Ten­sions con­tin­ue to mount in the Caribbean Sea, af­ter two Venezue­lan F-16 fight­er jets flew near the USS Ja­son Dun­ham in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters Thurs­day, an ac­tion the Pen­ta­gon de­scribed as “high­ly provoca­tive.”

The Dun­ham, an Aegis guid­ed-mis­sile de­stroy­er, is part of a US naval flotil­la de­ployed to the re­gion to tar­get drug car­tels and nar­co-ter­ror­ist net­works. Wash­ing­ton ac­cused Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion of at­tempt­ing to ob­struct its op­er­a­tions and said any threats to US ves­sels would be met with de­ci­sive ac­tion.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced the de­ploy­ment of ten F-35 fight­er jets to Puer­to Ri­co to strength­en US forces in the re­gion. Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Trump de­scribed re­cent in­ter­dic­tions and warned traf­fick­ers us­ing what he called the Caribbean “run­way to the Unit­ed States” that they would “be in trou­ble.” 

“And when I see boats com­ing in like loaded up the oth­er day with all sorts of drugs, prob­a­bly fen­tanyl most­ly, but all sorts of drugs, and we’re go­ing to take them out. And if peo­ple want to have fun go­ing on the high seas or the low seas, they’re go­ing to be in trou­ble. I will tell you, boat traf­fic is sub­stan­tial­ly down in the area that hap­pened,” Trump said.

“And they called it the run­way. It’s a run­way to the Unit­ed States. And boat traf­fic is very sub­stan­tial­ly down on the run­way. You can imag­ine why. I think any­body that saw that is go­ing to say, I’ll take a pass. I don’t even know about fish­er­men. They may say, I’m not get­ting on the boat. I’m not go­ing to take a chance.” 

Trump said he au­tho­rised cap­tains to re­spond if Venezue­lan air­craft en­dan­gered Amer­i­can ships.

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio al­so again de­fend­ed the mil­i­tary build-up dur­ing a speech in Ecuador on Thurs­day, call­ing Maduro “an in­dict­ed drug traf­fick­er” and pledg­ing con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions to dis­man­tle car­tels. Ru­bio said US al­lies, in­clud­ing T&T, sup­port­ed the ef­fort af­ter years of drug-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence and in­sta­bil­i­ty.

“I don’t know if you saw, Trinidad, a coun­try that has suf­fered great­ly from all these drugs com­ing out of Venezuela. They were con­grat­u­lat­ing us for it,” Ru­bio told re­porters.

“They thought it was a great thing be­cause they’ve suf­fered from it. So, we’re go­ing to con­tin­ue to hunt for like we al­ways have, but this time we’re not just go­ing to hunt for drug deal­ers or the lit­tle fast boats and say, ‘Let’s try to ar­rest them’. No, the pres­i­dent has said he wants to wage war on these groups be­cause they’ve been wag­ing war on us for 30 years and no one has re­spond­ed.”

How­ev­er, CELAC, the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States, is­sued a joint state­ment con­demn­ing the pres­ence of ex­tra-re­gion­al mil­i­tary forces.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Bo­livia, Brazil, Chile, Colom­bia, Cu­ba, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guatemala, Hon­duras, Mex­i­co, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lu­cia, Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name, Uruguay, and Venezuela reaf­firmed their com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing the re­gion as a “zone of peace.”

T&T was part of the meet­ing but was not men­tioned be­cause this coun­try vot­ed against the state­ment in con­junc­tion with Pe­ru and Ar­genti­na. 

The group com­mit­ted to keep­ing the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca a “zone of peace,” cit­ing the Treaty of Tlatelol­co, which bans nu­clear weapons in the re­gion. CELAC lead­ers urged diplo­ma­cy, re­spect for sov­er­eign­ty, and co­op­er­a­tion through in­ter­na­tion­al law in­stead of con­fronta­tion, warn­ing that an arms build-up could desta­bilise the re­gion.