As Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tends the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in St Kitts and Nevis this week, her pres­ence comes un­der the shad­ow of a com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial chap­ter in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy.

What would or­di­nar­i­ly be a rou­tine reaf­fir­ma­tion of re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion in­stead prompts un­com­fort­able ques­tions about the fu­ture of Caribbean uni­ty, and whether one na­tion’s pos­ture can al­ter Cari­com’s course.

In re­cent months, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s for­eign pol­i­cy has placed her at odds with the pre­vail­ing re­gion­al con­sen­sus.

At the cen­tre of the con­tro­ver­sy is her un­equiv­o­cal sup­port for the Unit­ed States’ ex­pand­ed mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly its op­er­a­tions against al­leged drug traf­fick­ing off the Venezue­lan coast, which re­sult­ed in the cap­ture of for­mer Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cil­ia Flo­res, on Jan­u­ary 3.

Her sharp crit­i­cism of the bloc as an “un­re­li­able part­ner” that is “dys­func­tion­al and self-de­struc­tive” marked a low point in re­gion­al re­la­tions.

By ac­cus­ing Cari­com of choos­ing a “nar­co-gov­ern­ment” in Cara­cas over its own de­mo­c­ra­t­ic al­lies, she ef­fec­tive­ly up­end­ed the unit­ed stance that once char­ac­terised Caribbean diplo­ma­cy.

This di­ver­gence has not been mere­ly rhetor­i­cal.

In Sep­tem­ber, at a CELAC emer­gency meet­ing, Trinidad and To­ba­go stood alone among Cari­com mem­bers in sup­port­ing the US mil­i­tary pres­ence, re­ject­ing broad­er re­gion­al con­cerns about sov­er­eign­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

Against the back­drop of this week’s sum­mit, the press­ing ques­tion is whether T&T’s in­de­pen­dent path strength­ens or weak­ens the Caribbean voice on the glob­al stage.

At home, Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tains that her ap­proach re­flects Trinidad and To­ba­go’s “T&T first” po­si­tion, point­ing to the threats posed by drug and gun traf­fick­ing and ar­gu­ing that these chal­lenges de­mand firm in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion.

Cari­com, how­ev­er, has long main­tained that col­lec­tive diplo­ma­cy, not soli­tary align­ment with ex­ter­nal pow­ers, of­fers the re­gion its great­est lever­age and shields it from geopo­lit­i­cal cross­fire.

Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters fur­ther is the fact that 11 Cari­com neigh­bours - in­clud­ing An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca and Ja­maica - face Wash­ing­ton’s pause on US im­mi­grant visas and the im­po­si­tion of $15,000 trav­el bonds, while Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains ex­empt.

Whether this is a co­in­ci­dence, a con­se­quence, or a mat­ter of qui­et diplo­ma­cy is a mat­ter of de­bate at home.

As Per­sad-Bisses­sar meets with US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on the mar­gins of the sum­mit to­day, the op­tics sug­gest that T&T may be chart­ing a bi­lat­er­al course some­what re­moved from its re­gion­al part­ners. The risk the re­gion faces is that if ma­jor pow­ers adopt a “car­rot and stick” ap­proach, re­ward­ing some while pe­nal­is­ing oth­ers, Cari­com’s hard-won uni­ty could fray.

This sum­mit, there­fore, is more than cer­e­mo­ni­al.

If the col­lec­tive voice of the Caribbean frac­tures in­to com­pet­ing po­si­tions, the very idea of a uni­fied Com­mu­ni­ty will be weak­ened at a time when glob­al geopol­i­tics de­mands co­or­di­na­tion, not di­vi­sion.

In this light, in Bas­seterre this week, the fo­cus will un­doubt­ed­ly rest square­ly on Per­sad-Bisses­sar and on whether her stance, re­in­forced in her open­ing state­ment to her re­gion­al col­leagues at the sum­mit’s open­ing yes­ter­day, nar­rows the re­gion­al di­vide or widens it.