By Dr. Nand C. Bar­douille

With a keen eye trained on Trinidad and To­ba­go, for­eign pol­i­cy cir­cles are look­ing back on an event­ful year in the in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com). The sub­ject of live­ly de­bate, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re-en­vi­sion­ing of the for­eign pol­i­cy-re­lat­ed prin­ci­ple of the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace has ar­guably fu­elled this height­ened lev­el of in­ter­est. Al­so of note, this de­ci­sion put Trinidad and To­ba­go at odds with its sis­ter Cari­com mem­ber states.

This sharp for­eign pol­i­cy turn and its fol­low-on ac­tions have a part to play in cat­a­pult­ing the Caribbean, which rarely re­ceives top billing in the top-tier in­ter­na­tion­al press, to a front-page head­line. That said, giv­en its large-scale and dead­ly ef­fect, the US mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean drove that head­line-grab­bing cov­er­age in 2025.

This dra­mat­ic turn of events has far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for Cari­com, which is in the grips of a for­eign pol­i­cy quandary. Like the now decades-old in­va­sion of Grena­da, which al­so split this bloc’s mem­ber states, Amer­i­ca is at the heart of it all.

While the Unit­ed States took the swing that is re­spon­si­ble for this re­gion­al group­ing’s cur­rent body blow, ac­cord­ing to Cari­com in­sid­ers, it would not have land­ed in the way that it did were it not for the for­eign pol­i­cy-re­lat­ed ac­tions of one Cari­com mem­ber state in par­tic­u­lar.

Those ac­tions were met with a mut­ed re­ac­tion from the 13 oth­er small states com­pris­ing the Cari­com bloc, even though vir­tu­al­ly all of those states were shak­en by them. The states in ques­tion are in­tent on keep­ing ten­sions, which have played out be­hind closed doors, con­tained.

Yet, Cari­com has been left scram­bling to deal with the re­sul­tant for­eign pol­i­cy un­cer­tain­ty qua fall­out. Port of Spain is keen­ly aware of the pres­sures that Cari­com is un­der, stem­ming from this dis­joint­ed re­gion­al for­eign pol­i­cy mo­ment. 

In flip­ping the script on the for­eign pol­i­cy-re­lat­ed prin­ci­ple of the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, cou­pled with its un­shake­able sup­port for the Unit­ed States’ on­go­ing pow­er pro­jec­tion in the Caribbean, T&Ts for­eign pol­i­cy re­align­ment has al­so been the cat­a­lyst for a wider de­bate on the most im­por­tant geopo­lit­i­cal trend of them all: The re­newed hege­mon­ic de­signs of the world’s pre-em­i­nent su­per­pow­er, whose fo­cus — once again — is on the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

Amer­i­ca’s geopol­i­tics-re­lat­ed re­think

In what is now a mul­ti­po­lar in­ter­na­tion­al or­der, and as its on­go­ing mil­i­tary ac­tion in the Caribbean demon­strates, the ad­min­is­tra­tion of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is heav­i­ly in­vest­ed in an Amer­i­can geopo­lit­i­cal pos­ture that turns on the ex­er­cise of dom­i­nance over the West­ern Hemi­sphere. A clear and high-pro­file in­di­ca­tor of this ap­proach is the White House’s much-an­tic­i­pat­ed, re­cent­ly-pub­lished US Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy (NSS), which fo­cus­es on the need to“re­store Amer­i­can pre­em­i­nence in the West­ern Hemi­sphere”à la neo-Mon­roeism. (Notwith­stand­ing, in show­cas­ing the Unit­ed States’ se­cu­ri­ty pri­or­i­ties and re­lat­ed out­look on the world, the doc­u­ment al­so un­der­scores sup­port for non-in­ter­ven­tion­ist poli­cies.)

As a warn­ing shot across the bow of (pri­mar­i­ly) Chi­na, a near-peer com­peti­tor to the US, Trump’s sec­ond NSS un­der­scores that Wash­ing­ton will not stand for for­eign in­flu­ence in this hemi­sphere.

In ad­di­tion, the strat­e­gy doc­u­ment in­di­cates that Wash­ing­ton will con­tin­ue apace with its ef­forts to beat back the drug trade and ir­reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion.

The NSS al­so spot­lights shift­ing US mil­i­tary as­sets to the West­ern Hemi­sphere — in a sign that this hemi­sphere is now the prin­ci­pal fo­cus of US for­eign pol­i­cy.

Due to the fact that it front-loads what the dis­ci­pline of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions terms ‘pow­er over’, the doc­u­ment has a mea­sured qua fo­cused ap­proach to soft pow­er-think­ing in Amer­i­can state­craft.

Where spheres of in­flu­ence-re­lat­ed think­ing fell by the for­eign pol­i­cy way­side in the post-Cold War pe­ri­od, as this NSS lays bare, it has come back in­to US for­eign pol­i­cy. It is es­pe­cial­ly pro­nounced at this junc­ture, con­sid­er­ing that the post-World War II in­ter­na­tion­al or­der is in a state of flux.

This NSS-styled Mon­roe Doc­trine re­dux is sure to ruf­fle a few feath­ers in Cari­com, span­ning a cross-sec­tion of stake­hold­ers.

The em­pha­sis placed on the na­tion-state in the doc­u­ment al­so con­firms what many in the re­gion al­ready know: The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has no qualms about the rel­e­ga­tion of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism and in­ter­na­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions. It is un­both­ered by the very rules of the (in­ter­na­tion­al) game that the Unit­ed States was large­ly re­spon­si­ble for au­thor­ing and putting in place 80 years ago.

US-backed lib­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al­ism, which lever­aged an ex­ten­sive net­work of in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions and le­gal/nor­ma­tive frame­works, has come un­der tremen­dous strain. The doc­u­ment casts aside the no­tion of a US-led in­ter­na­tion­al or­der, down­play­ing al­liances in favour of the high­ly per­son­al­is­tic, trans­ac­tion­al style of Trump 2.0 era US for­eign pol­i­cy.

The new US se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy and the world­view it re­flects are cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of Caribbean cap­i­tals, whose re­spec­tive an­a­lyt­i­cal gazes will par­tic­u­lar­ly fall on the doc­u­ment’s ref­er­ences to: (i) the Mon­roe Doc­trine; and (ii) an ap­proach to eco­nom­ic state­craft that wields a big stick.

In­deed, for a while now, re­gion­al gov­ern­ments have been at pains to ready them­selves for the full-fledged roll-out of Trump’s brash “Amer­i­ca first” for­eign pol­i­cy doc­trine.

What’s T&T’s an­gle?

For ex­am­ple, T&T’s re­cent­ly re-elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has in­vest­ed sig­nif­i­cant po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal in pri­or­i­tiz­ing a na­tion­al­ist for­eign pol­i­cy ap­proach and bi­lat­er­al deals with cer­tain third coun­tries over Cari­com co­op­er­a­tion on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

In this re­gard, two Port of Spain-or­ches­trat­ed diplo­mat­ic gam­bits come to mind. First, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar shift­ed her coun­try’s for­eign pol­i­cy to a tough pos­ture to­ward Cari­com, test­ing the four cor­ners of the re­gion­al group­ing’s for­eign pol­i­cy co­or­di­na­tion re­quire­ment, which the bloc’s con­stituent treaty spells out. Sec­ond, and re­lat­ed­ly, Port of Spain has cast its lot with the US mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean.

While the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion main­tains that such a large-scale dis­play of Amer­i­can pow­er is meant to dis­rupt the flow of nar­cotics to the Unit­ed States, it is an open se­cret that Wash­ing­ton is on a cru­sade against the left­ist, au­thor­i­tar­i­an Venezue­lan leader Nicolás Maduro.

For its part, the gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has drawn bit­ing crit­i­cism from the Maduro regime for its role in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s now months-long Venezue­lan pres­sure cam­paign. Cara­cas reg­u­lar­ly rails against this cam­paign, as this U.S. ad­min­is­tra­tion keeps up­ping the ante and con­tin­ues to ef­fect yet an­oth­er turn of the screw in forc­ing regime change. Im­por­tant­ly, the pos­si­ble off-ramps avail­able to Maduro are fiz­zling away.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tends that Maduro leads a drug car­tel (i.e. Car­tel de los Soles, or, Car­tel of the Suns), which it deems a for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion. On this ba­sis, the US mil­i­tary has gone af­ter it. Its march­ing or­ders are backed up by in­ter alia an Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der that Trump signed this past Jan­u­ary, des­ig­nat­ing car­tels and oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tions as for­eign ter­ror­ist or­ga­ni­za­tions and spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed glob­al ter­ror­ists. Maduro has al­so run afoul of Wash­ing­ton in oth­er re­spects, which I analyse else­where.

For the most part, Cari­com mem­ber states are deeply con­cerned about this volatile state of af­fairs.

Whith­er Cari­com?

Cari­com has long had a clear and con­sis­tent po­si­tion on non-in­ter­ven­tion, pri­or­i­tiz­ing sov­er­eign­ty, mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, the preser­va­tion of the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace and the set­tle­ment of con­flicts through peace­ful, diplo­mat­ic means. With­in sev­er­al quar­ters of state and non-state ac­tors in Cari­com, then, the so-called “Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear” has come un­der the spot­light.

This is not just be­cause the op­er­a­tion in ques­tion col­lides with those norms. Con­se­quen­tial­ly, the ef­fect of this show of force has been to di­vide the bloc.

More of the same is seem­ing­ly in the off­ing, as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has come out swing­ing in fram­ing its goals for the West­ern Hemi­sphere in terms of the dis­con­cert­ing phrase “En­list and Ex­pand.” This NSS-re­lat­ed un­der­tak­ing shows that Wash­ing­ton means busi­ness in that re­gard, es­pe­cial­ly when it is paired with this oth­er strat­e­gy doc­u­ment-re­lat­ed state­ment: “We will re­ward and en­cour­age the re­gion’s gov­ern­ments, po­lit­i­cal par­ties, and move­ments broad­ly aligned with our prin­ci­ples and strat­e­gy.”

This will not go over well with Cari­com mem­ber states, which — as post-colo­nial states — have long com­bined a non-ne­go­tiable com­mit­ment to sov­er­eign­ty with the in­de­pen­dent ex­er­cise of for­eign pol­i­cy. This ob­tains for their in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions with third coun­try-re­lat­ed small and large states, alike.

If the NSS is any in­di­ca­tion, on bal­ance, Trump 2.0 will like­ly hurt what tra­di­tion­al­ly has been these states’ most im­por­tant part­ner­ship. As such, vir­tu­al­ly all mem­ber states in Cari­com are hav­ing to grap­ple with es­sen­tial ques­tions about their fu­ture re­la­tions with the Unit­ed States.

The path of least re­sis­tance and its im­pli­ca­tions

In light of the for­eign pol­i­cy path that T&T is tak­ing, Port-of-Spain will like­ly be un­trou­bled by such a gloomy state of af­fairs. One through line in Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s for­eign pol­i­cy think­ing has been to en­sure that T&T is on side with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, which rev­els in ex­ert­ing mil­i­tary force and eco­nom­ic/trade lever­age; all of which are hall­marks of a hard pow­er-based for­eign pol­i­cy.

Since US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first in-per­son meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 30, which placed an em­pha­sis on re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and counter-nar­cotics co­op­er­a­tion vis-à-vis wider US-T&T re­la­tions, Port-of-Spain has drawn ever clos­er to Wash­ing­ton. A State De­part­ment read­out of that meet­ing re­layed that, for his part, “The Sec­re­tary em­pha­sised that deep­en­ing US-T&T co­op­er­a­tion will be crit­i­cal to dis­rupt­ing nar­co­traf­fick­ing net­works, strength­en­ing re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and safe­guard­ing our re­gion.”

The twin-is­land re­pub­lic’s For­eign Min­istry has had oc­ca­sion to reaf­firm that the gov­ern­ment strong­ly sup­ports the Unit­ed States’ on-go­ing mil­i­tary ac­tions in the re­gion. Port of Spain’s most strik­ing re­sponse to the US mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean, to date, came by way of this state­ment: “These op­er­a­tions aimed at com­bat­ting nar­co and hu­man traf­fick­ing and oth­er forms of transna­tion­al crime are ul­ti­mate­ly aimed at al­low­ing the Re­gion to be a true ‘Zone of Peace’ where all cit­i­zens can in re­al­i­ty, live and work in a safe en­vi­ron­ment.”

Port-of-Spain is play­ing ball and, in its view, in a man­ner that is pay­ing off. But as its ties with Wash­ing­ton have on­ly grown stronger, at least dur­ing the pe­ri­od in ques­tion, the same can­not be said in re­la­tion to Cari­com.

Giv­en T&T’s promi­nence in the re­gion­al group­ing and the weight­i­ness of the is­sues aris­ing, this de­vel­op­ment has brought the bloc to a wa­ter­shed mo­ment in in­tra-Cari­com re­la­tions.

A ma­jor point of con­tention is Port of Spain’s ap­proach to Wash­ing­ton’s mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean — in a con­text where the prin­ci­ple of Cari­com uni­ty seems less cen­tral to Port of Spain’s for­eign pol­i­cy cal­cu­lus.

The gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar cites the win-win na­ture of “Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear” for both the US and Trinidad and To­ba­go, with an eye to the lat­ter’s se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges with drug traf­fick­ing and as­so­ci­at­ed crimes. This sit­u­a­tion has run roughshod — for years now and, in­creas­ing­ly so, dri­ven by links to the Venezue­lan un­der­world — over the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. These crim­i­nal el­e­ments, ac­cord­ing to na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties, are run­ning amok in the coun­try and au­thor­i­ties are seem­ing­ly in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion in that re­gard. In the cir­cum­stances, cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty has hit at an all-time low.

Of the hand­ful of small­er na­tions in the wider Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion that have lent full-throat­ed and var­ied sup­port to Wash­ing­ton’s Venezue­lan pres­sure cam­paign, T&T is way out front.

Its sis­ter Cari­com mem­ber states have sat up and tak­en no­tice, ap­peal­ing di­rect­ly to Wash­ing­ton to be mind­ful of the wider im­pli­ca­tions of the US mil­i­tary’s ac­tions in the Caribbean. To judge from Trump’s sec­ond term NSS doc­u­ment, they may not get much trac­tion.

Hedg­ing of re­la­tion­al bets

Con­tend­ing with what the NSS dubs the “Trump Corol­lary” to the Mon­roe Doc­trine will like­ly throw up a num­ber of chal­lenges for Cari­com mem­ber states. This is es­pe­cial­ly the case when con­sid­er­ing — for ex­am­ple — the NSS is sharply crit­i­cal of Chi­na’s (soft) pow­er foot­print in the wider Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion. Of note, in Wash­ing­ton’s view, Chi­na’s grow­ing in­flu­ence in this space and among those Cari­com mem­ber states that diplo­mat­i­cal­ly align with the one-Chi­na prin­ci­ple has drawn con­sid­er­ably on Bei­jing’s Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive (BRI).

In re­al­i­ty, by pur­su­ing re­la­tions with Chi­na in this vein, the nineCari­com mem­ber states con­cerned os­ten­si­bly have de­vel­op­ment in­ter­ests in mind.

That said, it is al­so fair to say that the Caribbean’s “strate­gic im­por­tance as a hub for lo­gis­tics, bank­ing and com­merce” and its ge­o­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty to the Unit­ed States are among sev­er­al fac­tors dri­ving Chi­na’s in­ter­est in the re­gion, util­is­ing the BRI as a ve­hi­cle for trade, in­vest­ment and oth­er in­ter­ests in the re­gion.

Chi­nese soft pow­er in the Caribbean is said to have erod­ed Amer­i­ca’s dom­i­nance in this re­gion, which Wash­ing­ton tra­di­tion­al­ly “held un­ri­valed in­flu­ence over.”

Over the last decade and a half, Chi­na has seized op­por­tu­ni­ties for mo­men­tous trade and eco­nom­ic in­vest­ment in the Caribbean. In ad­di­tion, Chi­na is al­so tak­ing steps to put its stamp on se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance in the re­gion.

The NSS takes aim at the BRI, cit­ing such a tac­tic as a means by which to ad­vance Amer­i­can se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. It is in­struc­tive that, ear­li­er this year, the Unit­ed States’ strong-armed Pana­ma in­to with­draw­ing from the Ini­tia­tive.

The sig­nif­i­cance of this geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, which roused Bei­jing’s ire, is not lost on those Cari­com mem­ber states that are as­so­ci­at­ed with the BRI.

T&T, which be­came the first An­glo­phone Caribbean coun­try to sign on to the Ini­tia­tive in 2018, has ben­e­fit­ted from sev­er­al BRI-backed in­fra­struc­ture projects. Notwith­stand­ing the well-known con­cerns sur­round­ing the BRI, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, an­a­lysts agree that in the Trinidad and To­ba­go con­text it has “mod­ernised in­fra­struc­ture and ex­pand­ed pub­lic ser­vices.”

Chi­na is a re­li­able part­ner for T&T, whose re­la­tions with Bei­jing have “deep­ened” by virtue of the rel­a­tive­ly re­cent wave of BRI-re­lat­ed diplo­ma­cy.

For Bei­jing, T&T is a BRI suc­cess sto­ry. The nar­ra­tive be­hind that suc­cess al­so links to the Chi­na-Tai­wan com­pe­ti­tion for diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion in the wider Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion.

Against this back­drop, Port of Spain’s for­eign pol­i­cy gam­bit to get on Wash­ing­ton’s side in what is Amer­i­ca’s largest show of force in the Caribbean since the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis has not gone un­no­ticed in Bei­jing.

What is more, as Bei­jing un­packs the NSS, its as­sess­ment will im­me­di­ate­ly raise red flags ger­mane in­ter alia to Sino-Caribbean re­la­tions. No­tably, the type of U.S. state­craft set out there­in threat­ens to put the kinds of sol­id ties that Chi­na has built with coun­tries like Trinidad and To­ba­go to a stern test.

It does not help things that, of late, Port-of-Spain’s for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion­ing has giv­en the im­pres­sion that the road to for­eign pol­i­cy suc­cess leads through Wash­ing­ton. Among the ear­ly take­aways for for­eign pol­i­cy wonks who pay at­ten­tion to Cari­com mem­ber states’ for­eign poli­cies, this per­haps has stood out most.

The is­sues, tak­en to­geth­er, sug­gest that Cari­com now finds it­self in an al­to­geth­er tough spot. In the cir­cum­stances, the bloc’s mem­ber states can­not af­ford to stray from a for­eign pol­i­cy max­im that has wide ap­peal in the Caribbean con­text. Coined by the late Bar­ba­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Er­rol Bar­row, al­beit with Bar­ba­dos in mind, it reads (in part): “… friends of all, satel­lites on none.”

Nand C. Bar­douille, Ph.D., is the man­ag­er of The Diplo­mat­ic Acad­e­my of the Caribbean in the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The views ex­pressed are those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the of­fi­cial pol­i­cy or po­si­tion of The UWI.