The Gov­ern­ment’s con­fir­ma­tion that Unit­ed States mil­i­tary air­craft have been grant­ed ap­proval to tran­sit Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­ports war­rants care­ful pub­lic scruti­ny. While the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs has char­ac­terised the arrange­ment as be­ing of a 'lo­gis­ti­cal na­ture' in­volv­ing rou­tine per­son­nel move­ments, the ab­sence of a de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion, cou­pled with the tim­ing of the de­ci­sion, raise le­git­i­mate ques­tions about its pur­pose.

The con­text of this an­nounce­ment must al­so be viewed against the back­drop of po­si­tions pre­vi­ous­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed by the Gov­ern­ment this year. 

On Au­gust 23, 2025, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pub­licly sup­port­ed the de­ploy­ment of US naval ves­sels in the south­ern Caribbean and stat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go would al­low the use of its ter­ri­to­ry for US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions should Venezuela in­vade Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo. That state­ment pro­vid­ed clear in­sight in­to how the Gov­ern­ment viewed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s role in a po­ten­tial re­gion­al con­flict.

By Sep­tem­ber 1, 2025, the Prime Min­is­ter sought to tem­per pub­lic con­cern about a pos­si­ble US-Venezuela con­fronta­tion, in­sist­ing that the in­creased US pres­ence in the re­gion was pri­mar­i­ly linked to drug in­ter­dic­tion and rou­tine se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, de­vel­op­ments since then have con­tin­ued to evolve rapid­ly. 

State­ments by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sug­gest­ing that “land ac­tion” against the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion could soon be­gin, com­bined with the seizure of a Venezue­lan oil tanker on the high seas and the vis­i­ble build-up of US mil­i­tary as­sets in the Caribbean, have sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­tered the strate­gic en­vi­ron­ment.

It is against this back­drop that the Gov­ern­ment’s de­scrip­tion of the use of lo­cal air­ports as “rou­tine” must be as­sessed. 

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ge­og­ra­phy alone - just miles from Venezuela across the Gulf of Paria - sug­gests that mil­i­tary ac­cess to lo­cal ter­ri­to­ry is far more than a pure­ly pro­ce­dur­al mat­ter and has un­der­stand­ably prompt­ed ques­tions from a dis­cern­ing pub­lic.

Among them, why ac­cess to Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port is re­quired at this junc­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the USS Ger­ald R. Ford, the world’s largest air­craft car­ri­er, is al­ready op­er­at­ing in the wider Caribbean?

Al­so, what ex­act­ly does “lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port” en­tail in this in­stance? Does it in­volve the tran­sit of heavy trans­port air­craft, spe­cialised equip­ment or per­son­nel be­yond stan­dard ro­ta­tions? And for how long are these ap­provals ex­pect­ed to re­main in place?

These ques­tions are not root­ed in alarmism, nor do they im­ply hos­til­i­ty to­ward se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion with long-stand­ing part­ners. Rather, they re­flect a le­git­i­mate need for clar­i­ty in a pe­ri­od of re­gion­al un­cer­tain­ty. The im­pli­ca­tions for Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so can­not be over­looked, in­clud­ing the risk that the coun­try may be viewed, fair­ly or oth­er­wise, as a for­ward stag­ing point in any fu­ture con­flict un­fold­ing just miles from its shores.

What is re­quired now is broad­er and more trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic on these mat­ters. Gov­ern­ment should clear­ly state the du­ra­tion of these ap­provals, the cat­e­gories of mil­i­tary air­craft in­volved, and the num­ber of for­eign mil­i­tary per­son­nel au­tho­rised to tran­sit or re­main on lo­cal soil. 

The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serve clear and time­ly ex­pla­na­tions of de­ci­sions that may af­fect the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty, econ­o­my and in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing.