Politi­cians of­ten in­voke mil­i­tary lan­guage to gal­vanise pub­lic sup­port. In the Unit­ed States, Lyn­don John­son used the term “war” to in­tro­duce his “Great So­ci­ety” leg­isla­tive pro­gramme dur­ing his 1964 State of the Union Ad­dress. His “War on Pover­ty” was the un­of­fi­cial name for leg­is­la­tion to ad­dress the US na­tion­al pover­ty rate, which was around 19 per cent at the time. The “War on Crime” re­ferred to his ef­forts to mod­ernise law en­force­ment and re­duce ur­ban vi­o­lence.

Fol­low­ing John­son’s prece­dent, the ef­forts to erad­i­cate the il­le­gal drug trade in the US be­came the “War on Drugs”, and the “post-9/11” re­sponse be­came the “War on Ter­ror”. The War on Ter­ror ex­pand­ed the re­mit of the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) from mon­ey laun­der­ing to ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing, mak­ing it a cor­ner­stone of glob­al coun­tert­er­ror­ism strat­e­gy by em­bed­ding se­cu­ri­ty im­per­a­tives in­to fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion. An­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing leg­is­la­tion, as­set seizure and for­fei­ture leg­is­la­tion, and the reg­u­la­tion of char­i­ties and not-for-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions are all part of an in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work that stems from this an­ti-ter­ror­ism ef­fort.

FATF serves as a glob­al gov­er­nance mech­a­nism that ex­tends US and al­lied se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns in­to in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nance and forces states to com­ply if they wish to re­main part of the glob­al trade and fi­nance frame­work. Our politi­cians have nev­er made it clear why com­pli­ance is a cost of re­main­ing part of the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem. Small states must some­times make dif­fi­cult com­pro­mis­es to main­tain or pro­mote their coun­tries’ best in­ter­ests. At oth­er times, they may have more flex­i­bil­i­ty.

As re­la­tions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela de­te­ri­o­rat­ed, the US ap­proach to Venezuela has hard­ened, and the dis­course be­tween them has coars­ened. The US naval task force de­ploy­ment and its de­struc­tion of three Venezue­lan fish­ing boats with pas­sen­gers and crew were mil­i­tary ac­tions with no de­c­la­ra­tion of war. These ac­tions are in­com­pat­i­ble with in­ter­na­tion­al law. For­mer Philip­pine pres­i­dent Ro­dri­go Duterte is be­fore the ICC for sim­i­lar ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar reaf­firmed her sup­port for the US ac­tions at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, ar­gu­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go has suf­fered mas­sive­ly from car­tel vi­o­lence. En­dors­ing US ac­tions in elim­i­nat­ing sus­pect­ed drug traf­fick­ers begs the ques­tion as to whether these tac­tics are to be repli­cat­ed in T&T. The oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion is our re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela. A ju­nior min­is­ter in­flamed ten­sions with a sense­less Face­book rant, notwith­stand­ing his sub­se­quent apol­o­gy. Is this the best op­tion for a small na­tion sand­wiched be­tween two pow­er­ful ad­ver­saries, one hav­ing the most pow­er­ful army in the world and the oth­er your next-door neigh­bour?

Is T&T pre­pared for an in­flux of Venezue­lan mi­grants should things de­te­ri­o­rate? What if the Venezue­lan Coast Guard ag­gres­sive­ly “pa­trols” our mar­itime bor­ders? Is the T&T Coast Guard ready? In Sep­tem­ber 2024, the Chief of De­fence Staff, Air Vice Mar­shall Dar­ryl Daniel, pub­licly ac­knowl­edged that the eight larg­er ves­sels of the Coast Guard were non-func­tion­al and were un­der­go­ing re­pairs and re­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. News­pa­per re­ports sug­gest that the oth­er arms of the De­fence Force are in a sim­i­lar state of un­pre­pared­ness.

In­flam­ing ten­sions with Venezuela may arouse na­tion­al­ism, but it is point­less if it amounts to noth­ing more than “rob­ber” talk. T&T lacks the ca­pac­i­ty for es­ca­la­tion dom­i­nance, and it is un­clear that we can re­ly on US sup­port. There­fore, T&T should avoid un­nec­es­sary ex­po­sure. Ag­gres­sive rhetoric may serve a po­lit­i­cal pur­pose, but on­ly pru­dent pol­i­cy, wise lead­er­ship, ef­fi­cient man­age­ment, and a pro­duc­tive cit­i­zen­ry can move a coun­try to­ward pros­per­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty. Hope­ful­ly, the 2026 Bud­get will point in that di­rec­tion.