By Dr. Nand Bar­douille

With­in hours of soft­en­ing his tone on No­vem­ber 16 as re­gards his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pol­i­cy po­si­tion­ing on Venezuela, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump re­vert­ed to turn­ing the screws once again on Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

In up­ping the ante in the on­go­ing US-Venezuela war of nerves, Trump was like­ly mind­ful of the joint mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es in­volv­ing US and T&T forces slat­ed for No­vem­ber 16 to 21. These ex­er­cis­es form part of in­ten­sive US-T&T con­tacts, which have come in­to their own as Wash­ing­ton ratch­ets up its Venezue­lan pres­sure cam­paign.

This has not gone over well with Maduro, who on­ly re­cent­ly launched yet an­oth­er broad­side against T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She has not tak­en the bait, re­main­ing above the fray, even as she has been the tar­get of re­lent­less barbs from Cara­cas for sev­er­al weeks now.

T&T in the mix

Caribbean lead­ers have been care­ful not to be drawn on the mat­ter, al­though rum­blings of dis­con­tent have sur­faced via diplo­mat­ic chan­nels, to wit Per­sad-Bisses­sar threw down the gaunt­let to her Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) bloc coun­ter­parts.

Even those lead­ers of this re­gion­al group­ing, com­pris­ing 14 small states (in­clu­sive of T&T), who have close ties to Cara­cas that are root­ed in the late-Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez’s petro-diplo­ma­cy, have large­ly been hands-off as T&T-Venezuela re­la­tions have tak­en a turn for the worse.

It is worth not­ing that among the bloc’s con­stituent treaty-an­chored com­mit­ments, mem­ber states are oblig­ed to co­or­di­nate their for­eign poli­cies.

In this fram­ing, at a min­i­mum, mem­ber states ought to strive to con­sult on for­eign pol­i­cy mat­ters of the day.

There is a view in the re­gion that, when all is said and done, each mem­ber state pri­or­i­tizes the pur­suit of its own na­tion­al in­ter­est.

For her part, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has thrown her gov­ern­ment’s weight be­hind the new­ly named Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear,” en­dors­ing its moot­ed drug in­ter­dic­tion man­date.

Giv­en that the Caribbean re­mains a ma­jor drug tran­sit route, for decades now re­gion­al states have co­op­er­at­ed with the US — among oth­ers — as re­gards counter-nar­cotics-re­lat­ed cam­paigns.

What is dif­fer­ent this time around is the man­ner in which the US mil­i­tary is go­ing about this prob­lem, fir­ing off lethal strikes pri­mar­i­ly in Caribbean wa­ters against what the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion al­leges are “Cara­cas-backed drug traf­fick­ers.” For its part, Cara­cas has re­fut­ed this charge, “ac­cus­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of be­ing a threat to the peace and se­cu­ri­ty of the whole re­gion.”

Wash­ing­ton’s take on the sit­u­a­tion de­parts from the tra­di­tion­al counter-nar­cotics-re­lat­ed US play­book, not least be­cause of the large-scale US mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean since ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

On No­vem­ber 16, led by the USS Ger­ald R. Ford air­craft car­ri­er, the Ger­ald R. Ford Car­ri­er Strike Group ar­rived in the Caribbean Sea.

The pres­ence of these con­se­quen­tial US mil­i­tary as­sets, whose sights are seem­ing­ly trained on Venezuela, is the largest build-up of its kind in at least a gen­er­a­tion.

Yet, the Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment seems to be un­fazed by this show of force in the Caribbean Sea, or, for that mat­ter by the volatile un­der­ly­ing sit­u­a­tion, which a high­ly re­gard­ed vet­er­an re­gion­al­ist con­tends is “se­ri­ous.”

It is al­so fair to say that in the event the Trump-Maduro show­down de­volves in­to full-fledged ki­net­ic war­fare, bear­ing in mind that Cara­cas deems Trinidad and To­ba­go to be neck-deep in Wash­ing­ton’s Venezue­lan gam­bit, this twin-is­land re­pub­lic may be in per­il. It is al­so in­struc­tive that Wash­ing­ton’s oblig­a­tions to Port of Spain in such an even­tu­al­i­ty are still pub­licly un­known; but sure­ly a de­fence pact is on the ta­ble.

Such a sce­nario may al­so have oth­er un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences, os­ten­si­bly for Guyana, which has been em­broiled in a long-run­ning bor­der dis­pute with Venezuela. If the Maduro regime finds it­self on the ropes, it may do the un­think­able where Es­se­qui­bo is con­cerned.

This pos­si­ble sce­nario al­so begs the ques­tion, would US troops be oblig­ed to de­fend Guyana? Thus, along with the rest of CARI­COM, Guyana al­so has a dog in the fight.

What, then, are T&T’s mo­tives in go­ing down this road?

What Gives?

Its mo­tives are lay­ered. Broad­ly speak­ing, short­ly fol­low­ing her sec­ond-term win in gen­er­al elec­tions that were held back in April and in prepar­ing her coun­try for the fu­ture, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­ter­mined that T&T stands to gain con­sid­er­ably from ex­tend­ing un­bri­dled for­eign pol­i­cy-re­lat­ed sup­port to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. It is al­most as if such sup­port is the on­ly game in town for those chas­ing quick for­eign pol­i­cy wins.

Re­lat­ed­ly, Port of Spain is mind­ful of the un­cer­tain­ty that came to char­ac­ter­ize US-CARI­COM re­la­tions short­ly af­ter Trump be­gan his sec­ond term as US Pres­i­dent.

The Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment is ea­ger to do all it can to put T&T’s bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship with the US on a new foot­ing.

In do­ing so, it is in­tent on play­ing to the trans­ac­tion­al log­ic that dri­ves Amer­i­ca’s ‘deal­mak­er-in-chief’ and his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s for­eign pol­i­cy ap­proach in or­der to bring him on­side. A re­cent­ly pub­lished state­ment from T&T’s For­eign Min­istry, which calls at­ten­tion to Amer­i­can tar­iff re­lief for an im­por­tant con­stituen­cy of the coun­try’s ex­porters, bears this out.

There is no deny­ing that in head­ing in a new for­eign pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s gov­ern­ment wants to put dis­tance be­tween it­self and the gov­ern­ment of the now for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley. Of note, Row­ley’s for­eign pol­i­cy style and ap­proach in re­la­tion to Venezuela has a lot to do with it. In this re­gard, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance on Trinidad and To­ba­go-Venezuela en­er­gy sec­tor-re­lat­ed co­op­er­a­tion is telling.

Yet the re­al­i­ty is that while T&T may be scor­ing points with Wash­ing­ton, it has been swept up in what is wide­ly seen as the US for­eign pol­i­cy endgame vis-à-vis Venezuela: regime-change in Mi­raflo­res, the coun­try’s pres­i­den­tial palace.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Venezuela pol­i­cy, then, is geared to­wards oust­ing Maduro, who Wash­ing­ton ar­gues helms an il­le­git­i­mate regime. Wash­ing­ton has im­pli­cat­ed Maduro and his regime in drug traf­fick­ing and oth­er il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, with suc­ces­sive US ad­min­is­tra­tions hav­ing im­posed sanc­tions on Venezuela to boot.

In­deed, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has gone far­ther still with re­gard to the boun­ty that Wash­ing­ton pre­vi­ous­ly placed on the Venezue­lan leader’s head.

Maduro, who has voiced con­cern that Wash­ing­ton has a grand de­sign afoot for his coun­try’s con­sid­er­able oil and gas re­serves, is not hav­ing any of it.

This has not stopped him from al­so adopt­ing a more con­cil­ia­to­ry tone with Trump — on oc­ca­sion. As US-Venezuela re­la­tions have spi­ralled, though, Venezuela’s armed forces have re­peat­ed­ly car­ried out large-scale mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es in prepa­ra­tion for a pos­si­ble US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion that di­rect­ly tar­gets that South Amer­i­can coun­try.

A sec­ond chal­lenge is that Maduro’s regime is said to have presided over the col­lapse of the coun­try’s econ­o­my. All the while, ac­cord­ing to rights groups, it has en­gaged in wide­spread po­lit­i­cal re­pres­sion.

More re­cent­ly, the Maduro regime has come un­der par­tic­u­lar scruti­ny for re­port­ed­ly steal­ing last year’s Venezue­lan pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. In the pe­ri­od since, it has fur­ther con­sol­i­dat­ed its stran­gle­hold on Venezue­lan state in­sti­tu­tions and so­ci­ety.

Over the last sev­er­al years, mil­lions of Venezue­lans have fled the coun­try, seek­ing an es­cape from the dire eco­nom­ic and re­pres­sive po­lit­i­cal con­di­tions there. They have fanned out across the Amer­i­c­as and be­yond. (Like the US, Trinidad and To­ba­go plays host to tens of thou­sands of Venezue­lan mi­grants.)

The rub

This is the wider con­text for the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s es­ca­la­to­ry mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean that, along with its ap­proved covert ac­tion with­in Venezuela, has the Maduro regime in its crosshairs.

For this rea­son, Port of Spain’s de­ci­sion to hitch its (for­eign pol­i­cy) wag­on to this US mil­i­tary pres­sure cam­paign may prove cost­ly. Three costs stand­out, not least be­cause they point to the big pic­ture vis-à-vis in­tra-Cari­com re­la­tions and the bloc’s wider en­gage­ment on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

First, it is not lost on an­a­lysts that the mar­itime strikes as­so­ci­at­ed with “Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear” are a throw­back to the US gun­boat diplo­ma­cy that Wash­ing­ton uti­lized in the Caribbean re­gion to ad­vance its hege­mon­ic ends in the first few decades of the last cen­tu­ry.

Then there are two rel­a­tive­ly re­cent ex­am­ples of US in­ter­ven­tion­ism in the Caribbean con­text that es­pe­cial­ly hit a lit­tle too close to home for re­gion­al lead­ers, among oth­ers. They are the US in­va­sion of Grena­da over 40 years ago and Wash­ing­ton’s role in forcibly re­mov­ing Haiti’s then-du­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide from of­fice over 20 years ago.

Few in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics-re­lat­ed mo­ments have mat­tered so much for Caribbean lead­ers vis-à-vis the re­gion’s his­to­ry as these very ones in re­spect of their re­solve to up­hold the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

Un­der­stand­ably, then, their ap­proach to this con­cept is far from ahis­tor­i­cal.

Yet, up­on en­ter­ing the “Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear”-re­lat­ed fray fair­ly ear­ly on in the now three-plus month-long mar­itime strikes con­duct­ed by the U.S. mil­i­tary on what the Trumpad­min­is­tra­tion has dubbed nar­co-ter­ror­ist ac­tors, Trinidad and To­ba­go sin­gle­hand­ed­ly un­set­tled the long-stand­ing con­sen­sus on this key for­eign pol­i­cy-re­lat­ed tenet of Cari­com. The oc­ca­sion was Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­dress, on Sep­tem­ber 26th, to the high-lev­el Gen­er­al De­bate of the 80th Ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA).

In this ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “The no­tion that the Caribbean is a Zone of Peace has be­come a false ide­al. The re­al­i­ty is stark — no such Peace ex­ists to­day.”

These re­marks raised eye­brows among her col­league Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com, in­so­much that they sig­nal a sud­den about-face on a core for­eign pol­i­cy mat­ter from a lead­ing mem­ber of this re­gion­al group­ing.

It is note­wor­thy that in her UN­GA ad­dress, Per­sad-Bisses­sar drew con­nec­tions be­tween her Zone of Peace con­tention and the re­al­i­ty con­fronting her coun­try — which rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing faces acute in­se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges. She al­so as­sert­ed that “Trump’s com­ments on the dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects on coun­tries of re­lent­less nar­co and hu­man traf­fick­ing, or­gan­ised crime, and il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion are cor­rect.”

That said, it is al­so worth not­ing that Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean lead­ers think sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly about the Zone of Peace con­cept, which has wide res­o­nance pre­cise­ly be­cause of the ubiq­ui­ty of hege­mo­ny and hege­mons in their re­spec­tive coun­tries’ his­tor­i­cal arcs.

What is more, the de­gree to which T&T’s ap­par­ent re­treat from the Zone of Peace con­cept mat­ters in this wider re­gion­al con­text was on full dis­play at the re­cent­ly-held 4th CELAC-EU sum­mit. While the meet­ing’s joint de­c­la­ra­tion af­firmed that the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) is a Zone of Peace, con­vey­ing cer­tain foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples in that re­gard and in re­la­tion to the UN Char­ter, the doc­u­ment is guard­ed in the con­text of how it ad­dress­es “mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty in the Caribbean.”

While points of con­ver­gence on the mat­ter of com­bat­ting transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime and drug traf­fick­ing are re­flect­ed in the de­c­la­ra­tion, it al­so in­ter alia states: “Sev­er­al CELAC mem­ber States em­pha­sised their na­tion­al po­si­tions re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion in the Caribbean and the Pa­cif­ic. We re­it­er­ate our com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing mech­a­nisms for di­a­logue, co­or­di­na­tion, and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to joint­ly ad­dress these chal­lenges.”

Sec­ond, T&T ‘s Zone of Peace-re­lat­ed re­ver­sal is thought to have broad­er im­pli­ca­tions for the cov­et­ed role of small states like those of Cari­com in hold­ing up the pri­ma­cy of in­ter­na­tion­al law and mul­ti­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion, each of which is tight­ly bound up with the UN Char­ter. This Char­ter pro­vides for a frame­work and in­sti­tu­tion­al ap­pa­ra­tus that to­geth­er are sup­port­ive of peace­ful sys­temic change, which small states es­pe­cial­ly have a stake in pre­serv­ing in the face of the an­ar­chic in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment — and they have struc­tured their for­eign pol­i­cy to suit.

A case in point is T&T’s tra­di­tion­al for­eign pol­i­cy pre­cepts. For decades, they have un­der­lined the im­por­tance of the in­ter­na­tion­al rule of law and in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion, fram­ing them as in­dis­pens­able safe­guards rel­a­tive to the afore­said en­vi­ron­ment.

Giv­en their pow­er ca­pa­bil­i­ties qua asym­me­tries, small states tend to re­ject what the dis­ci­pline of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions terms “pow­er over” in in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics, or, in or­di­nary par­lance, an affin­i­ty to wield raw pow­er in such an en­vi­ron­ment to achieve for­eign pol­i­cy ends.

Yet so far, Trinidad and To­ba­go has en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sup­port­ed US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions that tar­get so-called rogue ac­tors in the Caribbean and that thus far have re­sult­ed in strikes on just short of two-dozen sup­posed drug-traf­fick­ing boats, re­port­ed­ly re­sult­ing in the deaths of dozens of peo­ple.

Sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al fig­ures, among them Colom­bian pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro, have con­demned such strikes as a vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law and as amount­ing to ex­tra­ju­di­cial ex­e­cu­tions.

In con­trast, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dou­bled down on her sup­port for such US strikes, urg­ing her coun­try’s fish­er­folk to ply their craft in T&T wa­ters. Re­port­ed­ly, some of them have fall­en vic­tim to this mael­strom of strikes.

Third and re­lat­ed­ly, the larg­er pat­tern of frag­men­ta­tion of world­views that has long weighed the world down and is on over­drive in our post-unipo­lar world seem­ing­ly threat­ens to rear its head and linger with­in Cari­com—as Cara­cas con­tin­ues to be squeezed by Wash­ing­ton.

Pres­i­dent of Suri­name Jen­nifer Geer­lings-Si­mons was among those re­gion­al lead­ers who voiced con­cern with such an ap­proach in the ear­ly go­ings of the mar­itime op­er­a­tions in ques­tion, hav­ing said that she “strong­ly re­it­er­ates [Suri­name’s] po­si­tion that con­flicts should pri­mar­i­ly be re­solved through di­a­logue;” si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly reaf­firm­ing her coun­try’s sup­port for the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

Since then, Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­cept­ed, Cari­com mem­ber states have stood fast on “the prin­ci­ple of main­tain­ing the Caribbean Re­gion as a Zone of Peace and the im­por­tance of di­a­logue and en­gage­ment to­wards the peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes and con­flict.” Oth­er promi­nent re­gion­al fig­ures have chimed in, too, ex­tend­ing their sup­port for this view.

While giv­ing Port of Spain added cause to deep­en US-Trinidad and To­ba­go re­la­tions, “Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear” has al­so dri­ven a wedge be­tween T&T and its sis­ter Cari­com mem­ber states.

Hav­ing sig­nalled that her gov­ern­ment will “be re­align­ing [T&T’s] for­eign pol­i­cy,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so re­port­ed­ly in­di­cat­ed that her “Gov­ern­ment no longer views Cari­com as a re­li­able part­ner.”

Her get-tough nar­ra­tive on that front is al­so meant to play to a do­mes­tic au­di­ence. Crime and vi­o­lence have been a per­sis­tent, decades-long chal­lenge for T&T. In re­cent years, there has been a surge in the in­volve­ment of Venezue­lan crim­i­nal gangs in se­ri­ous crime in the coun­try.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­so got­ten Cari­com mem­ber states’ at­ten­tion in its bid to squeeze Cara­cas by way of its ex­pressed de­sire to cut deals with them on mil­i­tary co­op­er­a­tion, dri­ving ad­di­tion­al wedges among them. Con­sid­er that some of those deals have come to pass, while oth­ers have not. One Cari­com mem­ber state that has been in the pub­lic eye in this con­text is still weigh­ing a re­quest from the US mil­i­tary to host an Amer­i­can radar in­stal­la­tion.

In the Fi­nal Analy­sis

As Wash­ing­ton bar­rels ahead with its lat­est Venezue­lan gam­bit, T&T is prob­lem­at­i­cal­ly in the thick of it.

This is not the first time that Cari­com mem­ber states have grap­pled with fraught US-Venezue­lan re­la­tions that risk im­per­illing re­gion­al uni­ty. Back in 2019, the (in­ter­na­tion­al) pol­i­tics of di­vide and rule in Cari­com were on full dis­play, thrust in­to the pub­lic eye when Trump rolled out the red car­pet for five Caribbean lead­ers at his Mar-a-La­go re­sort in West Palm Beach, Flori­da. Those lead­ers had sided with Wash­ing­ton in its bid to back Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do as the right­ful leader of Venezuela.

At the time, Trump and Maduro were al­so in a heat­ed stand­off. The stakes back then were not as su­per­charged as they are now, though, giv­en the far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for Cari­com as out­lined in the fore­go­ing analy­sis.

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.