This is not the first time that the Stabroek Business has commented on official pronouncements on economic diplomacy and the specific role of the Foreign Service in pursuit of the goals of attracting external investors, creating openings for the growth of commodity markets and marketing Guyana as a haven for external investment. In the hope that oil revenues will appear to set the country on a completely different path to development (although the experiences of some countries elsewhere suggest the jury is still open on this issue) it seems that this is yet another sign that our foreign The policy outlook is expected to extend beyond the limits we had become accustomed to in the period since independence.
What Minister Todd had to say in the National Assembly recently about economic diplomacy is nothing new. Similar sentiments have been defeated by successive political administrations. What we have been given is a brief sketch of what our economic diplomacy thrust is likely to look like. It has been involved in attracting investors and marketing in overseas markets. These broad outlines have no real shape.
Oil has broadened the envisaged views of economic diplomacy and Minster Todd, in his recent National Assembly presentation, dealt with the expansion of the country’s Foreign Service to areas in the Middle East, West Asia and Africa. What appears in the expanded 2021 Foreign Ministry budget will be used to create the necessary infrastructure to enable what appears to be an expansion of the Foreign Service to anticipate what we are being told to extend our foreign policy deeper into into the field of economic diplomacy.
So far, more than two decades after the government began trumpeting the idea of economic diplomacy, there has been no real sign of building an infrastructure that enables its effective implementation, we have not moved beyond the polemics. One would have expected, for example, that the basic ‘shape’ of the Foreign Ministry would now be slightly modified to consider, first, the need to reset its recruitment policy to take into account the need to attract relevant skills to the current focus. There needs to be a much stronger indication of an intention to adjust the ‘shape’ of an Foreign Service that, historically, is oriented towards what one might call political diplomacy. The available evidence does not suggest that there has been any corresponding significant change in the structure and staff of our overseas missions over the past two decades to take into account the need to equip those anticipated support with work. aggressive economic diplomacy initiative.
What Minister Todd said on the subject of the administration’s economic diplomacy (thrust?) At the National Assembly recently does not deviate significantly from what has been said before. The difference, this time, seems to be on the slightly stronger emphasis placed on our changing economic fortunes associated with oil and gas and what would appear to be a deliberate focus on building strategic economic bridges with countries in the Middle East.
If one were to look at the economic diplomacy activities of Asian countries, for example, we are likely to see the existence of strong support structures. Although it is understood that different strands of foreign policy are firmly anchored to the overall national interest of those countries, the emphasis cannot be mistaken.
In the case of Guyana foreign policy nuts and bolts are still anchored in the tradition that formed in the immediate post-independence period and which is largely – though admittedly, not – in axioms such as holiness. state, non-alignment and the rich / poor debate in the context of the dream of a New International Economic Order. This was the period when, to a greater extent, for poor countries (such as Guyana), it was measured in the passion that views on the above issues were expressed on the international stage, let alone in many too many cases, very few came from that passion.
Economic diplomacy, therefore, constitutes a game changer for Guyana’s foreign policy. If we look, in fact, just where we are ready for effective action we are bound to quickly discover that the polemics are aside, we are still some distance from where we should be. One of the things we have failed to do so far is create and place in the public domain what one might call the blueprint of economic diplomacy that goes beyond expressing the definitions and is extend to blueprint areas for targeted realization. After all, its foreign policy is the basis aside, economic diplomacy in its real sense is as much a domestic issue as it is foreign policy.
The question also arises as to whether grabbing economic diplomacy seriously on our foreign policy agenda is, in effect, radically changing the shape of the traditional foreign service, an idea not far off when one looks on the tendency of the ‘heavy hit’ countries in Asia and Europe to create some separation between their conventional diplomatic infrastructure and business-oriented trade and economic missions with their own structures, skills and Czars. Is it not likely, for example, that investing in economic diplomacy infrastructure will create a new and powerful dimension in pursuing foreign policy that could potentially change, perhaps even diminish the role of the Foreign Ministry? Here, at the moment at least, it is much more a question of raising an issue (which is clearly worth serious consideration) than making any kind of prediction about outcomes.