Essequibo Crisis, January 2024. Hypothetical Scenario.

A Harpoon Commander's Edition scenario for EC2003 Battle for the Caribbean Basin Battleset and the HCDB2-170909 (or later) 1980-2025 era Platform Database. This scenario is designed with Advanced Scenario Editor and to be run with HCE 2015.008+ or later.

This scenario is designed to be played from the Blue/UK-Allied side or from the Red/Venezuela side. You should play a few times first the Blue/UK-Allied side to avoid spoilers, and only later play the Red/Venezuela side.

Image: HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) with some 617 Squadron RAF "Dambusters" F-35B on deck (And perhaps some others USMC VMFA-211 "Wake Island Avengers" F-35B out of sight) during Carrier Strike Group 21 (CSG21), the ship first operational deployment, September 22, 2021. A work by UK government file is licensed under the Open Government Licence version 1.0 and took from Wikipedia Commons.

At the end of the very convulse 2023, with the almost two years long Russian invasion of Ukraine, the new Israel-Palestine crisis started on October 7, and before the current Houthis attacks on the civilian traffic in the near seas, another latent crisis exploded.

The Maduro's socialist regime of Venezuela, almost a puppet of Cuba and with increasing bonds with Iran, attempts to overcome its usual internal crisis with the very usual move of search an external enemy.

In this case the victim is its neighbour Guyana and the frontier Essequibo region.

The terrain is impassable and Brazil supports Guyana, and the question probably will be resolved in international justice courts, too long to be explained here.

But in this hypothetical scenario Guyana requested aid from the United Kingdom, materialized in a carrier strike group steaming and showing flag in the Venezuela EEZ, keeping presence for deterrent of the Maduro's pretensions over Essequibo.

The carrier strike group is limited by the lack of Royal Navy escorts (many in the Horn of Africa) and the low availability of F-35B and pilots (because the Eastern Europe Russian invasion of Ukraine), and the Venezuelan side is tempted of prevent its passage on its EEZ. Also, US refuses to support UK in this operation because the low risks and other commercial interests.

Alea jacta est.

Enrique Mas, January 21, 2024.