In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les says the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment must main­tain a stance of neu­tral­i­ty as ten­sions brew be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela in the wa­ters off T&T, fol­low­ing the de­ploy­ment of a US naval fleet and mil­i­tary as­sets to the re­gion.

His com­ment comes days af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump de­ployed mil­i­tary as­sets to the re­gion to com­bat nar­coter­ror­ism and drug traf­fick­ing.

In­ter­na­tion­al me­dia hous­es have re­port­ed that the US has de­ployed the USS San An­to­nio, USS Iwo Ji­ma and USS Fort Laud­erdale to the Venezue­lan coast with 4,500 US ser­vice mem­bers, in­clud­ing 2,200 Marines.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Dr Gon­za­les said while he does not an­tic­i­pate a di­rect es­ca­la­tion of the sit­u­a­tion, the Gov­ern­ment must be “vig­i­lant” and re­sist any over­tures that could pull the coun­try in­to the fray.

“You have to be very cau­tious and try not to get in­volved on one side or the oth­er. You have to steer a ship of neu­tral­i­ty and non-align­ment. You main­tain good re­la­tions with every­body and try not to be a proxy of any­body and try as hard as pos­si­ble to try and get some diplo­ma­cy go­ing or ne­go­ti­a­tion go­ing be­tween two par­ties,” Gon­za­les said.

In re­sponse to the im­pend­ing in­creased US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro an­nounced that his gov­ern­ment will mo­bilise over 4.5 mil­lion mili­tia mem­bers across the coun­try to “de­fend na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.”

Gon­za­les said it was im­por­tant for lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to ob­serve from the side­lines rather than take a par­tic­u­lar po­si­tion on the mat­ter.

“We have to see how things de­vel­op and if the Amer­i­cans come to us and if they re­al­ly plan to in­vade, and let’s say they want to use Trinidad as a stag­ing area, I think they should re­sist that,” he said.

“It is some­thing we have to wait and see the in­ten­tions of the Amer­i­cans. I am not clear as to what the in­ten­tion is, but I doubt that is the in­ten­tion at this time, es­pe­cial­ly when he ma­jor­i­ty of Trump sup­port­ers are against send­ing troops to fight wars abroad.”

Mean­while, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah not­ed that the pres­ence of US mil­i­tary ves­sels in Caribbean wa­ters was not un­prece­dent­ed, not­ing there could be un­der­ly­ing mo­tives at play. He, too, urged cau­tion.

“As it is now, there is ten­sion in the at­mos­phere and we are inch­ing to­wards a con­flict zone and a con­flict zone can have se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions for every­one and I think at this time, en­gag­ing in diplo­mat­ic con­ver­sa­tions and ad­vis­ing on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pos­ture on readi­ness if some­thing goes in the oth­er di­rec­tion, is al­so part of the home­work as­pect,” Heer­ah said.

He stressed that diplo­mat­ic en­gage­ment will be crit­i­cal for Caribbean gov­ern­ments in the com­ing weeks.

Both ex­perts agree that while the im­me­di­ate threat of con­flict ap­pears low, main­tain­ing neu­tral­i­ty and strength­en­ing diplo­mat­ic chan­nels will be key to en­sur­ing that T&T does not be­come en­tan­gled in the geopo­lit­i­cal con­test.

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah con­demned the US mil­i­tary build-up in the south­ern Caribbean tar­get­ed at Venezuela.

“We to­tal­ly re­ject the so-called pre­text for this un­prece­dent­ed as­sem­bly of naval and oth­er mil­i­tary as­sets and per­son­nel as be­ing one to “deal with nar­co-traf­fick­ing,” Ab­du­lah said.

He as­sert­ed, how­ev­er, that the re­al in­tent of the de­ploy­ment of mil­i­tary as­sets was to ef­fect regime change in Venezuela.

“This is ev­i­dent by the new “boun­ty” of US$50 mil­lion to cap­ture the Pres­i­dent of Venezuela. In this re­gard, Trump and the Re­pub­li­can neo-fas­cists are lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the (Biden) De­moc­rats, as it was Biden that first put a “boun­ty” on Pres­i­dent Maduro. And this again demon­strat­ed US hypocrisy and du­plic­i­ty.”

Ab­du­lah stressed that the re­gion must re­main a Zone of Peace and called on Cari­com states to break their si­lence on the de­vel­op­ment.