The Great Game: right around here

Oct 21, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

(Kaieteur News) – Guyana now has more than oil in its hands. Guyana has a strain of this century’s Great Game now hanging over its head. It’s not the Great Game played out by Britain and Imperial Russia almost 200 years ago for dominance in Central Asia. Wish it was that distant, and that inconsequential for Guyana. Unfortunately, today’s Great Game is right in this neighbourhood, and it is now picking up momentum.

Even more unfortunately, the news is all despairing from here. Gone are the days of cavalry and Cossacks on horseback, or lumbering junks dotting the seas. With America and China pawing the air, circling warily around each other, and an array of sophisticated armaments being lined up on each side, in this part of the hemisphere, it’s a most uncomfortable position for Guyana. To make matters infinitely worse, Guyanese are yoked to the weakest, most dreadful, leadership in its history. The situation is ripe for Guyana to be pulled left, to be dragged right, stretched thin, then steamrolled. The PPP calls this reading the situation, and bending accordingly.