? If you do not recall, he said he will be waiting for the US Army on the beaches.
He, like GHK Lall, believed that ideology is actual power. That, my friend, is extremely dangerous in a world system that is not only fraught with, but defined by, the most relentless politics of self-help.

The current world order is indeed driven by a lot of bullyism but the best option not to “suskay like a susuboy.” Rather, currently, we need to become even more rigorous in our analysis of what obtains in conduct of global governance. On a friendly note, Mr. Lall, there is no ‘h’ in Antony Blinken. Auto correct, I am sure.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Randolph Persaud