Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has used the op­por­tu­ni­ty of the 50th Cari­com Sum­mit to re­it­er­ate her Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion in sup­port of the in­ter­ven­tion of the Unit­ed States in the Caribbean Sea, al­leged­ly against drug traf­fick­ing.

In a fight­ing man­ner, the PM il­lus­trat­ed and de­fend­ed her po­si­tion that the US bomb­ing of craft and peo­ple has brought great re­lief to Trinidad and To­ba­go's crim­i­nal in­fes­ta­tion, while mak­ing it clear that she is un­apolo­getic about her sup­port for the US in­ter­ven­tion.

In fact, she told those gath­ered for the meet­ing in Bas­seterre, St Kitts yes­ter­day, “I would wel­come them (US mil­i­tary craft) again.”

It was clear­ly the in­tent of the PM to get that mat­ter off her chest, even if it rubbed many the wrong way. There are those, though, who must have hoped that the re­state­ment was not ac­com­pa­nied by provoca­tive con­tentions.

“Who vex loss,” she said as she dou­bled down on her sup­port for the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in a room where the pres­ence of the US mil­i­tary in the South­ern Caribbean had sharply split opin­ion over the past cou­ple of months.

Yet the Prime Min­is­ter in­sist­ed that, from her per­spec­tive, there is no such thing as a 'Caribbean Zone of Peace'.

Fur­ther along the line of the right and ef­fi­ca­cy of Cari­com states to take in­di­vid­ual po­si­tions in sup­port of their sov­er­eign in­ter­ests, Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness ar­gued that the Cari­com in­te­gra­tion move­ment does not re­quire com­pul­so­ry to­geth­er­ness in for­eign pol­i­cy mat­ters. More­over, he does not see the hold­ing of vary­ing po­si­tions by mem­ber states as be­ing “de­struc­tive to re­gion­al­ism.”

In fact, he con­tend­ed that Cari­com is “an as­so­ci­a­tion of in­de­pen­dent states, bound not by uni­for­mi­ty, but by shared pur­pose, mu­tu­al re­gard and a deep his­to­ry of col­lab­o­ra­tion” and that mem­bers of the re­gion­al group­ing are, “each ac­count­able to our own elec­torates [and] we will, at times, as­sess risks dif­fer­ent­ly, se­quence pri­or­i­ties dif­fer­ent­ly, or in­ter­pret geopo­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties dif­fer­ent­ly.

“That is not ev­i­dence of the weak­ness of our as­so­ci­a­tion. This is the nat­ur­al ex­pres­sion of sov­er­eign democ­ra­cies nav­i­gat­ing an in­creas­ing­ly tur­bu­lent glob­al en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.

More im­por­tant­ly, the Ja­maican PM made it clear, though, that the back­log of work re­lat­ing to the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my is the ma­jor chal­lenge ahead. What is need­ed “is a more func­tion­al CSME as es­sen­tial to build­ing re­silience, rais­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and en­sur­ing that Caribbean en­ter­pris­es can thrive in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive glob­al econ­o­my.”

That is the ma­jor work for the lead­ers to en­gage in when they have all of­floaded their bur­dens of dif­fer­ences with each oth­er.

Look­ing ahead to the fi­nal con­fer­ence com­mu­nique, we will there­fore be in­ter­est­ed to see what the pri­or­i­ties for Cari­com are in this re­gard.

Al­so, what will be the re­gion’s po­si­tion on Cu­ba, giv­en that there was lit­tle of con­se­quence said at the open­ing on the im­me­di­ate sit­u­a­tion with Cu­ba and its peo­ple be­ing once again made to suf­fer from an­oth­er US ini­tia­tive, the stop­ping of en­er­gy sup­plies to Ha­vana. It is one thing to is­sue ex­pres­sions of con­cern for the Cuban peo­ple; an­oth­er to of­fer as­sis­tance. Cana­da and Mex­i­co are send­ing en­er­gy sup­plies to Ha­vana. What is the Caribbean to do?

Al­so, there is the out­come of the meet­ings of the Cari­com lead­ers with the US Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, to be con­tem­plat­ed.

All of that will ul­ti­mate­ly bring the re­gion­al lead­ers to the point of re­al­i­ty: the sur­vival of in­di­vid­ual small states in a world of big pow­er re­al­i­ties.