Raphael John-Lall

As the US con­tin­ues its mil­i­tary buildup in the Caribbean, re­gion­al lead­ers and ex­perts are warn­ing that this can have a neg­a­tive im­pact on T&T and the rest of the re­gion’s economies.

Venezuela con­tin­ues to ramp up rhetoric against T&T as two weeks ago, its De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López sent an­oth­er strong mes­sage to T&T that mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es with the US is a po­ten­tial “ag­gres­sion” against Venezuela.

Two weeks ago, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley warned that T&T could be­come a soft tar­get should the Unit­ed States launch mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela, ar­gu­ing that the coun­try’s off­shore gas plat­forms could be among the first as­sets placed at risk.

So­cial re­searcher Dau­rius Figueira, who has pub­lished books on the en­er­gy re­la­tion­ship be­tween T&T and Venezuela, agrees with in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports that mil­i­tary ac­tion could neg­a­tive­ly af­fect the economies of the re­gion, in­clud­ing T&T.

He told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the ten­sions are caus­ing un­cer­tain­ty and this could turn off po­ten­tial in­vestors whether it is T&T or the rest of the Caribbean.

“At present, brinks­man­ship is the or­der of the day on both sides. This in it­self has dire con­se­quences for the Caribbean econ­o­my, as there is at present no cer­tain­ty of sta­bil­i­ty in the near fu­ture, there­fore why in­vest?”

He al­so com­ment­ed on the US Gov­ern­ment’s move warn­ing air­lines not to en­ter Venezuela’s air­space and the reper­cus­sions it has had so far.

Caribbean Air­lines made a de­ci­sion to tem­porar­i­ly halt flights to Cara­cas in Sep­tem­ber.

“The move to close down Venezue­lan air­space is al­ready neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing the is­lands of Cu­ra­cao and Bonaire as their con­nect­ing flights to/from Eu­rope must fly through this zone of un­cer­tain­ty, and both are heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on tourism,” Figueira said.

He warned that out­right in­va­sion of Venezuela will desta­bilise South Amer­i­ca and drag the T&T and the Caribbean in­to acute eco­nom­ic hard­ship wors­en­ing what al­ready ex­ists.

“In the event of war, T&T is a valid mil­i­tary tar­get that must be neu­tralised for the de­fence of Venezuela. The prime tar­get is our en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture specif­i­cal­ly At­lantic. T&T has made it­self a valid mil­i­tary tar­get. Mu­tu­al­ly as­sured de­struc­tion for T&T and Venezuela.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bloomberg in an ar­ti­cle dat­ed No­vem­ber 24, any mil­i­tary con­flict could dri­ve away sun-seek­ing vis­i­tors just as the peak tourism sea­son is get­ting un­der­way, with tourism jobs ac­count­ing for more than 75 per cent of em­ploy­ment in places like Aru­ba, St. Lu­cia and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

Bloomberg al­so quot­ed Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness who spoke to them on the side­lines of the G20 meet­ing in South Africa.

“We al­ways main­tain that the Caribbean is a zone of peace and we want to en­sure that it is a zone of peace. Any ac­tion that chal­lenges that or changes that view would have or could have a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on tourism.”

Oth­er Caribbean lead­ers al­so warned about a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on the re­gion’s economies.

“A hint of armed con­fronta­tion in our wa­ters re­ver­ber­ates in­stant­ly through ho­tel book­ings, air­lines, for­eign in­vest­ment and the liveli­hoods of hun­dreds of thou­sands of fam­i­lies,” An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne wrote in a let­ter to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump two weeks ago, urg­ing him to pur­sue di­a­log with Cara­cas, lo­cal ra­dio sta­tion Nice FM re­port­ed.

Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen­er­al Dan Caine met T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last week where they dis­cussed top­ics like re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty al­though no men­tion was made of Venezuela in the fol­low­ing press re­leas­es.

How­ev­er, T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter has as­sured that T&T will not be used as a launch­ing pad for at­tacks on Venezuela.

Op­tions

Venezue­lan en­er­gy writer Werther San­doval, in an ar­ti­cle dat­ed No­vem­ber 23, in the Venezue­lan dai­ly news­pa­per El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias, asked now that the Drag­on gas field project has been buried be­cause of po­lit­i­cal ten­sions with Venezuela, what will be the al­ter­na­tive for T&T’s eco­nom­ic fu­ture.

“In re­cent days, the Gov­ern­ment of the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T has been try­ing to stem the grow­ing pub­lic dis­con­tent caused by the al­ready ev­i­dent bud­get cri­sis gen­er­at­ed by the de­cline in gas pro­duc­tion, which threat­ens to wors­en af­ter Venezuela’s sus­pen­sion of joint ex­ploita­tion agree­ments for bor­der fields.”

He con­tin­ued by say­ing that the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate is be­com­ing com­plex.

“Crit­i­cism of T&T’s Gov­ern­ment’s lack of diplo­ma­cy in deal­ing with Venezuela has been com­pound­ed by com­plaints about the lack of in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the US mil­i­tary pres­ence on the is­land and oth­er do­mes­tic dis­putes like the re­vo­ca­tion of the US visa of so­cial ac­tivist Gary Aboud.

“What is Plan B? Where will they get the ad­di­tion­al gas be­tween 2026 and 2030, and be­yond, to meet in­dus­tri­al and ex­port needs?”

T&T’s en­tire in­dus­tri­al ecosys­tem, from methanol to am­mo­nia and Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG), de­pends on a sta­ble gas sup­ply, he added.

He ar­gues that the stark re­al­i­ty is that no oth­er project, whether in Guyana, Suri­name or Grena­da, will be able to re­place these re­sources with­in that time­frame.

Econ­o­mist Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian T&T would cer­tain­ly be neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed if there is a war in the south­ern Caribbean.

“Our im­ports and ex­ports as well as trav­el would be se­vere­ly af­fect­ed as both sea and air trans­port would be high­ly re­duced, if not ter­mi­nat­ed, due to the mil­i­tary dan­gers in the sea and air spaces.”

He warned that this could lead to even food and oth­er ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties be­com­ing un­avail­able.

“More­over, if we get in­volved in the war our crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture would come un­der at­tack and we may well have to do with­out wa­ter, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, ports and elec­tric­i­ty for some time. Some of our ba­sic en­ter­pris­es in oil, gas and petro­chem­i­cals could al­so be at­tacked.”

Fi­nal­ly, he said the de­gree of dam­age would large­ly be the re­sult of T&T’s en­gage­ment in any war along­side the US against Venezuela which has sig­nif­i­cant mil­i­tary ca­pac­i­ty to strike T&T giv­en the short dis­tance be­tween the two coun­tries.

“Above all, hu­man lives could be lost if Venezuela tar­gets cer­tain civil­ian ar­eas and places where our na­tion­als work. Our in­dus­tri­al spaces are quite close to our in­dus­tri­al sites so loss of life could be sig­nif­i­cant. T&T is a very vul­ner­a­ble coun­try with its heavy de­pen­dence on a few en­er­gy ex­port in­dus­tries which could eas­i­ly be de­stroyed or in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed to the point that the econ­o­my in terms of jobs and rev­enue would be se­ri­ous­ly dam­aged.”