Guyana-Venezuela Border Dispute, Missile Defense Base in Poland, DRC Elections, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, tensions are rekindled between Venezuela and Guyana over a territorial dispute, a U.S. missile defense base becomes operable in Poland, and the Democratic Republic of Congo holds general elections against many odds. It's December 14th, 2023 and time for The World Next Week.

I am Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. So Bob, let's start ... Actually, let's start in Saint Vincent.

MCMAHON:
I'd love to.

ROBBINS:
I know the weather's going to be better there. Today, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Guyana's President Irfaan Ali meet in Saint Vincent, and they're going to discuss this very longstanding border dispute. Venezuela has claimed sovereignty over a significant region of Guyana—about two-thirds of Guyana's territory—and this dispute dates back to the nineteenth century. So why is Maduro now threatening to annex this region, and how seriously should we take this? Is there a danger of a military confrontation?

MCMAHON:
Well, on the last part, we'll get a real sense of that at this meeting in Saint Vincent. The fact that they fairly readily agreed to this meeting, and there are some powerful, as well as concerned, neighbors who are normally friendlier towards Venezuela involved means that maybe this is going to be a path to deescalating this dispute since it has been, as you said, so long percolating. And as for why it is occurring now, those who are most familiar with Venezuela and domestic situations say there's a clear line between the surfacing of this and the prioritizing of this by the Maduro government at this time because of a Venezuelan election cycle that's playing out and what seemed to be really strong signs that opposition forces seem to be poised to do quite well. Our colleague Will Freeman has a YouTube Short take on this on our YouTube channel where he just points to the fact that there's various crackdowns already underway against opposition forces after the strong showing of an opposition candidate and a very strong turnout, by the way, for a primary vote a little bit more than a month ago. That turnout was a lot higher than the turnout for this referendum that Maduro called hastily about seizing this large portion of Guyana. That turnout was estimated about 50 percent. 

And so, it's very much Maduro trying to fire up a nationalist base, a nationalist cause, and sort of portray the opposition as against the interests of Venezuela. And so, I think that's a big part of it. And again, that's why I sense that there might be an opportunity to ratchet down the tensions in the talks taking place in Saint Vincent today. But it's not clear because this is, at the end of the day, existential for the Maduro regime, and he's shown a willingness to pull out many stops to stay in power.

ROBBINS:
And how much of this is about oil? I gather that ExxonMobil announced in October that it had made a significant discovery of oil and gas in this region, although nobody's saying how much because maybe they don't want to make it even more tasty for Venezuela.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, so back in 2015, 11 billion barrels of oil were discovered off the coast of Guyana by ExxonMobil. And already Guyana has shown some sort of a spurt of economic activity and a real sense that it's got some resource riches that it can parlay into, you know, badly needed help for infrastructure and other domestic needs. And to be sure, Venezuela could use that revenue from the resource riches of the area. Venezuela itself possesses what are believed to be the world's greatest reservoirs of oil, of untapped oil, and yet they have so mismanaged their oil sector in the last decade plus that they are able to extract a portion of what they have from the ground in any sort of usable way. So it could be a ... Certainly that's an appeal to what Venezuelans know and can fasten onto, which is a lifeline back to economics, some sort of economic security.

Again, just to recast Venezuela's domestic situation, its economic situation, is appalling. Millions of people have fled the country. We've seen an increasing number of Venezuelans come into the United States, for example. To such an extent that the U.S.—for a variety of reasons, including that influx—has taken a renewed interest in trying to deal with Venezuela and trying to contribute to some sort of political normalization in the country. And there was a hope that the holding of elections that could be in some way said to be free and fair would be a way from which the U.S. could then reengage with Venezuela. That's looking very cloudy right now, Carla. And so ... which all gets us back to this dispute with a neighboring country over two-thirds of its territory. There's a lot at stake here, and a lot of it seems to be domestic on the Venezuelan side.

ROBBINS:
So forgive me, do I have this right? I mean, Guyana's got like, what, 800,000 people in it? Or something like that. And Venezuela's got, what, 28 million? When I ask this question about whether there was a possibility of a military confrontation, I mean, it's like Staten Island versus the United States or something like that. I mean, who's on Guyana's side in this?

MCMAHON:
Well, among the countries that voiced immediate concern was Brazil. Brazilian President Lula has been sort of outspoken in supporting the Venezuelan government despite its many problems and its many abuses. And for him to come out and say, "Wait a second, what's going on here?" and to sort of activate Brazilian security forces in the process is a sign of how serious it takes this threat and it takes the threat to Guyana. The U.S. is active in the area. You could expect some sort of U.S. involvement potentially if there was some sort of dramatic Venezuelan military move, just for starters, Carla. But I think, again, today's talks are hoped to be a chance to ratchet down or to gauge how serious Venezuela is about what it's claimed and it's, you know, the holding this referendum and so on. So yeah, there's regional concern. Guyana has people on its side at this point, and I think Venezuela would be facing more than just a tiny Staten Island-sized force against it.

ROBBINS:
Which is not to say anything bad about either Guyana or Staten Island. So hold off on those emails.

MCMAHON:
Indeed. And Staten Island, we should note, does not possess any offshore riches beyond the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, I think.

ROBBINS:
Nothing that we've mentioned.

MCMAHON:
Carla, let's move our discussion to Europe. Poland's prime minister has announced a new U.S. missile defense base will be operable this Friday. This airbase in northern Poland, which I'm not going to be able to pronounce, will be the second U.S. AEGIS system to be built in Europe and part of a strengthening of U.S.-Polish relations. The stated intention is to counter missiles that could be coming from Iran and ... Although it's incited a lot of concern, including from Russia. How does this defense base work, and will it be a deterrence in practice?

ROBBINS:
So Bob, missile defense is another of my favorite tech nerd topics. So I leapt at the chance to talk about this one. So as you said, this is the second American missile defense site in Eastern Europe. And the first one was in southern Romania, and it opened in 2016. And together along with a radar system in Turkey and missiles on U.S. Navy ships and a command center I think in Germany, its system is supposed to stop short and medium range ballistic missiles launched from Iran. It's what's called a "mid-core system"—supposed to stop them, actually, when they're up in space as they're coming down. And it's a complex system. And unlike the National Missile Defense System, these systems are actually supposed to be reasonably effective, although this one, thank God, hasn't been tested. I think the really important issue here is this political significance of this opening. The U.S. and NATO insist that it is completely defensive, that it is focused on Iran.

The interceptors contain no explosive and not supposed to intended to hit ground targets. It lacks the software to do this and that even the most effective missile defense system would be quickly overwhelmed by the Russian arsenal. And that's really the point of concern here is that the Russians ... Ever since this was announced, Moscow has charged it as a direct threat to its own security, claiming that these bases could either be used to shoot down Russian missiles, threatening their nuclear deterrent, or it's actually some sort of secret Trojan horse to fire offensive missiles from what used to be Warsaw Pact territory from NATO. And President Trump didn't make this any easier when in a typically braggadocios way he declared the system would, "Detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States."

The U.S. decision to push ahead with missile defenses from the beginning of the Bush administration has made the Russians completely nuts. It infuriated Putin and became part of his justification of declaring war in Ukraine. And the fact that this base, particularly the Russian base, is just one hundred kilometers from Kaliningrad has added to its propaganda value. Now you know I have no sympathy at all for the Russian justifications for invading Ukraine, but it's important to remember the arc of this argument. And in the weeks leading up to the invasion, Putin was demanding a full renegotiation of the entire post-Cold War architecture, including a pullback of U.S. troops from NATO territory in Eastern Europe, pullback of NATO weaponry, and shutting down these bases. So that's why this matters as much as anything having to do with Iran.

MCMAHON:
Have we had any recent comment from Russia about this move to operability here? Or they pretty much said our position's well known and be careful?

ROBBINS:
Not that I've seen. These base systems itself has gone through a variety of iterations. It was a much more ambitious one under Bush. Obama tried to sort of make it smaller to be less threatening to the Russians. And in the weeks before the Ukraine invasion, the U.S. and NATO offered to discuss some unspecified transparency mechanism with Moscow to persuaded it that the system really did pose no threat to their deterrent or that it really actually wasn't an offensive basing system. But it was really too little too late. And I don't think anything could change Putin's mind on this. 

You know, this ... Ever since the decision to pull out of the ABM Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, only two years into Putin's reign, he's been really obsessed with missile defense. And he's been really obsessed with NATO expansion. So could you change his mind about any of these things? Probably not. And it really has built up and built up and built up. So I think so far into this at this point, it's just part of the bill of particulars.

MCMAHON:
You know, it's occurring at a time—something else we've discussed on this podcast—which is the unraveling of the whole arms control architecture and engagement between the two countries. To what extent did they have the ability to kind of ramp back up into any kind of a dialogue to at least, you know, send across the transom assurances about behavior and intentions and things like that? I mean, this is kind of worrisome on a bunch of levels, Carla.

ROBBINS:
There are all sorts of people who are arms controllers who make a very legitimate argument, which is even in the midst of a near-hot war with Russia that you have to keep this process going because you still have all these nuclear weapons here. But the beginning of the conflict with, you know, with Ukraine, Putin said that he was going to suspend participation in the last START Treaty. Although he went out of his way to say that he wasn't going to be mounting more weapons there. But they have suspended verification. And that itself is very scary because we don't know what the other side is doing. The potential for miscalculation, the political arguments for new arms races, all of those things are there. So at some point we're going to have to get back to talking to the Russians about these things. But this has been hanging over the Ukraine conflict.

Have we self-deterred too much because we were afraid that the Russians were going to potentially use a tactical nuclear weapon? It's always there every step of the way. And certainly, I think missile defense at this point is probably the lesser of the concerns, but it is one of the original splits between Putin and the West. I don't blame the West for all of the sins that Putin has committed. Putin, of course, blames the West for what he's done; "Stop me before I kill again." But I think Bush's decision to pull out of the ABM Treaty was certainly one of the early moments leading to Putin's paranoia.

MCMAHON:
And then meanwhile in the justification from the U.S. side for the Polish location, there had been, certainly in its early days, a legitimate concern about Iran's capability in the missile realm. Does it pose any serious deterrence to Iran?

ROBBINS:
You know, I'm a missile defense skeptic, certainly national missile defense skeptic. I don't know how good this technology is. I'm not good enough on the tech to do it. There's no question that North Korea is building up its ballistic missile technology, no question that Iran is fed by Russian technologies, been building up its ballistic missile technology. And if one could really build a shield against the smaller countries, countries with limited technological capability, that would be great. 

The reason why the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was signed in 1972, was put in place was the notion that mutual vulnerability was going to be the ultimate deterrence. And interestingly enough, the U.S. spent billions of dollars, $5.7 billion in the early 1970s, to build a small missile defense system in Langdon, North Dakota. I've actually been there. And then scrapped it the second it was open because the Russians put in ... You know, they MIRV-ed their system. They put these multiple reentry vehicles, these multiple warheads because they realized that the Russians could overwhelm any system that we built and decided it was pointless, that these systems themselves were an invitation to an even larger arms race.

So I think when you talk about national missile defense, which has been a favorite of large numbers of people on the hill, I think this is a pipe dream. But theater missile defense? Probably not a bad idea, certainly when you see how many including non-state actors have been developing missile systems. So theater missile defense probably a good idea but also leading to potentially larger regional arms races.

MCMAHON:
Fair enough. And kudos to you for resurrecting the acronym "MIRV," Carla. I haven't heard that one in a while.

ROBBINS:
I told you, I can nerd out anytime you want on the podcast. 

So Bob, the Democratic Republic of Congo holding presidential elections on December 20th. There are currently—this is an incredible number—twenty-two presidential candidates, including the incumbent President Felix—and I'm going to try to pronounce this correctly—Tshisekedi, who is running for his second and final term. His 2019 victory has marked the country's only peaceful transition of power. Is this going to be a free and fair election? And here's something that really fascinates me about this, which is with twenty-two candidates, there's no runoff? So whoever wins the first round becomes the next president. So how do you have legitimacy under those conditions?

MCMAHON:
Lots at stake. As you said, it was just coming off a previous election that was the first peaceful transition of power. So it's a work in progress, the democracy in Congo. But a lot of Congo watchers say simply the fact that the Tshisekedi administration sticking with the timeline of a December 20th election is significant, especially given that his predecessor, Joseph Kabila, put it off for a very long time and ended up leading Congo for close to eighteen years. So Tshisekedi is keeping to the schedule. As our colleague Michelle Gavin points out in a piece on our website, he's working with the power of incumbency, which is quite significant anywhere but especially in Africa. And that the pre-electoral playing field is not a level one. There has already been instances of political violence and politically motivated prosecutions. The U.S. watchdog group Freedom House, which keeps an eye on country's functioning and governance, has scored DRC at only four points out of a possible forty for political rights.

And there's a good deal of a concern about the voter registration process, as well. So all of that and the fact, as you say, there's no runoff. It's all, you know ... who ever gets past it, wins it all. Does seem to strongly indicate we're going to have the incumbent rolling over into a second term. There are going to be observers, including the U.S.-based Carter Center has a team on the ground, the African Union, and an organization called the National Episcopal Conference of Congo and the Church of Christ in Congo, which are Protestant and Catholic-affiliated organizations, have missions as well. And they are important because they have a great deal of credibility in the country. 

Again, this is a gigantic country. It's worth noting. It is the size of Western Europe. It is 100 million people that runs from the border of Uganda to the Atlantic Ocean. And it's got an ongoing conflict that's centered in the East that has created a lot of insecurity. There are some areas that are simply not going to be able to vote because of the insecurity. There's a UN peacekeeping mission, the largest in the UN system, that is still there. Although it could be winding down if we have Tshisekedi coming into a second term. And that's keeping the peace in places like North and South Kivu and Ituri provinces. And there's about 7 million displaced Congolese as well. 

So it is a logistical challenge to say the least. This is not only presidential voting and all the candidates you mentioned, but it's also for the country's legislature. It's for local candidates as well, which is a new thing for Congo, for DRC. So it's a major democratic test and achievement in and of itself to hold these with any sort of feasible degree of free and fairness, being among the things that are being tested here. But I think we look for the incumbent, and then we see whether Congo is able to continue to pursue some sort of a steady path towards consolidating its democracy.

ROBBINS:
And when we talk about the advantages of incumbency, is it because he's actually delivered or is it because he's just got the playing field on his side?

MCMAHON:
You know, some of the reports I've seen from the African media are that ... They often use the term "mixed record." So he very much has committed to bread-and-butter issues like education, for example, and providing healthcare. And maternal healthcare was something he focused on, for example, and delivered to some extent on. Primary education, he's expanded the availability of that and other education. The level and the quality of education in the DRC is seen as highly inadequate. So he needs to follow through on that and improve that. It is among the world's most impoverished countries. Something like at least 60 percent of the country survives on $2 a day. The other thing that often gets mentioned with Congo is the resource riches. It is staggeringly wealthy in resources, and it's the resources of the future as well: cobalt, as well as uranium, as well as copper. You name it. There's a giant list of resources that it is valuable for. It is why these elections are being watched with a great deal of interest, not just in the region but internationally because a lot of countries would like to continue to do business and mine in DRC. 

It also possesses one of the three most important rainforest systems in the world, by many environmentalists' account, and they would value that staying intact as much as possible. We've talked a lot about how important Brazil's Amazonian rainforest is and Indonesia's as well. Congo's another really important one, sort of "lungs of the earth" aspect and so the stewardship of that. So those are big picture items, but the Congolese themselves need to have some sort of translation of its natural riches into putting food on the table. And that's something that Tshisekedi was going to have to work on. And we'll see whether he's able to come out of this with any sort of a mandate. Again, assuming he wins at the polls on the 20th.

ROBBINS:
We'll see how long that takes to count something like that.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think the counting is going to be an important thing to watch. I should also note, Carla, I forgot to mention that of all those candidates running, the one to keep an eye on is Moïse Katumbi. He's the former governor of Katanga province. He's got a significant political following. And so to the extent you see any sort of closeness in tallying numbers, he's likely to be the one giving Tshisekedi his strongest challenge.

ROBBINS:
And he owns a football team.

MCMAHON:
Doesn't hurt when you own a football team. 

Well, Carla, we've been talking about numbers, and it's time to talk about figures, as in the audience figure of the week. This is the figure that listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. This week, Carla, our audience selected, "Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Goes Missing." Why is this a significant development on our figure of the week front?

ROBBINS:
Well, it's a pretty disturbing story. So Navalny, as everybody knows, is the anti-corruption campaigner and Putin's best-known opponent and a man who has the ability to bring thousands of people into the street in Russia. He's been in prison since January of '21 when he returned home from Germany against all sorts of people who warned him this was going to happen. And he was ... had been recuperating in Germany after being poisoned with Novichok and a poisoning that everyone attributes to the Kremlin. And last August, he was sentenced to nineteen years on charges of extremism, which is in addition to the eleven and a half years he was already serving for fraud and other charges, of course, charges he denies. And on Tuesday, the government postponed yet another trial, this one for alleged vandalism after he failed to appear in court. And his political supporters say they have not had contact with him since.

Those supporters also say they've been given a variety of explanations for Navalny's disappearance, including electrical problems at the prison colony where he was being held some two hundred kilometers east of Moscow. They were told he was being moved to an unspecified location, to his having left the prison colony. And Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the administration, "Has no opportunity," to follow the fate of any individual inmate including Navalny. Pretty extraordinary, like, "Not our problem!" Navalny's team's also said that in a recent week that he had become ill and had been put on an IV by prison staff, which is pretty chilling.

So what makes the timing of this even more suspect, suspect upon suspect, is that last Friday, Putin announced he's running for a fifth term in March. And Navalny also had rolled out a new website, or his people had rolled out a new website, called "Russia without Putin," urging Russian citizens to distribute as much information as possible about Putin's many crimes and calling on everyone, to each individual, to persuade ten voters to turn out and vote against Putin. So he was very much in Putin's face. Spokesman for Navalny's political group said that there were some thirty prisons, special prisons where they thought Navalny could be being held right now. And the spokesman added, "There's nothing stopping them from hiding him for as long as they want."

MCMAHON:
Yeah, it's looking particularly grim, and we've seen variations on this story before as his condition has worsened and the Russian government has disassembled and continued to layer on charges. There is a long list of individuals they saw as threats that have been part of this. And it's also a reminder, you mentioned he came back willingly to the country, that you cannot underestimate the courage of somebody like Navalny. He knew he was going to be thrown into prison and mistreated. And he had all sorts of information that he had already been sharing in his recuperation from Germany about Putin, about Putin's graft and about the attempt to poison him. He had sort of exposed all sorts of depravity and was showing an ability to really troll the Russian government that was very effective, and yet still came back to the country. And it's going to serve the government's purpose to have him out of the way finally and move on and continue to control the narrative.

The question is whether there's anything left in the event there's a post-Navalny opposition phase in Russia, what that means and what kind of international reaction even matters and what sort of reaction it does stir up at this point.

ROBBINS:
Well, we don't know if we're yet in a post-Navalny. He could be suddenly discovered. Certainly, the EU and the United States and lots of people are demanding that they find him. And I think the thing that fascinates me about this, as chilling as it is, is Putin feeling that insecure? He certainly doesn't come across as someone who's insecure. He did another one of his annual press conferences today and was swaggering all over the place, not backing down in Ukraine or on anything else. Why would one man make him that nervous? 

Certainly, I would be nervous if I were him. They're not doing all that well in Ukraine, and they're losing lots of people. He doesn't have an independent press. He doesn't have an organized political opposition. He seems have his ... control the oligarchy, and he seems to have gotten through and been talking about this a lot. He seems to be... Sanctions are biting, but not enough. So why would one man make him that nervous? And dictators, I suppose, don't sleep well at night. And Navalny seems to have really gotten under his skin. So let's hope he resurfaces. But I think it says something really interesting about Putin, that he's perhaps not as secure as he appears to be.

MCMAHON:
No, that is worth watching. If you look at lots of the benchmarks of Russian society right now, they are pretty fragile actually, even with the kind of boastful signaling that he gave at his news conference and the appearance of the wavering coalition, pro-Ukrainian coalition in the West. Still, in all, Russian society is at a weak place. And we don't know a lot of it. "We" being the general public that used to get more reliable reports out of Russia, because it's been so closed off. But it could be another signal that he was sensing a real threat and finally had moved against Navalny in a more complete way. But yeah, we'll have to see how he pursues his reelection and who shows up to vote during this campaign coming up in the spring. But it's a pretty grim time for Russia.

ROBBINS:
One, and this is watch the space ... One, perhaps slightly more hopeful statement out of Putin, although you can read it in different ways, is he suggested potentially that he was maybe ready to negotiate with the Americans about Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained wrongly, as well as Paul Whelan. But there don't appear, although I haven't read the transcript, I've just read the highlights, any discussion of the RFE/RL reporter, Alsu Kurmasheva. So we are thinking of all of them, of Evan, Paul Whelan, and also in hoping that at the very least that there's a strong pressure from the United States to get them all out. And let's hope that Navalny reappears soon.

MCMAHON:
Indeed. And that's our look at The World Next Week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Tokyo is hosting the ASEAN Japan Commemorative Summit. Parliamentary elections take place in Serbia. And also not to be overlooked, Carla, the Daytime Emmy Awards are being announced.

ROBBINS:
I really wanted that to be our audience figure of the week.

MCMAHON:
And finally, next week's year-ender episode is going to be dropped on The World Next Week. It's The World Next Year.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at [email protected]. Publications mentioned in this episode as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Sinet Adous and Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. And special thanks to Kaitlyn Esperon for her research assistance. And Kaitlyn, thanks for everything you've done for us in these past months. We're really going to miss you. Our theme music is provided by Markus Zakaria. And this is Carla Robbins saying so long and not only are we going to have our special year-ender episode, we're going to have a special guest. So tune in.

MCMAHON:
Yes, and we'll keep that a secret until next week. This is Bob McMahon saying goodbye. And as always, be careful out there.