PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Prof Andy Knight is warn­ing that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may be on the wrong side of his­to­ry amid push­back from the US Con­gress against mil­i­tary strikes on boats leav­ing Venezuela in the South­ern Caribbean Sea.

It was re­port­ed that Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors Tim Kaine and Adam Schiff, on Fri­day, in­tro­duced a War Pow­ers Act res­o­lu­tion to block the use of US Armed Forces to en­gage in hos­til­i­ties against cer­tain non-state or­gan­i­sa­tions fol­low­ing mul­ti­ple unau­tho­rised mil­i­tary strikes on un­ver­i­fied al­leged drug traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions in the South­ern Caribbean Sea.

The Prime Min­is­ter had stat­ed she ful­ly sup­port­ed US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s stance against drug traf­fick­ers af­ter it was re­port­ed that a drone strike killed 11 peo­ple aboard a boat on Sep­tem­ber 2. There were sub­se­quent lethal strikes on Sep­tem­ber 15 and 19.

“Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is, I think, on the wrong side of his­to­ry right now,” said Prof Knight, who is the pro­fes­sor of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­ber­ta and for­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in St Au­gus­tine.

He said, “He is not even con­sult­ing with his Con­gress over acts of war. And that’s a very im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge for him. I think that sup­port­ing Trump pos­es sig­nif­i­cant risks to the Caribbean as a re­gion. First of all, it’s an undiplo­mat­ic way of deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion with Venezuela. It turns for­mer friends in­to en­e­mies.”

Prof Knight not­ed that most Cari­com lead­ers did not take such a po­si­tion, as the re­gion would not ben­e­fit from be­ing turned in­to a war zone.

He said, “None of the Caribbean coun­tries seems to be will­ing to sup­port Trinidad on this is­sue. It turns the Caribbean in­to a zone of war, as op­posed to a zone of peace. And I think this is some­thing that we need to be very care­ful about, be­cause pro­duc­ing re­gion­al in­sta­bil­i­ty in the Caribbean re­gion is go­ing to be a neg­a­tive for the re­gion, and for what? Just to cur­ry favour with a per­son who is known not to be loy­al to you.”

As for the ac­tion by the US Sen­ate, the pro­fes­sor stressed the US Pres­i­dent’s ac­tion had not re­ceived ap­proval from Con­gress.

“What he’s do­ing has not been ap­proved by Con­gress, and any act of war has to be ap­proved by Con­gress; oth­er­wise, it has to be con­sid­ered an un­de­clared war. So when the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment calls for a UN in­ter­ven­tion, I think that’s the ap­pro­pri­ate thing to do, giv­en that this is an un­de­clared war. There have been ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of at least 14 in­di­vid­u­als on those boats,” said Prof Knight who ques­tioned if this was a valid tac­tic to ad­dress the is­sue of drug traf­fick­ing.

“Drug traf­fick­ing is not at war against the Unit­ed States. If there is drug traf­fick­ing and you want to deal with it, there’s an ap­pro­pri­ate way to deal with this: have a stan­dard in­ter­dic­tion op­er­a­tion, ar­rest the in­di­vid­u­als, get the drugs that have al­leged­ly been traf­ficked, and have the per­sons ar­rest­ed and tried in the court, have them de­fend them­selves in court,” he said.

He urged Cari­com to take a more de­ci­sive stand on the is­sue as well.

“We need to sort of call it out for what it is. And it is about time that Cari­com and the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States work close­ly with the Unit­ed Na­tions and per­haps have some sort of in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what the Unit­ed States is do­ing,” he said.

“I think this is about time that we put an end to what I con­sid­er to be a reck­less, non-trans­par­ent op­er­a­tion with no proof that these in­di­vid­u­als are drug traf­fick­ers. They might be reg­u­lar fish­er­men. I think it’s up to the Unit­ed States to prove that they are drug traf­fick­ers, and they haven’t been able to do that as yet.”

Pres­i­dent Trump told re­porters dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Oval Of­fice that he has strong ev­i­dence that the lat­est boat was car­ry­ing drugs.