There is much to be con­cerned about, giv­en the un­sure and un­known na­ture of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ments in re­la­tion to this week’s vis­it of the US Mil­i­tary Chief of Staff here. Among such mat­ters, the re­cent land­ing of mil­i­tary air­craft in To­ba­go and the ab­sence of a ful­some and fun­da­men­tal state­ment by the PM on the is­sues in­volved. The un­cer­tain­ty and ab­sence of depth of the PM’s re­spons­es to crit­i­cal mat­ters must leave think­ing cit­i­zens deeply con­cerned about the US ma­noeu­vres in re­la­tion to Venezuela, as they are like­ly to im­pact on T&T.

For a start, it’s dif­fi­cult to be­lieve that Gen­er­al Dan Caine, Chair­man of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff - con­cerned as he must be with on­go­ing, un­set­tled wars in which the US is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in­volved, the Mid­dle East, Ukraine and Rus­sia - will take time out to come to Trinidad to talk shop with the T&T PM, sam­ple dou­bles and fo­cus on small sea craft which have been blown out of the wa­ter by US war ma­chines.

It is far more pos­si­ble and log­i­cal that Gen­er­al Caine would come to T&T to en­gage in dis­cus­sion with an al­ly on el­e­ments of the con­tem­pla­tion and plan­ning of the like­ly ac­tion of the US mil­i­tary against Venezuela.

The Prime Min­is­ter's lat­est as­sur­ances to the na­tion are there­fore dif­fi­cult to ac­cept even for per­haps her most loy­al sup­port­ers.

In fact, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s vague­ness and her in­sis­tence that the meet­ing with the US Gen­er­al did not dis­cuss the po­ten­tial con­flict be­tween the US and Venezuela and the im­pli­ca­tions for the safe­ty of Trinidad, are dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend. Sim­i­lar­ly puz­zling is her seem­ing lack of full aware­ness and/or un­will­ing­ness to ful­ly in­form the na­tion of the pres­ence and ob­jec­tive of the US mil­i­tary air­craft which land­ed at the ANR Robin­son Air­port.

“They are help­ing us with some­thing to do at the air­port,” is not the kind of re­sponse ex­pect­ed of the Prime Min­is­ter in the cir­cum­stances.

The THA Chief Sec­re­tary claimed to be to­tal­ly un­aware of the ar­rival and mis­sion of the air­craft in To­ba­go.

Cu­ri­ous­ly, in deny­ing knowl­edge of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a US mil­i­tary at­tack on Venezuela, the Prime Min­is­ter de­lib­er­ate­ly or un­in­ten­tion­al­ly placed her­self and, by ex­ten­sion, T&T at the cen­tre of the is­sue: “We are not about to launch any cam­paign against Venezuela.”

The fact is, there is con­fu­sion and un­cer­tain­ty at­tend­ing the state­ments of the Prime Min­is­ter about T&T’s in­volve­ment in what­ev­er po­ten­tial con­flict which may erupt be­cause of the claims of the US against Venezuela.

It would be quite im­pos­si­ble to be as­sured that T&T, sev­en miles off the coast of Venezuela, will not be af­fect­ed in some way if the US de­cides to go to war against Venezuela. A refugee cri­sis at the south­ern tip of Trinidad will be cer­tain as Venezue­lans seek to es­cape from the ef­fects of war.

Rep­e­ti­tion of the trite, “There is noth­ing to be afraid of at this time,” with the qual­i­fy­ing “at this time”, will not al­low any­one here to be ful­ly as­sured that peace will pre­vail, and so Trinidad and To­ba­go will be safe from be­ing im­pact­ed if war re­sults.