JESSE RAMDEO, GAIL ALEXAN­DER & RAPHAEL JOHN-LALL

The gov­ern­ment of Venezuela has or­dered a full-scale mil­i­tary readi­ness ex­er­cise with 200,000 armed troops de­ployed, just as the Unit­ed States’ USS Ger­ald R Ford—the largest air­craft car­ri­er and war­ship ever con­struct­ed—en­tered Caribbean wa­ters.

Yes­ter­day, the US Navy of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced the ar­rival of the USS Ger­ald R Ford (CVN 78) and its en­tire strike group to the area of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the South­ern Com­mand (US­SOUTH­COM). The Ford is mov­ing with over 4,000 sailors and dozens of tac­ti­cal air­craft on board. The next-gen­er­a­tion car­ri­er can launch and re­cov­er air­craft si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, day and night.

It was stat­ed that the op­er­a­tion was or­dered by US Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth “to sup­port the pres­i­den­tial di­rec­tive to dis­man­tle transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­bat nar­coter­ror­ism in de­fence of US ter­ri­to­ry.”

The Pen­ta­gon said the en­hanced pres­ence of US forces in the South­ern Com­mand area will in­crease the abil­i­ty to “de­tect, mon­i­tor, and dis­rupt il­lic­it ac­tors and ac­tiv­i­ties that threat­en the se­cu­ri­ty and pros­per­i­ty of the Unit­ed States and the West­ern Hemi­sphere. These forces will strength­en ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tions to dis­rupt nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and de­grade and dis­man­tle transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

The strike group will re­in­force joint forces al­ready de­ployed in the re­gion, in­clud­ing the USS Iwo Ji­ma’s am­phibi­ous group and its ex­pe­di­tionary Ma­rine unit. The group in­cludes the guid­ed-mis­sile de­stroy­ers USS Bain­bridge (DDG 96), USS Ma­han (DDG 72), and the in­te­grat­ed air and mis­sile de­fence com­mand ship USS Win­ston S Churchill (DDG 81).

On Sun­day, the US car­ried out its 19th strike on an al­leged drug-smug­gling boat, killing six peo­ple in the East­ern Pa­cif­ic. That strike brought the num­ber of peo­ple killed in such op­er­a­tions since Sep­tem­ber 2 to 76.

The an­nounce­ment of the Ford’s ar­rival in the re­gion sparked an im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion from Venezuela and in­ject­ed fresh ten­sion in­to the Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty land­scape, rais­ing fears of a po­ten­tial con­fronta­tion be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

Yes­ter­day, Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López an­nounced that the Bo­li­var­i­an Na­tion­al Armed Forces (FANB) were im­ple­ment­ing the high­er phase of Plan In­de­pen­dence 200, a na­tion­al mo­bil­i­sa­tion ex­er­cise aimed at en­hanc­ing com­mand, con­trol, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion across all mil­i­tary branch­es.

Venezuela be­gan large-scale mil­i­tary drills yes­ter­day, de­ploy­ing 200,000 troops with so­phis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment in­clud­ing fight­er jets, tanks, and mis­siles.

The op­er­a­tion, or­dered by Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, be­gan at 4 am yes­ter­day and will run un­til to­day.

López as­sured that the FANB, to­geth­er with armed cit­i­zens and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, con­tin­ue prepa­ra­tion ex­er­cis­es to de­fend Venezuela against “threats in the Caribbean.”

The Min­istry of Pop­u­lar Pow­er for De­fence said the ini­tia­tive in­cludes the “mas­sive de­ploy­ment” of land, air, naval, river­ine, and mis­sile units, as well as the Bo­li­var­i­an Mili­tia, cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, and re­gion­al Com­mands for Com­pre­hen­sive De­fence.

It em­pha­sised a “pop­u­lar-mil­i­tary-po­lice fu­sion” across the coun­try’s ter­ri­to­ry to con­front what it termed “im­pe­r­i­al threats.”

Last week, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said he was doubt­ful about go­ing to war with Venezuela; how­ev­er, he had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ground op­er­a­tions and strikes.

Calls for vig­i­lance and diplo­ma­cy

Ef­forts yes­ter­day to con­tact Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers, and Cari­com Am­bas­sador Ralph Maraj on the de­vel­op­ments were un­suc­cess­ful.

How­ev­er, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah has cau­tioned Caribbean gov­ern­ments to move swift­ly to­ward cri­sis pre­pared­ness and a co­or­di­nat­ed re­gion­al re­sponse fol­low­ing the near-si­mul­ta­ne­ous an­nounce­ment of Venezuela’s mil­i­tary mo­bil­i­sa­tion and the ar­rival of the USS Ger­ald R Ford.

Heer­ah de­scribed Venezuela’s an­nounce­ment of a “mas­sive de­ploy­ment” as cre­at­ing a “lay­er of strate­gic ten­sion” across an al­ready frag­ile re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment.

“While the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment as­serts that the mo­bil­i­sa­tion is in­tend­ed to strength­en na­tion­al de­fence and se­cure its bor­ders, the re­gion­al im­pli­ca­tions are sig­nif­i­cant and can­not be un­der­stat­ed. The pres­ence of US naval as­sets, in­clud­ing the USS Ger­ald R Ford Car­ri­er Group and ad­vanced F-35 air­craft, adds a lay­er of strate­gic ten­sion to an al­ready frag­ile re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment,” Heer­ah said.

Heer­ah said the de­vel­op­ments were par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing for neigh­bour­ing states, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, giv­en the coun­try’s close prox­im­i­ty to Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters and its strate­gic po­si­tion along ma­jor mar­itime routes.

“This de­vel­op­ment is a cause for con­cern, par­tic­u­lar­ly for neigh­bour­ing states such as Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he not­ed. “It un­der­scores the ur­gent need for proac­tive cri­sis man­age­ment and con­tin­gency plan­ning at both the na­tion­al and Cari­com lev­els.”

He warned that in­sta­bil­i­ty could man­i­fest in sev­er­al forms, from mass mi­gra­tion and mar­itime in­cur­sions to cy­ber threats and dis­rup­tions of re­gion­al trade and en­er­gy routes, and urged au­thor­i­ties to pre­pare for mul­ti­ple con­tin­gen­cies.

Heer­ah stressed that in such volatile cir­cum­stances, ef­fec­tive cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­comes es­sen­tial to main­tain­ing pub­lic or­der and na­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

He urged gov­ern­ments to bal­ance vig­i­lance with re­straint, en­sur­ing that Caribbean na­tions re­main unit­ed in the face of ris­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions.

“This sit­u­a­tion calls for mea­sured diplo­ma­cy, strate­gic readi­ness, and a uni­fied re­gion­al re­sponse. Trinidad and To­ba­go must re­main vig­i­lant, guid­ed by prin­ci­ples of sov­er­eign­ty, peace, and pre­pared­ness, en­sur­ing that na­tion­al in­ter­ests and cit­i­zen safe­ty re­main para­mount amid shift­ing geopo­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics.”

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah said the sit­u­a­tion is heat­ing up and the com­ing days need to be close­ly mon­i­tored, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Ford’s ar­rival.

“And you don’t use air­craft car­ri­ers to deal with nar­co-traf­fick­ers. There­fore, one has to ques­tion if all of this is meant to en­gage Venezuela’s mil­i­tary one way or an­oth­er, or for regime change, some sort of in­ter­nal coup d’état, or a di­rect strike against Nicolás Maduro and oth­ers there,” Ab­du­lah said.

“The sit­u­a­tion is heat­ing up, which is why we had our Vig­il for Peace last Sun­day, and our mes­sage clear­ly res­onat­ed. We now have to wait and see what the next 48 to 72 hours bring and mon­i­tor whether the US will try to cre­ate some in­ci­dent—a ‘false flag’—to use as a pre­text to at­tack Venezuela.”

Ab­du­lah said that so far, Venezuela has been very dis­ci­plined and en­gaged in ma­jor mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es. “They’re prepar­ing for the worst but hop­ing for the best. They haven’t re­act­ed to provo­ca­tion, so the at­ten­tion is on the US in terms of in­creas­ing ten­sions.”

With the Unit­ed King­dom de­cid­ing to no longer share in­tel­li­gence with the US about sus­pect­ed drug traf­fick­ing ves­sels in the Caribbean, ac­cord­ing to CNN, Ab­du­lah said it showed that the US had be­come more iso­lat­ed glob­al­ly, in­clud­ing with many Amer­i­cans not sup­port­ing the mil­i­tary moves.

He said the move by the UK in­di­cat­ed that the coun­try does not want to be com­plic­it in what has been deemed ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings in­volved in re­cent US strikes on al­leged drug boats.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne yes­ter­day slammed the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the re­gion­al mat­ter and ac­cused it of “den­i­grat­ing the re­gion’s zone of peace sta­tus.”

‘Venezue­lans will de­fend’

Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López as­sured that the FANB, to­geth­er with the armed cit­i­zens and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, con­tin­ue with prepa­ra­tion ex­er­cis­es to de­fend Venezuela against “threats in the Caribbean.”

He made these re­marks as Venezuela be­gan its large-scale mil­i­tary drills yes­ter­day.

On Mon­day, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro warned that gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers will re­spond with an “in­sur­rec­tionary gen­er­al strike” if the Unit­ed States takes mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela.

Dur­ing a meet­ing with the na­tion­al lead­er­ship of the rul­ing Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty of Venezuela (PSUV) and mem­bers of the PSUV Youth, Maduro promised that the work­ing class will paral­yse the coun­try’s pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ties “un­til Chav­is­mo is re­turned to pow­er,” in the event of a coup or in­ter­ven­tion.

“If im­pe­ri­al­ism were to strike a blow and do dam­age, from the very mo­ment the or­der for mo­bil­i­sa­tion and com­bat op­er­a­tions of all the peo­ple will be de­creed and the Venezue­lan work­ing class will ini­ti­ate an in­sur­rec­tionary gen­er­al strike,” he said.

Last month, Venezuela end­ed sev­er­al gas agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter this coun­try al­lowed the USS Grave­ly to dock in Port of Spain from Oc­to­ber 26 to 31. Cara­cas ac­cused T&T of pro­vok­ing a war. It lat­er la­belled Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar per­sona non gra­ta. The Prime Min­is­ter said the USS Grave­ly’s pres­ence in T&T was part of con­tin­ued train­ing and co­op­er­a­tion with the US.