There is an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible, Gen­e­sis 15:18, that says that the land promised to Abra­ham’s de­scen­dants stretch­es from the riv­er of Egypt to the Eu­phrates. In mod­ern po­lit­i­cal lan­guage, the max­i­mal ver­sion of that claim is some­times called “Greater Is­rael”.

De­pend­ing on who is draw­ing the map, it can in­clude mod­ern Is­rael and Pales­tine, but al­so Jor­dan, Lebanon, parts of Syr­ia, Egypt and Iraq.

That claim is not the for­mal pol­i­cy of every Is­raeli gov­ern­ment, and it is cer­tain­ly not the be­lief of every Is­raeli. The diplo­mat­ic prob­lem be­gins when a po­lit­i­cal ac­tor stands be­side such a map, im­ply­ing the ab­sorp­tion of neigh­bour­ing ter­ri­to­ry. At that point, the map be­comes an el­e­ment of for­eign pol­i­cy.

Jor­dan un­der­stood this in 2023 when Is­raeli Fi­nance Min­is­ter Beza­lel Smotrich spoke in Paris from a podi­um bear­ing a map that de­pict­ed Is­rael as in­clud­ing all of Jor­dan and the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries.

Am­man sum­moned the Is­raeli am­bas­sador, said the act vi­o­lat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al norms and Jor­dan’s peace treaty with Is­rael, and de­mand­ed clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Is­rael then gave as­sur­ances that the map did not rep­re­sent the state’s po­si­tion and that Is­rael re­spect­ed Jor­dan’s sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty.

That is what self re­spect looks like in for­eign pol­i­cy. This was lack­ing in the Cari­com re­gion over the past cou­ple of weeks.

Venezuela’s Act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez re­cent­ly met with the prime min­is­ters of Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos while wear­ing a brooch de­pict­ing Venezuela’s claim to Guyana’s Es­se­qui­bo re­gion. Guyana ob­ject­ed and Cari­com is­sued a state­ment but that should nev­er have been nec­es­sary in the first place.

Any self-re­spect­ing Caribbean leader should have un­der­stood the provo­ca­tion be­fore Cari­com need­ed to in­ter­vene. It speaks to the con­cern of Cari­com be­ing a re­li­able part­ner. Some­thing that T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter has ques­tioned for some time now.

The crux of the mat­ter is whether Cari­com states un­der­stand the strate­gic game be­ing played around them. For years, Venezuela has used the lan­guage of sol­i­dar­i­ty, sov­er­eign­ty and an­ti-im­pe­ri­al­ism to po­si­tion it­self as an al­ter­na­tive to Unit­ed States in­flu­ence in the hemi­sphere. Many Caribbean in­tel­lec­tu­als, politi­cians and me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers have been drawn to that lan­guage. They hear “an­ti-im­pe­ri­al­ism” and as­sume virtue. They hear “sol­i­dar­i­ty” and as­sume friend­ship. They hear “Bo­li­var­i­an” and as­sume lib­er­a­tion.

Ex­cept that we should know bet­ter. The al­ter­na­tive to one hege­mon is not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly free­dom. Some­times it is an­oth­er hege­mon with a dif­fer­ent flag, a dif­fer­ent vo­cab­u­lary along with their own ex­pan­sion­ist ter­ri­to­r­i­al am­bi­tions. To the ex­tent that Venezuela un­der the Chav­is­mo move­ment has po­si­tioned it­self as an op­pos­ing re­gion­al force to the US, em­brac­ing Cara­cas will al­ways car­ry reper­cus­sions from Wash­ing­ton.

The les­son of AL­BA

and Petro­Caribe

That is the les­son of AL­BA-TCP and Petro­Caribe. If you are not fa­mil­iar with these terms then a his­to­ry les­son is nec­es­sary.

AL­BA was cre­at­ed by Hugo Chávez and Fi­del Cas­tro as an al­ter­na­tive to the US-backed Free Trade Area of the Amer­i­c­as. This isn’t a neu­tral de­vel­op­ment club but an ide­o­log­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal counter project. Its lan­guage was sov­er­eign­ty, co­op­er­a­tion, com­ple­men­tar­i­ty and re­sis­tance to dom­i­na­tion.

On the sur­face, much of that lan­guage ap­pealed to Caribbean sen­ti­ment. The re­gion has its own his­to­ry of colo­nial ex­trac­tion, struc­tur­al de­pen­dence and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to ex­ter­nal pow­er. An of­fer dressed in the lan­guage of dig­ni­ty will al­ways find an au­di­ence here. But AL­BA was not on­ly about free­ing small states from Wash­ing­ton’s or­bit. It was al­so about draw­ing them in­to Cara­cas’s or­bit. The events of the past two weeks con­firm those am­bi­tions have not been aban­doned. Cari­com coun­tries need to be clear on mak­ing a con­scious choice be­tween the US or Venezuela.

Petro­Caribe was the en­er­gy arm of Venezuela’s strat­e­gy. Launched in 2005, it al­lowed par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries to buy Venezue­lan oil on con­ces­sion­al terms. A por­tion of the bill was paid quick­ly, while the re­main­der could be de­ferred over many years at low in­ter­est. Some oblig­a­tions could be set­tled through goods and ser­vices. There was al­so an AL­BA-Caribe Fund for so­cial and de­vel­op­ment projects.

For small oil-im­port­ing economies fac­ing high fu­el prices, this was at­trac­tive. It cre­at­ed fis­cal breath­ing room. It re­duced im­me­di­ate pres­sure on for­eign ex­change. It al­lowed gov­ern­ments to soft­en the do­mes­tic im­pact of ex­pen­sive fu­el and elec­tric­i­ty. No se­ri­ous per­son should pre­tend those ben­e­fits were imag­i­nary.

But Petro­Caribe was cheap oil, cred­it line, diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ship and po­lit­i­cal lever­age all at once. It al­lowed Cara­cas to con­vert oil wealth in­to re­gion­al in­flu­ence. It gave Venezuela a role in the fis­cal life of small states. It gave re­cip­i­ent gov­ern­ments a rea­son to hes­i­tate be­fore crit­i­cis­ing Cara­cas. It cre­at­ed grat­i­tude, oblig­a­tion and de­pen­dence.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning saw the dan­ger ear­ly while his po­lit­i­cal suc­ces­sors seemed wil­ful­ly blind to those con­cerns. His warn­ing about Petro­Caribe was wide­ly dis­missed across the Caribbean as self in­ter­est be­cause T&T had its own mar­ket to pro­tect. That crit­i­cism was fair to some ex­tent. T&T had sup­plied much of the re­gion’s en­er­gy needs and stood to lose from Venezuela’s con­ces­sion­al en­try in­to the mar­ket. But self in­ter­est does not in­val­i­date the warn­ing.

Man­ning warned that Petro­Caribe could leave the re­gion de­pen­dent on a sin­gle provider, Venezuela, and said it was “a ques­tion of cut­ting your own throat if you are not care­ful”. He al­so ar­gued that T&T could not sup­port the FTAA head­quar­ters project in Port of Spain, while sign­ing on to an agree­ment framed against that same hemi­spher­ic trade mod­el.

Petro­Caribe al­so had a role to play in Petrotrin. The com­pa­ny had its own in­ter­nal fail­ures, but Petro­Caribe helped re­move a strate­gic re­gion­al mar­ket at pre­cise­ly the time Petrotrin need­ed scale and re­silience. Trinidad and To­ba­go should re­mem­ber the lo­cal cost. The arrange­ment helped oil-im­port­ing neigh­bours but it was through di­vide and con­quer, as it al­so shift­ed the cen­tre of Caribbean en­er­gy diplo­ma­cy from Port of Spain to Cara­cas.

Guyana ex­pe­ri­enced an­oth­er side of the Venezue­lan method. Un­der Petro­Caribe, Guyana ben­e­fit­ted from a rice-for-oil com­pen­sa­tion arrange­ment. Guyanese rice ex­ports were ac­cept­ed in par­tial pay­ment for Venezue­lan oil, and the scheme gave stim­u­lus to the rice sec­tor be­fore it end­ed.

But the same Venezuela that bought Guyanese rice con­tin­ued to press its claim to Es­se­qui­bo.

That is how lever­age works. First cul­ti­vate re­la­tion­ships, then fi­nance de­pen­dence. In ef­fect, soft­en the room, di­vide the re­gion. Then, when the ter­ri­to­r­i­al claim is as­sert­ed, the counter coali­tion is weak­er than it should be.

T&T is not a spec­ta­tor

This is why the Es­se­qui­bo brooch mat­ters. Wear it, see who ob­jects, see who stays silent, see who val­ues bi­lat­er­al favour above col­lec­tive prin­ci­ple.

The mat­ter al­so reach­es be­yond Guyana. Cari­com had al­ready warned in 2015 that Venezuela’s De­cree af­fect­ed the mar­itime space of not on­ly Guyana but al­so oth­er mem­ber states. Heads of Gov­ern­ment called on Venezuela to with­draw the el­e­ments of that de­cree ap­ply­ing to the ter­ri­to­ry and mar­itime space of mem­ber states.

T&T cit­i­zens should read that care­ful­ly. We are not spec­ta­tors. We sit close to Venezuela. We have en­er­gy in­ter­ests tied to Venezue­lan re­sources. We have mar­itime in­ter­ests, mi­gra­tion pres­sures and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. We are faced with a larg­er neigh­bour that has shown the will­ing­ness to use their mil­i­tary to pro­voke and in­tim­i­date across the bor­der in Guyana.

This brings us to the sep­a­rate spec­ta­cle of for­mer prime min­is­ter and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young meet­ing Del­cy Ro­dríguez in Cara­cas.

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian re­port­ing, Young post­ed a pho­to­graph of him­self shak­ing hands with Ro­dríguez at Mi­raflo­res Palace, with the hash­tag “per­sona gra­ta”.

This is ex­treme­ly reck­less, es­pe­cial­ly from some­one who, when in Gov­ern­ment, al­most patent­ed the words “un­pa­tri­ot­ic” and “trea­so­nous”.

We cer­tain­ly need to en­gage Venezuela on cross-bor­der en­er­gy where it is in our in­ter­est, as well as pur­sue our law­ful share of gas re­sources. How­ev­er, as a Cari­com na­tion we need to sup­port Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty with­out hes­i­ta­tion.

Di­rec­tion­al­ly that means clos­er ties to the US as a counter bal­ance to en­sure the ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of the coun­tries in the south­ern Caribbean, in­clud­ing ours. “Neu­tral­i­ty” is a “cop out” that bor­ders on be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble.

The les­son from AL­BA and Petro­Caribe is that pow­er rarely ar­rives call­ing it­self pow­er. It some­times ar­rives call­ing it­self sol­i­dar­i­ty. In the past it ar­rived with con­ces­sion­al oil, long cred­it, shared his­to­ry, an­ti-im­pe­r­i­al speech­es and the promise of dig­ni­ty.

If the re­sult is de­pen­dence on Cara­cas, si­lence on Es­se­qui­bo and the dis­place­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s own strate­gic in­ter­ests, we should be hon­est enough to name what hap­pened.

The Caribbean should not be seek­ing to em­brace a hege­mon that still lacks rule of law, a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy and a sta­ble mar­ket struc­ture. It does not need to ro­man­ti­cise Chav­is­mo be­cause it dis­likes Wash­ing­ton.

Venezuela’s pos­tur­ing should be met with re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty but that seems to be se­ri­ous­ly lack­ing where it mat­ters. Patrick Man­ning warned that the re­gion could cut its own throat. Two decades lat­er, the knife is still on the ta­ble.