The pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go is now in­to a pe­ri­od in which every T&TEC gen­er­a­tor that blows can give cit­i­zens close to the ex­plo­sion a feel­ing “that the war has start­ed.” And who can blame such a pos­si­ble re­ac­tion in the cir­cum­stances of com­plete un­cer­tain­ty about what is like­ly to un­fold out of the hap­pen­ings of the last cou­ple weeks.

The big is­sue dri­ving the fear to height­ened lev­els is the ab­sence of in­for­ma­tion on whether or not the Unit­ed States is plan­ning to take mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela and what are the cir­cum­stances which can pre­cip­i­tate it.

More­over, the re­al­i­ty is that the con­se­quences of mil­i­tary con­flict be­tween the US and Venezuela can have se­ri­ous reper­cus­sions for the safe­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, its cit­i­zens and in­fra­struc­ture. The rhetoric from a few spokesper­sons of the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment has been in­creas­ing and dis­turb­ing, lead­ing to a sense that there can be re­tal­ia­to­ry ac­tion against T&T by Cara­cas if the US de­cides to at­tack the South Amer­i­can main­land.

The stand tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to have T&T be a pawn for the war­like op­er­a­tions of the US in the Caribbean Sea, has led to the feel­ing that T&T can be­come a tar­get in the cross­fire be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Cara­cas.

Ac­com­pa­ny­ing the pro-Amer­i­can stance of this coun­try’s Gov­ern­ment, in­clu­sive of be­ing over­whelm­ing­ly in sup­port of the dead­ly strikes against the al­leged drug ves­sels in the wa­ters of the Caribbean Sea, the T&T Gov­ern­ment has said noth­ing of con­se­quence to give cit­i­zens a mea­sure of as­sur­ance of their safe­ty if a war breaks out. In re­al­i­ty, it could not be ex­pect­ed that the Gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton will in­form Port-of-Spain of when, how and where it will strike Venezuela, if that be the case.

The re­sult of all of the above and more is that the peo­ple of this coun­try are liv­ing in a won­der­land of ig­no­rance as to what can hap­pen be­tween the US and Venezuela, es­pe­cial­ly since T&T can be­come vic­tims of a spillover of the con­flict. In the vac­u­um of a lack of de­fin­i­tive in­for­ma­tion, no won­der the ex­pres­sions of con­cerns in­di­vid­u­al­ly by cit­i­zens and por­tions of the pop­u­la­tion that vi­o­lence of a kind that has nev­er been ex­pe­ri­enced here in “Sweet T&T” may be pos­si­ble.

No doubt, the in­for­ma­tion of sol­diers here be­ing in “a state of pre­pared­ness and on­go­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty pre­pared­ness,” and the very di­rect warn­ing of Venezuela’s For­eign Min­is­ter Venezue­lan Yván Gil that any for­eign mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against Venezuela will have con­sid­er­able reper­cus­sions on T&T and the rest of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, must be stok­ing fears amongst the pop­u­la­tion about a dy­nam­ic that it knows noth­ing about.

What is sure­ly re­quired is for Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ad­dress the na­tion, as far as she is able to, with a com­pre­hen­sive state­ment to quell well-found­ed or imag­ined fears about the se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens and res­i­dents. And this is notwith­stand­ing, as stat­ed ear­li­er, that the US is not like­ly to be go­ing around shar­ing what must sure­ly qual­i­fy as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters of that coun­try. The fact is that lead­er­ship has cer­tain re­spon­si­bil­i­ties which can­not be dodged, as in the present.