With the joint at­tack by Is­rael and the Unit­ed States on Iran last Sat­ur­day, and an ex­pand­ing war rag­ing in the Mid­dle East now, we might for­get that a meet­ing of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com took place in St Kitts- Nevis last week.

Do you re­mem­ber what Cari­com agreed to do in Haiti? Well, they agreed to sup­port the US de­ci­sion to have Pres­i­dent Fils-Aime and his Cab­i­net con­tin­ue to gov­ern un­til elec­tions in Au­gust 2026.

Cari­com’s role in any­thing that hap­pens in gov­er­nance, gov­ern­ment or pol­i­tics in Haiti is min­i­mal. Cari­com sup­port­ed the US po­si­tion on gangs and transna­tion­al crime but Kenya is do­ing the polic­ing in Haiti and on­ly Ja­maica and the Ba­hamas, of Cari­com, have boots on the ground. Cari­com’s in­flu­ence on what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pens in Haiti is se­vere­ly di­min­ished be­cause of lim­it­ed re­sources and ca­pac­i­ty.

On Cu­ba, the Cari­com push­back did re­duce some pres­sure on Cu­ba. Mex­i­co and Cana­da had tak­en ear­li­er de­ci­sions to send hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, so there was a trend. The US did not block hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, re­lent­ing to al­low at least some oil for Cu­ba, and side­line dis­cus­sions ac­tu­al­ly took place in St Kitts be­tween US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s team and young Raul Guiller­mo Ro­driguez Cas­tro, now body­guard to his grand­fa­ther Raul Cas­tro, still the re­al pow­er in Cu­ba.

Cari­com has lit­tle pow­er over what hap­pens in Cu­ba but be­cause the wrong move with un­man­age­able con­se­quences can have a desta­bil­is­ing ef­fect on the re­gion, it is con­ced­ing some in­flu­ence.

Two Cari­com lead­ers, Pres­i­dent Ir­fan Ali (Guyana) and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, were in­vit­ed by Ru­bio to at­tend the South­ern Shield meet­ing be­ing host­ed by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in Flori­da. That gath­er­ing of lead­ers has been dubbed the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit, and be­cause the play­ers are all South of Mex­i­co, they are de­scribed as the South­ern Shield.

By the time the closed-door South­ern Shield meet­ings are in ses­sion, it will be dif­fi­cult to pre­dict what the scale of the cur­rent Mid­dle East war, al­ready spread­ing out­ward, will ac­tu­al­ly be.

The world has en­tered dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry. As­sas­si­na­tion of a coun­try’s leader rais­es the ques­tion im­me­di­ate­ly of who the next world leader to be ex­e­cut­ed by a ri­val pow­er will be. How soon?

The ex­pla­na­tion of Ru­bio, that Is­rael had tak­en a de­ci­sion to strike Iran, and there­fore the US had to pre­empt the con­se­quences, is bound to have an im­pact on cit­i­zen re­sponse in the US. Some may well ask how the de­ci­sion to fol­low Is­rael’s lead can be ra­tio­nalised as Amer­i­ca First pol­i­cy?

There can be no ques­tion that Ru­bio’s pres­ence changed the dy­nam­ics of the Cari­com Sum­mit be­cause Cari­com, as an en­ti­ty, had to take in­to ac­count the US as a Cari­com part­ner and as the over­whelm­ing­ly dom­i­nant coun­try in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. Af­ter that St Kitts Sum­mit, the ten­sions with­in Cari­com and the di­ver­gence of ob­jec­tives are go­ing to be­come sharp­er as the clash be­tween the old rules and the “Dun­roe Doc­trine” be­come more pro­nounced. Soft pow­er is giv­ing way to hard lever­age; sov­er­eign­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are in a di­rect clash. Ge­og­ra­phy is be­ing over­rid­den by tech­no­log­i­cal re­al­i­ties.

The dis­po­si­tion and tone of the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit will be fo­cused on in­su­lat­ing the Amer­i­c­as as a re­gion and con­ti­nent from Chi­na in par­tic­u­lar.

It is clear that Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is pre­pared to be the an­chor coun­try for the US in Cari­com. While Es­se­qui­bo oil aligns Guyana with the US, sev­er­al po­ten­tial ben­e­fits make it too al­lur­ing for our Prime Min­is­ter to with­draw from the US em­brace now.

One of the things on of­fer at the South­ern Shield Con­fer­ence will be a “Vest­ed Part­ner” agree­ment - a bi­lat­er­al part­ner­ship with the US, which strength­ens the ca­pac­i­ty of part­ner coun­tries to deal with gangs and nar­coter­ror­ism, strength­en na­tion­al and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, se­cures T&T’s fu­ture in en­er­gy, gives T&T fi­nan­cial breath­ing room, tar­iff re­lief and a cer­tain amount of gen­er­al in­sur­ance. All of these may be too much for our Prime Min­is­ter to re­sist, even if she knows the trade-off is a loss of sov­er­eign­ty, per­pet­u­al ten­sion in Cari­com and lim­i­ta­tions on for­eign pol­i­cy choic­es, as the US car­rot and stick strat­e­gy for the re­gion con­tin­ues to un­fold.

In spite of the drift to­wards the South­ern Shield by T&T and Guyana, Brazil, which shares a bor­der with Guyana, is solid­ly BRICS. Mex­i­co and Cana­da, though un­der duress, are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly carv­ing out al­ter­na­tive sov­er­eign path­ways; and as­so­ci­at­ed de­pen­den­cies in the Caribbean are form­ing a line to be­come full Cari­com mem­bers.

Sta­bil­i­ty, se­cu­ri­ty, pros­per­i­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty are now of the high­est con­sid­er­a­tion for every­body.