To­day, there are suf­fi­cient ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­but­tals of the long­stand­ing Latin max­im “si vis pacem, para bel­lum”—“if you want peace, pre­pare for war”—to con­clude that the net im­pact of a com­bat­ive pre­dis­po­si­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you are weak and small, can be as in­im­i­cal as the very vi­o­lence be­ing avoid­ed.

This would prob­a­bly not have been vo­cif­er­ous­ly ex­plored when the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) as­sem­bled in Ha­vana, Cu­ba, in Jan­u­ary 2014 and is­sued the Procla­ma­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

Maybe when the group­ing met in Bo­gotá on Sat­ur­day, the war-for-peace dic­tum might have fea­tured. I am not sure what of­fi­cial guid­ance, if any, was pro­vid­ed to our low-lev­el rep­re­sen­ta­tives there.

But such a thought—war’s com­ple­men­tary re­la­tion­ship with peace—would have cer­tain­ly been in the back­ground as this group­ing of 33 sov­er­eign states re­it­er­at­ed sup­port for a Latin Amer­i­can/Caribbean Zone of Peace.

In­deed, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was a proud sig­na­to­ry to the ini­tial de­c­la­ra­tion 12 years ago, which the CELAC sum­mit as­sert­ed had been in har­mo­ny with the UN Char­ter - Ar­ti­cles 1, 2(4), and 2(7) point­ing to peace­ful re­la­tions; pro­hi­bi­tion on force; and non-in­ter­ven­tion.

Maybe ex­perts would al­so wish to cite the Treaty of Tlatelol­co of 1967, to which Caribbean coun­tries are par­ty and which fo­cus­es on the move­ment and use of nu­clear weapons in our wa­ters. The same prin­ci­ples ap­ply. But let’s fo­cus for now on the post-Ha­vana pe­ri­od.

Since then (per­haps even be­fore), both the pre­cise ex­pres­sion —“zone of peace” and words to that ef­fect—have been adopt­ed as stan­dard lan­guage in de­c­la­ra­tions con­firm­ing the com­mit­ment of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) to or­der­ly, typ­i­cal­ly con­sen­sus-based for­eign pol­i­cy.

This is along­side its firm and long­stand­ing pos­ture re­gard­ing bor­der con­flicts in­volv­ing Guatemala and Be­lize, and Venezuela and Guyana, to­ward which diplo­ma­cy has been the pre­ferred ap­proach.

By the way, over the years, these sub­jects of cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al ju­ridi­cal con­sid­er­a­tion have nev­er been ne­glect­ed or for­got­ten. They have, in fact, been fixed in­to the tem­plates for re­port­ing on meet­ings of Cari­com lead­ers.

There has been an as­sump­tion of col­lec­tive ig­no­rance in re­cent as­ser­tions that the re­gion has been guilty of ne­glect and/or aban­don­ment when it comes to such mat­ters—Guyana/Venezuela in par­tic­u­lar.

But back to the Zone of Peace— it­self sub­ject to bold mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion and de­lib­er­ate rhetor­i­cal ma­nip­u­la­tion. Such an as­pi­ra­tion was nev­er meant to be ap­plied as a blan­ket metaphor ap­plic­a­ble to do­mes­tic crim­i­nal­i­ty and dis­qui­et. In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr Nand Bar­douille’s Hand­book on Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty For­eign Re­la­tions and State­craft is wor­thy of at­ten­tion in this con­text.

“Fun­da­men­tal­ly,” he says, “the (Cari­com) bloc has a con­sid­er­able stake in the re­gion as a ‘Zone of Peace’. This is a long-stand­ing re­frain of the re­gion’s lead­er­ship, who look to the past, cit­ing the use­ful lessons it holds re­gard­ing hege­mons who set in mo­tion events with last­ing ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the re­gion and its peo­ple.”

In the cur­rent sea­son of in­san­i­ty, we have nev­er­the­less been treat­ed to re­pu­di­a­tion of a sound geo-po­lit­i­cal pos­ture.

Now, wit­ness what hap­pens with the dic­tum of war to achieve peace when ap­plied in the re­al world—and who be­comes pas­sive col­lat­er­al dam­age. We re­call the Cold War and, to­day, hos­til­i­ties in­volv­ing Iran, Is­rael and the US are not as far away as we ap­pear to be­lieve.

There are grim signs on the wall —notwith­stand­ing the promise of short-term fi­nan­cial gains ow­ing to in­creas­es in en­er­gy prices.

Last week­end, on these pages, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne, how­ev­er, ar­gued that the prospects for a mo­men­tary boost have to be tem­pered against huge in­creas­es in tanker and in­sur­ance rates. This, he said, has the po­ten­tial to “off­set price in­creas­es for car­go leav­ing T&T.”

For­mer Cari­com as­sis­tant sec­re­tary gen­er­al for Eco­nom­ic In­te­gra­tion, In­no­va­tion and De­vel­op­ment, econ­o­mist Joseph Cox, in the lat­est in­stal­ment of his Caribbean Busi­ness Re­view, al­so notes: “The is­sue is no longer the price of oil. It’s the price of mov­ing the world.”

His trea­tise on this is wor­thy of close at­ten­tion.

“The Caribbean,” he ar­gues, “faces a dou­ble con­straint. First, high­er glob­al prices. Sec­ond, re­duced pri­or­i­ty in the al­lo­ca­tion of both car­go and ship­ping ca­pac­i­ty.

“The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic made this clear. In a tight glob­al mar­ket, the Caribbean is not a pri­or­i­ty des­ti­na­tion. It is the resid­ual des­ti­na­tion.”

There is noth­ing to sug­gest, ei­ther now or in the past, that geo-po­lit­i­cal syco­phancy is ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing need­ed in­su­la­tion.

This coun­try’s sup­port for “si vis pacem, para bel­lum” is fast teach­ing us: “qui igne lu­dit, com­bu­re­tur”—play with fire and you will be burned.