Commencement address

by
His Excellency Brigadier David Granger
President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana,
to the 2015 Graduating Class of the
William J. Perry Center of Hemispheric Defense Studies
Washington D. C., July 24, 2015.

Collective Security for Small States in the Caribbean.

Mr. Chairperson;
Director, CHDS, Mr. Mark Wilkins;
Ambassador Wanda Nesbitt, Senior Vice President, N. D. U.
Dr. Rebecca Charles, Deputy Asst. Secretary of Defence.
Professors, Lecturers and members of staff of the William J. Perry Center for
Hemispheric Defense Studies;
Ambassadors, Members of the Diplomatic Corps;
Government Officials;
Distinguished guests;
Graduating students of the Caribbean Defense and Security Course;
Friends;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
I am honoured by the kind invitation extended to me to address this
commencement ceremony. This privilege is personally gratifying because it
affords me the opportunity to return to an institution that has special
memories for me. I am an alumnus of the Center for Hemispheric Defense
Studies. I also served here as an adjunct professor from 2006. My tenure
here both as a student and staff member was extremely enriching. I
came, first, as a retired military officer. I return today as the President of the
Cooperative Republic of Guyana.

My experience here prepared me for my role as a regional leader. My

research rekindled my interest in hemispheric defense. My engagements
with faculty and students strengthened my understanding of the security
needs of the small states of the Caribbean.
I was meeting, a week ago, with President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil at a
conference of MERCOSUR, advocating there the same principles of
hemispheric integration and regional security that I was advocating here in
the classrooms of CHDS in Washington a decade earlier. It is, therefore, with
a deep sense of appreciation for the mission of this Center, faith in the
destiny of this hemisphere and my personal passion for the security of small
states that I have returned to deliver this commencement address.
I congratulate you, the graduates. I celebrate the success of this Center. I
iterate my appreciation for the Centers good work in building mutual faith
and understanding in the hemisphere. I am confident that the knowledge
you have gained here will help you to appreciate the importance of
hemispheric and regional security. I am confident, also, that you would have
gained a deeper understanding of the existential threats faced by the small
states of the Caribbean at the national, regional and hemispheric levels. In
gaining these insights, you would appreciate equally the values of national
sovereignty and international cooperation and the need for the Caribbean to
become and remain a zone of peace in a turbulent world.
We are the New World. We inherited, however, the wars of the Old World.
The Caribbean, historically, been the cockpit where extra-regional states
(America, Britain, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia and
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Spain) vicariously struggled for supremacy. The Region has endured enough
conflict. It is time to enjoy peaceful co-existence.
The William J. Perry Center of Hemispheric Defense Studies, to my mind,
has as its main purpose the need to preserve peace within and between
nations of the western hemisphere. The democratic wave that swept the
world at the end of the Cold War brought with it the notion that democratic
governments would not usually go to war with each other. The establishment
of democratic regimes, therefore, was expected to yield an important
dividend in the preservation of peace.
The Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies was born out of an expressed
demand for an institution that would provide this sort of education to both
civilian and military personnel in the post-Cold War world. The Centers role
has expanded since 2001. It now seeks to promote a deeper understanding
of the security threats faced by countries in the hemisphere and to find ways
to ensure cooperation, collaboration and coordination in achieving national
objectives. This understanding is invaluable to civilian officials and military
executives whether they come from a superpower or a small state.
Most of the states of the world are small. The majority of the students of this
course come from small states. The small state has now become the central
focus of international relations. The end of bipolar international relations
has allowed the spotlight to focus on the security of small states.
My great concern is about some of the challenges faced by small states and
how the security of small states can be guaranteed in an unequal world. The
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situation of my own country - the Cooperative Republic of Guyana - is an

example of the vulnerability of small states. Guyana at the moment is facing
a challenge to its survival by a larger state. The present threat, if not resolved
promptly, permanently and peacefully, could lead to a deterioration of the
security situation in the Caribbean and on the South American continent.
This we must avoid.
Guyana faces a threat to its territory and to its maritime zone. This threat is
not a sudden spat between neighbours about a minor rectification of a
boundary. It has persisted for fifty years. Investors have been intimidated.
Development has been derailed. Projects have been obstructed.
At issue is the principle of the sovereign right of a country to exploit its own
resources for the development of its people;

the principle of the peaceful settlement of disputes and the

resort to the use of force, threats and intimidation by a strong
state against a small state;

the principle of the inviolability of international agreements and

adherence to international law.
Small weak states are often subject to territorial threats from larger, strong
states. The small state, on the one hand, seeks to guarantee its security from
external threats. It is compelled, on the other hand, to provide for the dayto-day needs of its people. It must choose, in the context of its limited
resources, whether to spend its money on rice or rifles, guns or butter!
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The era of conquest by the conquistadores and of warfare by buccaneers,

privateers and pirates, when gunboats were instruments of international
conflict, is gone. We live in a civilized age. Small and large states must coexist
peacefully.
Guyana, for its part, is committed to ensuring that the western hemisphere
is spared any future form of armed conflict. It continues to employ the tools
of diplomacy.

It continues to seek the solidarity of the international

community in its desire to bring about a peaceful resolution to the threat to

its territory. It places its faith and its fate in the mechanisms of collective
security.
A small state threatened with aggression can appeal only to the acceptance
of the notion of collective security. It can embrace, like Guyana, important
principles in its relations with other countries. It can commit itself to noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries, to non-aggression, to
peaceful coexistence and to the non-use of force for the settlement of
controversies.
Small states in the Caribbean do not face only territorial threats. They also
face internal and international threats which can have their sources in
political and strategic objectives of foreign states. These threats can
undermine the stability and viability of the small state. They can also
escalate into terrorism thereby gravely undermining national security.
Guyana rejects all forms of terrorism and disavows its practice. We were one
of the first states in this hemisphere to have felt the pain of terrorist violence.
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Eleven Guyanese students were blown out of the sky on October 6, 1976,
when the aircraft in which they were travelling was bombed by terrorists off
the shore of Barbados, another small Caribbean state.
Transnational threats are another source of insecurity for small states. Small
states are extremely vulnerable to threats such as trafficking in illegal
narcotics, trafficking in persons and trafficking in illegal weapons. Each of
these threats, in turn, can spawn violent crime. Small states cannot hope to
combat these transnational threats by themselves. They must resort to
collective international and regional security mechanisms.

One such

partnership is the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative.

The Caribbean needs a new stronger collective security system to deal with
new security threats. This new system must include the large and medium
states and must respect the sovereignty of small states of the Caribbean.
Unless the small and weak are secure, the stronger and larger will also suffer.
The case for a collective security system for the hemisphere is convincing.
The fate of the countries of the Region must be determined by institutions
and peoples dedicated to making the western hemisphere a zone of peace.
C.H.D.S. is one such institution. You are such people. The hemisphere needs
you.
The class of 2015 can play its part in ensuring that our hemisphere is
characterized by cooperation not confrontation and conflict. I charge you to
be ambassadors of peace and purveyors of hope for this and future
generations.
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I wish you well.

I thank you.