DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt 

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go has be­come a soft tar­get should the Unit­ed States launch mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela, ar­gu­ing that the coun­try’s off­shore gas plat­forms could be among the first as­sets placed at risk.

His com­ments, made dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at his Good­wood Park home yes­ter­day, were aimed at coun­ter­ing what he called wide­spread “mis­in­for­ma­tion” sur­round­ing the Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment (SO­FA), which he re­newed with Wash­ing­ton in De­cem­ber 2024.

Row­ley in­sist­ed the agree­ment con­tained no pro­vi­sions for regime change, mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion or any for­eign mil­i­tary base on T&T’s soil.

The re­newed scruti­ny al­so comes as US Marines con­duct joint mil­i­tary ex­changes with the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) from No­vem­ber 16 to 21.

“There is ab­solute­ly noth­ing in the Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment to per­mit any com­mit­ment from Trinidad and To­ba­go to breach the UN Char­ter, to in­ter­vene mil­i­tar­i­ly in any of our neigh­bours or any­where in the world. Ab­solute­ly not so at all. Any­body from the Gov­ern­ment say­ing that—it is a lie!” Row­ley de­clared.

He added that if T&T is now per­ceived as aligned with Wash­ing­ton in any fu­ture con­fronta­tion with Cara­cas, that per­cep­tion is the re­sult of choic­es made by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, not his for­mer gov­ern­ment.

“There is noth­ing in any doc­u­ment that I’m aware of which pre­vents the sov­er­eign gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go from say­ing ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any re­quest com­ing from any coun­try if we be­lieve that it jeop­ar­dis­es our sov­er­eign­ty or puts our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the test.”

The for­mer prime min­is­ter al­so is­sued a sharp re­buke of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion, say­ing the pub­lic de­served far greater clar­i­ty on the geopo­lit­i­cal risks now fac­ing the coun­try.

“We have a Bad John Prime Min­is­ter who doesn’t go to work, doesn’t talk to the me­dia, don’t care who she fire, don’t care who gets a job. But, she bad!”

Row­ley said he ded­i­cat­ed his life to a coun­try where his chil­dren and grand­chil­dren are raised, and that the pop­u­la­tion must un­der­stand the grav­i­ty of the mo­ment. He said Venezuela could in­ter­pret any fa­cil­i­ta­tion of US op­er­a­tions as a hos­tile act.

“This is not Car­ni­val. This is not a joke. It’s all well and good for the Prime Min­is­ter to stay home and hide and talk schupid­ness through buf­foons. But our life is in­volved here now,” he warned.

‘A cur­rent we can­not
swim against’

Row­ley paint­ed a bleak sce­nario in which crit­i­cal en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, much of it ly­ing rough­ly 60 miles off the coast, could be­come ex­posed should ten­sions es­ca­late in the South­ern Caribbean. With no navy or coast guard ca­pa­ble of de­fend­ing these in­stal­la­tions, he said the coun­try is dan­ger­ous­ly vul­ner­a­ble.

“Just by a cred­i­ble threat to those plat­forms, Trinidad and To­ba­go is now in a cur­rent against which it can­not swim,” he said.

He added that in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies would not hes­i­tate to evac­u­ate per­son­nel if the plat­forms were deemed po­ten­tial tar­gets, trig­ger­ing an im­me­di­ate col­lapse of na­tion­al en­er­gy pro­duc­tion.

“Be­cause if a threat like that comes to us, a cred­i­ble threat that those plat­forms are in fact le­git­i­mate tar­gets, those in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies will do one thing—they’ll re­move their staff from the plat­form.

Once they come off the plat­form, it shuts down the gas sup­ply to Trinidad and To­ba­go. And that shuts down Point Lisas, it shuts down the At­lantic LNG plant, and it shuts down every fac­to­ry in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Be­cause it would have shut down T&TEC, and this bulb will not light be­cause we are so vul­ner­a­ble.

What the hell are we do­ing, en­gag­ing our­selves and en­cour­ag­ing mil­i­tary ac­tion against our near­est friend­ly neigh­bour?”

Row­ley fur­ther not­ed that mod­ern con­flict no longer be­gan with troops but with drones, mis­siles, cy­ber­at­tacks and oth­er long-range tools ca­pa­ble of crip­pling small states with­out warn­ing.

He ques­tioned whether the gov­ern­ment had con­sid­ered whether host­ing US-linked op­er­a­tions could make T&T a le­git­i­mate mil­i­tary tar­get.

“They have sac­ri­ficed our neu­tral­i­ty in mat­ters of this na­ture, and it has put us in a very vul­ner­a­ble po­si­tion. So vul­ner­a­ble that if it comes to a shoot­ing war off our coast, we are de­fence­less and our econ­o­my is de­fence­less.”

Row­ley al­so ques­tioned whether US mil­i­tary as­sets would re­main to de­fend T&T if re­gion­al ten­sions stretched on.

“Do we, as a gov­ern­ment, as a peo­ple, gen­uine­ly be­lieve that those plat­forms out there—that the Amer­i­cans will re­main there with their sub­marines, and their air­craft car­ri­ers, and their planes and their he­li­copters to pro­tect us from Venezuela for the next month? The next year? ”

He wel­comed re­cent sig­nals for po­ten­tial talks be­tween US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro but cau­tioned that US pol­i­cy po­si­tions could change overnight.