The elec­tion of Don­ald Trump as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has com­pli­cat­ed the geopol­i­tics and made the world a more in­se­cure place. He has wield­ed a wreck­ing ball to the glob­al trade or­der. He has uni­lat­er­al­ly ab­ro­gat­ed trade treaties, pre­fer­ring in­stead to use tar­iffs ei­ther to pun­ish or co­erce coun­tries in­to chang­ing their trad­ing re­la­tion­ships with the US. He has al­so brought dis­or­der to the glob­al se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments by threat­en­ing to in­vade Cana­da or to take con­trol of Green­land.

Al­though Pres­i­dent Trump cam­paigned on the promise of end­ing US mil­i­tary en­tan­gle­ments abroad, he has not been the man of peace he claimed to be. In Jan­u­ary, US forces re­moved Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Maduro from Cara­cas, promis­ing to take con­trol of the coun­try and “our” oil. Yes­ter­day, in a co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion with Is­rael, Trump launched an un­pro­voked at­tack against Iran in the midst of diplo­mat­ic ef­forts to avert con­flict. Both ac­tions vi­o­late the UN Char­ter and do not ap­pear to have the sup­port of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, ac­cord­ing to opin­ion polls.

In 2003, the road to war in Iraq was paved with lies about non-ex­is­tent weapons of mass de­struc­tion. The path to a new con­flict in Iran, 23 years lat­er, has been lined large­ly with in­co­her­ence or si­lence. Cu­ba, al­ready on its knees from US sanc­tions, ap­pears to be next in line. What should Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion be?

His­tor­i­cal­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy has been ground­ed in the prin­ci­ples of non-align­ment, but in prac­tice, it op­er­ates as prag­mat­ic, in­ter­est-based align­ment rather than strict neu­tral­i­ty. At the height of the Cold War, in 1974, diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions were es­tab­lished with Chi­na, which have en­dured and deep­ened to the present day. Chi­na has fi­nanced many gov­ern­ment projects across dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, notwith­stand­ing the US sanc­tions and tight­en­ing em­bar­go, diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Cu­ba con­tin­ued.

Small states must avoid en­tan­gle­ments abroad, as they lack the eco­nom­ic or mil­i­tary mus­cle to pur­sue them. Con­se­quent­ly, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s arrange­ments have been based on a pol­i­cy of non-in­ter­fer­ence, the avoid­ance of ide­o­log­i­cal po­si­tions, re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty, prag­mat­ic eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion and sup­port of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism at the Unit­ed Na­tions. This ex­plains the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas and the con­tin­u­ous sup­port of re­gion­al trad­ing agree­ments.

This ap­proach could be de­fined as strate­gic am­bi­gu­i­ty. It has fa­cil­i­tat­ed con­tin­ued func­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion with the US on en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments, though there have been points of fric­tion and dis­agree­ment, as with the con­tentious mar­itime “Shiprid­er agree­ment” which was even­tu­al­ly signed by Bas­deo Pan­day when prime min­is­ter.

Whilst our of­fi­cial po­si­tion is non-aligned, our eco­nom­ic po­si­tion nar­rows our abil­i­ty to ma­noeu­vre. The US is a glob­al hege­mon and is our largest trad­ing part­ner. This lim­its our abil­i­ty to op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly. Cur­rent­ly and in the re­cent past, US sanc­tions on Venezuela have lim­it­ed our ca­pac­i­ty to trade with Venezuela with­out an OFAC li­cence. This pre­vent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go and its busi­ness part­ners, Shell and BP, from mon­etis­ing any gas op­er­at­ing li­cences with Venezuela.

Since as­sum­ing of­fice, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Biss­esar’s po­si­tion has been more overt­ly sup­port­ive of US ac­tions in Caribbean wa­ters, even though those ac­tions have been of du­bi­ous le­gal­i­ty, in­clud­ing US ac­tions against Venezuela.

The com­pli­ca­tion is that Don­ald Trump is trans­ac­tion­al, not pol­i­cy-dri­ven. His treat­ment of Cana­da, NA­TO, Mex­i­co and Green­land rais­es ques­tions about how a small in­de­pen­dent state will be treat­ed once it has served the US pur­pose.