Since March this year, re­gion­al me­dia house Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion has an­nounced nine mar­itime seizures of il­le­gal nar­cotics by mar­itime forces, sev­en of which in­volved the US Coast Guard. These seizures in­volved tonnes of co­caine and mar­i­jua­na, with a street val­ue of over US$500 mil­lion, through mul­ti­ple in­ter­cep­tions in which over a dozen drug smug­glers were ar­rest­ed.

While many of these op­er­a­tions were con­duct­ed in the Caribbean Sea by the US Coast Guard, one seizure in June in­volved an in­ter­na­tion­al, mul­ti-agency op­er­a­tion, in which a ves­sel was tracked from T&T wa­ters across the At­lantic Ocean to the Por­tuguese arch­i­pel­ago of the Azores, where 1,600 kilo­grammes of co­caine worth US$25 mil­lion were seized. That op­er­a­tion in­volved the US Drug En­force­ment Agency, of­fi­cers from two T&T po­lice units, the Por­tuguese Navy and Ju­di­cial Po­lice work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion.

In all nine op­er­a­tions, il­le­gal drugs were seized. In some of the mar­itime in­ter­cep­tions, peo­ple were de­tained. In none of those op­er­a­tions did the US Coast Guard, or the oth­er mar­itime law en­force­ment agen­cies in­volved, find it nec­es­sary to blow up the ves­sel that was sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing the il­lic­it car­goes.

On Tues­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump claimed that Amer­i­can forces oblit­er­at­ed a ves­sel, in which 11 "ter­ror­ists" from the Tren de Aragua gang were al­leged­ly trans­port­ing drugs. Trump claimed that the in­ci­dent took place some­where in the South­ern Caribbean and that the ves­sel de­part­ed from Venezuela.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Mr Trump pro­vid­ed no ev­i­dence to sup­port his claims as the ves­sel, which was al­leged­ly filled with il­le­gal drugs and ter­ror­ist drug traf­fick­ers, was de­stroyed. As a re­sult, none of his claims about the ves­sel leav­ing Venezuela filled with Tren de Aragua ter­ror­ists and drugs can be ver­i­fied. And the ex­act lo­ca­tion and time of the in­ci­dent re­mains shroud­ed in se­cre­cy.

Even if every claim made by the US pres­i­dent turns out to be ac­cu­rate, the dif­fer­ence be­tween the nine pre­vi­ous drug-in­ter­dic­tion ef­forts and Tues­day's al­leged in­ci­dent is quite stark. The de­lib­er­ate de­struc­tion of the ev­i­dence of drug traf­fick­ing is al­so like­ly to be un­prece­dent­ed and strange.

It could have been a sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic re­la­tions coup for the US pres­i­dent if the ves­sel re­mained in­tact and the al­leged drug smug­glers with their il­le­gal car­go were re­cov­ered.

The ques­tion is why has Mr Trump es­ca­lat­ed the de­ploy­ment of men, ma­chines and in­tel­li­gence re­sources to erad­i­cate drug traf­fick­ing from this re­gion, when pre­vi­ous ef­forts this year ap­pear to have borne re­sults in in­ter­dict­ing the flow of drugs to mar­kets in the north.

The im­plau­si­bil­i­ty of Tues­day's in­ci­dent may re­sult in some in this re­gion, and be­yond, be­liev­ing that the goal of stop­ping nar­co­traf­fick­ing in these parts is a very low pri­or­i­ty in ex­plain­ing why the US naval flotil­la was de­ployed to the South­ern Caribbean.

It could be that the US is try­ing to pro­voke an all-out war aimed at re­mov­ing the Nico­las Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion in Venezuela, us­ing the fight against drug traf­fick­ing as a fig leaf to hide the re­al mo­tive be­hind the mil­i­tary build-up.

If Mr Trump's mo­ti­va­tions turn out to be ag­gres­sive, that leaves the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion in a quandary, as the Prime Min­is­ter seems to have es­chewed T&T's tra­di­tion­al stance of neu­tral­i­ty and non-in­ter­fer­ence by throw­ing her full sup­port be­hind the White House.

T&T will, there­fore, need to main­tain a cor­dial re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela be­cause that coun­try is less than 11 kilo­me­tres away from T&T at its clos­est point.