As the war of words between Guyana 🇬🇾 & Venezuela 🇻🇪 threatens to turn into a very real conflict it is interesting to look at both their respective national & US diaspora populations as the U.S. will likely be the most decisive foreign actor in determining how things turn out. Venezuela has more than 30M people and is thus far more than an order of magnitude larger than Guyana’s tiny ~750,000 people. 400,000 Guyanese live in the US (that’s more than half the number of Guyanese in Guyana!). By contrast 800,000 Venezuelans call the US home. However, diaspora politics may not matter as much as in previous conflicts as most Venezuelans have no love for their government (even if they do think Essequibo is Venezuelan) and thus they will not raise much political pressure stateside. Guyanese OTOH may attempt to exert pressure on the US government to intervene. But this is yet to be seen.