DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar moved swift­ly yes­ter­day to dis­tance Trinidad and To­ba­go from a Unit­ed States mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela that cul­mi­nat­ed in the cap­ture of that coun­try’s Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro and his wife Cil­lia Flo­res.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is NOT a par­tic­i­pant in any of these on­go­ing mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions. Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to main­tain peace­ful re­la­tions with the peo­ple of Venezuela,” the Prime Min­is­ter said in a state­ment post­ed to her so­cial me­dia plat­forms around 5.42am.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, the world awoke to news that Venezuela was plunged in­to its most dra­mat­ic rup­ture in decades af­ter US forces launched an overnight op­er­a­tion in Cara­cas, cap­tur­ing Pres­i­dent Maduro and his wife, Cil­ia, in just two hours and fly­ing them out of the coun­try as Wash­ing­ton de­clared it would “run” Venezuela tem­porar­i­ly.

Hours af­ter the op­er­a­tion, Maduro and Flo­res ar­rived in New York to face fed­er­al charges.

De­tailed by Chair­man of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al John Daniel “Raizin” Caine as Op­er­a­tion Ab­solute Re­solve, the ex­er­cise un­fold­ed in the ear­ly hours of Jan­u­ary 2. Caine said more than 150 air­craft were launched from 20 bases across the West­ern Hemi­sphere in a com­plex, mul­ti-do­main mis­sion in­volv­ing air, ground, mar­itime and in­tel­li­gence as­sets. US forces en­tered Maduro’s com­pound at 2.01 am, came un­der fire, re­turned fire, and took the Venezue­lan leader and his wife in­to cus­tody be­fore with­draw­ing by 4.29 am, with no re­port­ed US ca­su­al­ties. Amer­i­can forces re­main in the re­gion.

Lat­er in the day yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that T&T looks for­ward to re­newed co­op­er­a­tion and the strength­en­ing of its long-stand­ing friend­ship with the Venezue­lan peo­ple, as they tran­si­tion away from years of “op­pres­sion” and “dic­ta­tor­ship”.

The rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is ex­pect­ed to face ques­tions on the de­vel­op­ments to­day, Sun­day, when par­ty of­fi­cials hold a me­dia con­fer­ence at which the is­sue is like­ly to be ad­dressed.

The Op­po­si­tion, how­ev­er, struck a sharply dif­fer­ent tone. Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les de­scribed the cap­ture and strikes as “deeply trou­bling”, warn­ing that any such ac­tion with­in the re­gion was a mat­ter of se­ri­ous con­cern for the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) and the wider Caribbean.

She crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to pub­licly ad­dress the safe­ty and wel­fare of T&T na­tion­als in Cara­cas and re­it­er­at­ed the re­gion’s long-stand­ing com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers lat­er as­sured all na­tion­als were safe.

Be­yond of­fi­cial state­ments, anger and anx­i­ety spilled in­to civ­il so­ci­ety. A coali­tion of or­gan­i­sa­tions in T&T is­sued a blis­ter­ing con­dem­na­tion of the US ac­tion, de­scrib­ing it as “an act of im­pe­ri­al­ism” and “an in­ter­na­tion­al crime”. The groups ac­cused Wash­ing­ton of pur­su­ing regime change un­der the guise of counter-nar­cotics op­er­a­tions and an­nounced plans for a pub­lic demon­stra­tion out­side the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain.

The state­ment was signed by All Man­sions of Rasta­fari, Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea, the Ifa/Orisa Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, the Net­work of NGOs for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Trin­ba­go for Pales­tine, and the Warao Na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The groups said they will mo­bilise at the Venezue­lan Em­bassy on Vic­to­ria Av­enue to­day in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Venezue­lan peo­ple.

But an­a­lysts re­mained di­vid­ed on what the de­vel­op­ments could mean for Trinidad and To­ba­go. In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les warned that the reper­cus­sions may still be un­fold­ing.

“I think we should be geared up for any even­tu­al­i­ty. We should pre­pare our­selves for any even­tu­al­i­ty, be­cause we don’t know what’s com­ing. Okay, this is what we should have done even be­fore the strike.”

But Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Bryan, al­so an in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert, said T&T faces no im­me­di­ate threat.

“I don’t think we have to wor­ry about any­thing be­cause we didn’t play any part in his ex­tri­ca­tion and in his ex­trac­tion, I should say. No, our hands are clean as far as that is con­cerned.”

Both Gon­za­les and Bryan pre­vi­ous­ly served as di­rec­tors of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.

Trump: ‘We’ll run it prop­er­ly’

One hour af­ter the raid con­clud­ed, Pres­i­dent Trump took to Truth So­cial around 5 am to an­nounce that the large-scale mil­i­tary strike in Venezuela had re­sult­ed in Maduro’s cap­ture and his wife.

A sub­se­quent post saw Trump share a pho­to of a blind­fold­ed Maduro wear­ing head­phones while clutch­ing a bot­tle of wa­ter. It was the on­ly proof of life.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence from Mar-a-La­go in Flori­da, Trump said the US would take con­trol of Venezuela’s ad­min­is­tra­tion un­til a po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tion could be se­cured.

“We’re go­ing to run the coun­try un­til such time as we can do a safe, prop­er and ju­di­cious tran­si­tion,” Trump said.

“We don’t want to be in­volved with hav­ing some­body else get in and we have the same sit­u­a­tion that we had for the last long pe­ri­od of years.”

Trump made it clear that Wash­ing­ton’s plans are close­ly tied to Venezuela’s vast oil re­serves, sig­nalling a cen­tral role for US cor­po­ra­tions.

“We are go­ing to have this done right. We’re not gonna just do this with Maduro and then leave like every­body else, leave and say, ‘you know, let it go to hell’. If we just left, it has ze­ro chance of ever com­ing back. We’ll run it prop­er­ly; we’ll run it pro­fes­sion­al­ly. We’ll have the great­est oil com­pa­nies in the world go in and in­vest bil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars. And take out mon­ey, use that mon­ey in Venezuela and the biggest ben­e­fi­cia­ry is gonna be the peo­ple of Venezuela.”

Trump framed the US in­ter­ven­tion as both nec­es­sary and self-fi­nanc­ing, in­di­cat­ing that the US could look over Venezuela for years.

The US Com­man­der in Chief al­so sug­gest­ed the US was pre­pared to es­ca­late mil­i­tar­i­ly if chal­lenged. “And we are ready to stage a sec­ond and much larg­er at­tack if we need to do so.”

Pressed on who would gov­ern Venezuela dur­ing this in­ter­im pe­ri­od, Trump said his ad­min­is­tra­tion was al­ready en­gag­ing with fig­ures in­side the coun­try.

“For us to just leave, who’s go­ing to take over? There is no­body to take over.”

He said Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio had been in con­tact with Del­cy Ro­dríguez, Maduro’s vice pres­i­dent.

“She had a long con­ver­sa­tion with Mar­co, and she said, ‘we’ll do what­ev­er you need’. I think she was quite gra­cious, but she re­al­ly doesn’t have a choice.”

Trump dis­missed op­po­si­tion leader María Co­ri­na Macha­do as a suc­ces­sor.

“Oh, I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the sup­port with­in or the re­spect with­in the coun­try. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the re­spect.”

But af­ter Trump’s news con­fer­ence, Ro­driguez, at her own me­dia brief­ing, de­mand­ed Maduro’s im­me­di­ate re­lease.

Caribbean re­acts

Cari­com yes­ter­day said its con­fer­ence of heads of gov­ern­ment met very ear­ly fol­low­ing re­ports of the US mil­i­tary ac­tion. It said it con­tin­ues to ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion it de­scribed as be­ing of grave con­cern to the re­gion.

But Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley steered clear of tak­ing any side in the US-Venezuela con­flict.

Mot­t­ley ad­dressed a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day af­ter a meet­ing of her na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty coun­cil.

She said Bar­ba­dos will hold firm to what Cari­com de­cides.

“Venezuela is our friend. The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is our friend. In fact, in both in­stances, we have fam­i­ly re­la­tions with both coun­tries. By the same to­ken, the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty has been the en­ti­ty that we have cho­sen as a mat­ter of first prin­ci­ples to align our for­eign pol­i­cy with. When the heads of gov­ern­ment met this morn­ing, all of the per­sons were not there be­cause it was an emer­gency ear­ly meet­ing. We took a de­ci­sion that we will wait for oth­er in­for­ma­tion to be­come present. And when that hap­pens, we will cer­tain­ly act col­lec­tive­ly, and I do not want in any way to prej­u­dice the in­tegri­ty of that con­sul­ta­tive process with Cari­com.”

Mot­t­ley said the US’s ac­tion has al­ready af­fect­ed Bar­ba­dos’ tourism prod­uct, with sev­er­al full flights be­ing can­celled.

A time­line of US op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean

• Au­gust 2025

US de­ploys a sig­nif­i­cant naval strike group (de­stroy­ers, am­phibi­ous ships and Marines) in­to the south­ern Caribbean Sea near Venezuela as part of an in­ten­si­fied counter-nar­cotics and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty mis­sion.

• Sep­tem­ber 2025

US launch­es airstrikes on ves­sels in the Caribbean Sea, un­der a cam­paign re­ferred to as Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear. The strikes tar­get boats al­leged to be in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing.

• Oc­to­ber 2025

US in­tel­li­gence re­port­ed­ly iden­ti­fies Venezue­lan mil­i­tary sites al­leged to be tied to drug traf­fick­ing net­works

• Oc­to­ber 16, 2025

Re­ports emerge that the US has in­creased forces to around 10,000 per­son­nel in the Caribbean.

• No­vem­ber 2025

Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear is for­mal­ly scaled up with the ar­rival of the USS Ger­ald R Ford car­ri­er strike group, ac­com­pa­ny­ing naval and Ma­rine forces.

• No­vem­ber 16 -21, 2025

US Marines con­duct joint train­ing with the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, fo­cus­ing on counter-transna­tion­al threats and re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion.

• No­vem­ber 27, 2025

The US sets up a radar at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go.

• De­cem­ber 10, 2025

US spe­cial forces seize a Venezue­lan crude oil tanker off the coast, al­leg­ing sanc­tioned oil smug­gling.

• Jan­u­ary 3, 2026

The US con­ducts large-scale mil­i­tary strikes on Venezuela, in­clud­ing air and spe­cial op­er­a­tions in and around Cara­cas.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cil­ia Flo­res are cap­tured by US forces to face crim­i­nal charges in New York.