With Pompeo Trip, Oil Boom Raises Focus on Guyana, Suriname
With Pompeo Trip, Oil Boom Raises Focus on Guyana, Suriname
"For him to go to both of these countries is extraordinary and shows that something big is happening," AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth said to AFP on Secretary Pompeo's trip to South America.
Mike Pompeo on Thursday becomes the first US secretary of state to visit Guyana and Suriname as the discovery of oil fuels a sudden new interest in the small South American nations...
"I used to work at the State Department and getting any secretary of state to travel anywhere in Latin America and the Caribbean was a heavy lift," said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas.
"For him to go to both of these countries is extraordinary and shows that something big is happening."...
Farnsworth cautioned that Guyana and Suriname were unlikely to be major priorities for China, considering how far away they are.
But he said that greater US engagement in its own hemisphere would send a message at a time that Washington is in an increasingly global competition with China.
"As we've seen, China tends to take advantage and extend activities until there is some pushback. It's a bit of a feeling-out process," he said...
