In­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts are con­fi­dent of an aver­sion of war in Venezuela amidst its on­go­ing po­lit­i­cal cri­sis.

How­ev­er, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a nu­clear weapon ex­plod­ing by er­ror can oc­cur.

With ten­sions height­en­ing fol­low­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s re­cent sanc­tion­ing Venezuela’s state-owned oil com­pa­ny PDS­VA, some are claim­ing this could trig­ger a world war be­tween the two lead­ers.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley joined a del­e­ga­tion led by Cari­com’s chair­man Dr Tim­o­thy Har­ris in New York where they held dis­cus­sions with Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res to as­sist with the cri­sis in Venezuela where the Gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has been un­der in­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure to step down, while Juan Guai­do had de­clared him­self in­ter­im pres­i­dent of Venezuela.

Row­ley ex­pressed hope fol­low­ing the meet­ing that in the not too dis­tant fu­ture there will be a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment and di­min­ish­ing of ten­sions in T&T’s neigh­bour­ing ter­ri­to­ry.

On a CNC3 pro­gramme on Mon­day ti­tled “War Watch: Eye on the Amer­i­c­as” four ex­perts—di­rec­tor of UWI In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, Strate­gic Se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant com­man­der Garvin Heer­ah, Cara­cas cor­re­spon­dent Fe­li­ciano Rey­na and di­rec­tor of the nu­clear pro­gramme at the In­ter­na­tion­al Physi­cians for the Pre­ven­tion of Nu­clear War Charles John­son— gave their views on the on­go­ing is­sues.

Rey­na ad­mit­ted that in the last few days Venezuela’s op­pres­sion had in­creased with over 800 cit­i­zens be­ing im­pris­oned, while there are 26 protest-re­lat­ed death and scores be­ing in­jured.

Gon­za­les be­lieves that the sit­u­a­tion “has come to a head.”

With T&T’s shar­ing bor­ders with Venezuela, Gon­za­les said it was not in our in­ter­est to break re­la­tions with them.

“But this can cause you some prob­lems be­cause the Amer­i­cans, for ex­am­ple, want every­body to come on their side. It is ex­pect­ed that small coun­tries like ours...our Caribbean broth­ers we don’t have much in­flu­ence in that sit­u­a­tion. We have to re­alise that we are not go­ing to de­ter­mine the out­come there.”

He felt that T&T has tak­en the cor­rect po­si­tion on the is­sue which we should stand firm on.

In con­flict is­sues, Heer­ah said the first line of de­fence for any coun­try was “self-preser­va­tion” through dis­cus­sions.

“And there­fore T&T has to en­sure that we are ex­plor­ing the is­sues in this in­creas­ing con­flict. Our air and mar­itime space must be looked at. There must be strate­gic dis­cus­sions with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and Civ­il Avi­a­tion with our air space and air space man­age­ment which are with­in our con­trol.”

He said T&T can­not match nor com­pare it­self to su­per­pow­ers of the world-the US and Rus­sia with mil­i­tary pow­er.

With both sides of the spec­trum hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant mil­i­tary pow­er, Heer­ah said for Venezuela to reach a stage of mil­i­tary ac­tion “I hon­est­ly don’t think so.”

“I think it should not and prob­a­bly won’t reach to the point of flex­ing of mil­i­tary pow­ers yet. That ex­ist out there, but will it reach to a point where there is ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to be an in­ter­ven­tion of mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion I don’t think so.”

He said who­ev­er sits in pow­er in Venezuela, one of the con­cerns for in­ter­est­ed par­ties was to tread care­ful­ly with the coun­try’s oil and gas re­serves.

“What we should be hear­ing from our de­ci­sion mak­ers is do or have we con­sid­ered a plan to evac­u­ate our cit­i­zens in Venezuela should this thing reach to a point where we have to evac­u­ate our cit­i­zens to safe ground in T&T,” Heer­ah said.

John­son said in­ter­na­tion­al law states that nu­clear weapons are il­le­gal to use ac­cord­ing to a World Court rul­ing.

“But they left a large ex­emp­tion...if na­tions be­lieve that their sov­er­eign­ty is in dan­ger they are al­lowed to use the nu­clear weapons ac­cord­ing to the court de­ci­sion.”

Asked what are the chances of Venezuela’s po­lit­i­cal ten­sion turn­ing in­to a war us­ing nu­clear weapons, John­son ad­mit­ted that the sit­u­a­tion was not tense as the Cuban mis­sile cri­sis, where the US and So­vi­et Union were in con­flict with one an­oth­er.

“This is more of a sit­u­a­tion of prox­ies with­in Venezuela that is be­ing sup­port­ed by Rus­sia and Unit­ed States.”

John­son point­ed out that many ves­sels built by the US and Rus­sians have dual ca­pa­bil­i­ties (they can use con­ven­tion­al and nu­clear weapons.)

As it stands nei­ther the US nor Rus­sia, John­son said, are bound to dis­close whether or not they car­ry nu­clear weapons and no coun­try in the world aside from New Zealand has a “Nu­clear Free Zone.”

This in it­self in­creas­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of weapons be­ing launched in er­ror.

He said the chance of a nu­clear weapon ex­plod­ing by er­ror can oc­cur.

“There have been a num­ber of cas­es over a decade in which the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing of an old­er weapon or some com­put­er er­ror has caused a sit­u­a­tion where a nu­clear weapon has mal­func­tioned and near­ly launched a nu­clear war.”