AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Hours af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s warn­ing to Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro that his days in pow­er were num­bered, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tains that the US mil­i­tary build-up in the re­gion is aimed at com­bat­ing drug traf­fick­ing, not regime change. She al­so re­it­er­at­ed that no re­quest has been made for Trinidad and To­ba­go to serve as a base for po­ten­tial at­tacks on Venezue­lan soil.

How­ev­er, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les be­lieves Trump’s ac­tions make it clear that the ob­jec­tive goes be­yond drug in­ter­dic­tion, aim­ing in­stead to re­move the Maduro regime. He now ques­tions how the Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment would re­spond if land strikes were to be­gin.

Speak­ing on Sun­day evening with CBS jour­nal­ist No­rah O’Don­nell dur­ing an in­ter­view on 60 Min­utes, Trump was ques­tioned about the de­ploy­ment of Unit­ed States mil­i­tary as­sets in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, in­clud­ing the USS Ger­ald Ford, the world’s largest war­ship.

When asked di­rect­ly whether Maduro’s “days as pres­i­dent are num­bered,” Trump replied, “I would say, yeah, I think so, yeah.”

O’Don­nell then pressed fur­ther: “And this is­sue of po­ten­tial land strikes in Venezuela, is that true?”

Trump re­spond­ed, “I don’t tell you that. I mean, I’m not say­ing it’s true or un­true, but I wouldn’t be in­clined to say that I would do that. I don’t talk to a re­porter about whether or not I’m go­ing to strike. I’m not go­ing to.”

Ear­li­er in the in­ter­view, when asked if the Unit­ed States was prepar­ing for war with Venezuela, Trump said he doubt­ed it.

“I doubt it. I don’t think so. But they’ve been treat­ing us very bad­ly, not on­ly on drugs. They’ve dumped hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple in­to our coun­try that we didn’t want, peo­ple from pris­ons,” he said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­sis­tent­ly side-stepped ques­tions about whether her Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es Nico­las Maduro as Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent. She pre­vi­ous­ly told Guardian Me­dia that the ques­tion does not arise.

The Prime Min­is­ter has on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions said her back­ing of the US mil­i­tary was to com­bat “ter­ror­ist drug car­tels” and the re­sult­ing high crime rate in Trinidad and To­ba­go. She has stat­ed that the na­tion has been “help­less­ly drown­ing in blood and vi­o­lence” for years due to il­le­gal drugs, guns, and arms traf­fick­ing, and that small is­land states lack the re­sources to tack­le transna­tion­al crime on their own. She ex­pressed that she has “no sym­pa­thy for traf­fick­ers.”

But when asked yes­ter­day if she will con­tin­ue to back the US if land strikes com­mence against Venezuela, the Prime Min­is­ter said she does not have con­trol over the US and its mil­i­tary.

In a What­sApp re­sponse, she said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go has no con­trol or in­flu­ence re­gard­ing the ac­tions of the US mil­i­tary in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters or with­in Venezuela. What I can say is that there have been no mil­i­tary strikes with­in our ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters, and there has been no re­quest from the US mil­i­tary to use our ter­ri­to­ry for any strikes against drug car­tels in­side of Venezuela. We con­tin­ue to main­tain peace­ful re­la­tions with the peo­ple of Venezuela.”

Re­gard­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s in­ter­view, the Prime Min­is­ter said his com­ments were clear.

“He is com­mit­ted to the fight against drug traf­fick­ing with­in our re­gion. My Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to sup­port the US mil­i­tary drug in­ter­dic­tion ex­er­cis­es with­in the re­gion.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there have been failed ef­forts by peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions to cre­ate chaos and hys­te­ria among the pop­u­la­tions re­gard­ing re­la­tions be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The PNM, their trolls, and some in the me­dia are try­ing to gaslight the pop­u­la­tion about war and at­tacks against Trinidad in the hope that my­self or the Gov­ern­ment will re­spond to every ru­mour. That is not go­ing to hap­pen. I will let the pop­u­la­tion know if there is any cause for con­cern. In the mean­time, who­ev­er wants to take bas­ket from the per­sons hys­ter­i­cal­ly try­ing to pro­tect drug traf­fick­ers from the US mil­i­tary, they are free to do so and make fools of them­selves.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for the pop­u­la­tion to stay “strong” dur­ing this time.

“Law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have noth­ing to fear, but those who com­mit vi­o­lence against the pop­u­la­tion will face a most bru­tal re­al­i­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said there are many drug-fund­ed busi­ness­es that are fund­ing a pub­lic re­la­tions cam­paign against the US war on drugs.

“Take note of lo­cal and re­gion­al per­sons and groups that are vo­cif­er­ous­ly con­demn­ing the fight against the drug car­tels. They are show­ing you who they are; be­lieve them. I pre­fer for drugs and arms traf­fick­ers to be killed vi­o­lent­ly than for you, the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, to con­tin­ue be­ing killed vi­o­lent­ly in your own homes.”

‘US strikes mak­ing a dent
on il­le­gal drugs in T&T’

Since Sep­tem­ber 2025, the US mil­i­tary has con­duct­ed sev­er­al op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean, in­clud­ing strikes on sus­pect­ed drug-smug­gling ves­sels off South Amer­i­ca. At the start of this month, No­vem­ber, US of­fi­cials con­firmed at least 15 such strikes in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean, re­sult­ing in 64 deaths.

The most re­cent strike oc­curred on Sat­ur­day on an al­leged drug traf­fick­ing ves­sel. The lat­est strike tar­get­ed a boat in the Caribbean Sea and killed three peo­ple on board, ac­cord­ing to US Sec­re­tary of De­fence Pe­te Hegseth.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said those ki­net­ic strikes have al­ready af­fect­ed the drug trade in T&T.

The Prime Min­is­ter said be­tween Sep­tem­ber 30 and No­vem­ber 1, some 1,806 kilo­grams of Colom­bian “Creepy” mar­i­jua­na and 117.4 kilo­grams of co­caine were seized with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of TT$361.4 mil­lion. She added that three peo­ple have al­so been ar­rest­ed, with war­rants out for oth­er sus­pects.

How­ev­er, while Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­lieves Trump’s com­ment dur­ing the in­ter­view shows his com­mit­ment to fight­ing drugs in the re­gion, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les be­lieves his threat to re­move Maduro spoke more about regime change, which he be­lieves is Trump’s true in­ten­tion.

Asked if this coun­try’s Gov­ern­ment is aware of that, Gon­za­les said, “That’s an in­ter­est­ing ques­tion. I’ve asked my­self that same ques­tion. I’m not sure they have looked prop­er­ly at this thing. And a lot of the things that they say are kind of con­tra­dic­to­ry.”

He added, “For in­stance, if the Amer­i­cans start strik­ing in Venezuela, mil­i­tary strikes or bomb­ing bases or what­ev­er, is the Gov­ern­ment go­ing to en­dorse that? They have en­dorsed the strikes against the boats and so on. Are they go­ing to en­dorse sim­i­lar strikes in Venezuela? I’m ask­ing my­self, be­cause if they do that, they’re caught in a line there with Venezuela, which has no re­turn from that.”

Gon­za­les be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment did not think its strat­e­gy through and has de­cid­ed to side with the US, hop­ing the Amer­i­cans will win against Venezuela.

“They be­lieve the Amer­i­cans are all-pow­er­ful. They will walk in there, and they will over­throw the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment. And when the Venezue­lans win, they will get the oil and gas or what­ev­er it is and so forth.”

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les said it will not be easy for the US to over­throw Venezuela, giv­en the coun­try’s mil­i­tary cul­ture and ter­rain.

Gon­za­les said while US Pres­i­dent Trump may say his coun­try will not go to war with Venezuela, he may still at­tempt to desta­bi­lize the Maduro regime through ag­gres­sion.

“You could start putting pres­sure on the Venezue­lans like you’re do­ing right now with all these bomb­ings off the coast here. And you could prob­a­bly do strikes in Venezuela, mash up some mil­i­tary air­ports and some ports and some mil­i­tary head­quar­ters, and so forth. That may not over­throw the gov­ern­ment, but all it may do is prob­a­bly cause some dis­af­fec­tion in the army. So ba­si­cal­ly, there’s a good mean­ing to what he says there. It’s prob­a­bly that he’s pur­su­ing that kind of route, which is to try to desta­bilise the place, try to over­throw the gov­ern­ment, start im­pris­on­ment.”

Last Fri­day, a Mi­a­mi Her­ald re­port claim­ing that US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump au­tho­rised land strikes on Venezuela “in the com­ing days” sparked alarm in T&T, with the De­fence Force call­ing all its sol­diers and mil­i­tary per­son­nel to du­ty at bases across the coun­try. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice al­so called all of­fi­cers who had been on leave back to du­ty.

How­ev­er, Trump lat­er de­nied the re­port, which US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio la­belled as “fake.”