From Sep­tem­ber 2, 2025—which was the day of the first US strike on ves­sels in the South­ern Caribbean that were al­leged to be car­ry­ing il­le­gal drugs and nar­co­traf­fick­ers—T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar em­braced the new Amer­i­can pol­i­cy of deal­ing with mar­itime craft in this re­gion.

Asked about the strike, which al­leged­ly killed 11 peo­ple on board the ves­sel, US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on Sep­tem­ber 2 de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as a counter-drug mis­sion aimed at desta­bil­is­ing car­tels op­er­at­ing with im­puni­ty in the re­gion.

“These par­tic­u­lar drugs were prob­a­bly head­ed to Trinidad or some oth­er coun­try in the Caribbean, at which point they just con­tribute to the in­sta­bil­i­ty these coun­tries are fac­ing,” Ru­bio said.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia on Sep­tem­ber 2, Per­sad-Bisses­sar came out in full sup­port of the US ac­tion say­ing, “I, along with most of the coun­try, am hap­py that the US naval de­ploy­ment is hav­ing suc­cess in their mis­sion. The US gov­ern­ment has re­peat­ed­ly said that go­ing af­ter the drug car­tels was its ob­jec­tive and they have be­gun to de­liv­er. Il­le­gal­ly traf­ficked drugs and arms have caused death and de­struc­tion in our so­ci­ety over the last 25 years...

“The slaugh­ter of our peo­ple is fu­elled by evil car­tel traf­fick­ers. The pain and suf­fer­ing the car­tels have in­flict­ed on our na­tion is im­mense. I have no sym­pa­thy for traf­fick­ers. The US mil­i­tary should kill them all vi­o­lent­ly.”

The Prime Min­is­ter added that the re­stric­tion of il­le­gal guns, drugs and hu­man traf­fick­ing will de­crease vi­o­lence in the re­gion and, in par­tic­u­lar, in this coun­try.

“May God bless and pro­tect the mem­bers of the US mil­i­tary who are en­gaged in the drug in­ter­dic­tion mis­sion. Their ef­forts will save many lives in our coun­try and the re­gion,” she said.

The point here is that the T&T Prime Min­is­ter was the first leader of a third-par­ty, sov­er­eign na­tion to come out vig­or­ous­ly in sup­port of what came to be known as US ki­net­ic strikes on al­leged drug boats in the South­ern Caribbean.

And while in­ter­na­tion­al law schol­ars, hu­man rights ac­tivists and politi­cians around the world con­demned the strikes as ex­tra­ju­di­cial and il­le­gal killings, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar nev­er wa­vered in her sup­port of the US ac­tion.

In fact, in her speech to the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2025, she ap­peared to dou­ble down in her sup­port of the strikes.

“While there have been ob­jec­tions to the US mil­i­tary ac­tion against drug car­tels in the south­ern Caribbean, some ob­jec­tions from some coun­tries, I state to­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go re­minds the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that un­less force­ful and ag­gres­sive ac­tions are tak­en, these evil drug car­tels will con­tin­ue their so­ci­etal de­struc­tion be­cause they be­lieve af­fect­ed na­tions will al­ways un­re­served­ly sub­scribe to morals and ethics and hu­man rights and val­ues which they them­selves bla­tant­ly flout.”

Em­pha­sis­ing that crim­i­nals do not ad­here to ethics and moral­i­ty, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “There­fore, we will fight fire with fire with­in the law. That is why we will­ing­ly sup­port­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty al­liance an­nounced by US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, in­volv­ing the US and sev­er­al coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca and, of course, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing in the hemi­sphere.”

What has T&T’s sup­port yield­ed?

On Sep­tem­ber 30, the T&T Prime Min­is­ter met with Mr Ru­bio at his of­fices in Wash­ing­ton DC. Af­ter that meet­ing, the US De­part­ment of State put out a read­out at­trib­uted to Mr Ru­bio that out­lined as fol­lows, “The Sec­re­tary ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty. He out­lined US sup­port for the gov­ern­ment’s Drag­on gas pro­pos­al and steps to en­sure it will not pro­vide sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit to the Maduro regime.”

In a state­ment is­sued sev­er­al hours af­ter the meet­ing, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced that the US gov­ern­ment now sup­ports Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ef­forts to de­vel­op cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bon re­sources.

“Sub­se­quent to the meet­ing, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go was in­formed that the Sec­re­tary of State sup­ports the ap­proval of the rel­e­vant Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) li­cences to be­gin dis­cus­sions to­ward de­vel­op­ing its cross-bor­der hy­dro­car­bons,” the state­ment read.

The US De­part­ment of Trea­sury, on Oc­to­ber 8, grant­ed T&T and whol­ly state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) a six-month OFAC li­cence al­low­ing the pur­suit of the de­vel­op­ment of the Drag­on gas field.

In an­nounc­ing the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s re­ceipt of the OFAC li­cence on Oc­to­ber 9, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie went out of his way to dis­close that the grant of the li­cence “was based up­on the re­quest dat­ed May 19, 2025, and sup­ple­men­tal in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed on di­verse dates in June and Ju­ly 2025.”

The point con­veyed by Mr Je­re­mie was that it was the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, elect­ed on April 28, 2025, that ap­plied for the OFAC li­cence.

But, it seems to me, that the grant of the OFAC li­cence to the Gov­ern­ment led by Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar must raise ques­tions about why the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion re­voked OFAC li­cences for the Drag­on and Cocuina nat­ur­al gas fields in April 2025:

It is note­wor­thy that Stu­art Young was sworn in as prime min­is­ter on March 17, 2025. He had the wide­ly re­port­ed bi­lat­er­al meet­ing with Mr Ru­bio in Kingston, Ja­maica, on March 26, and the OFAC li­cences were re­voked on April 8. Mr Ru­bio had a con­ver­sa­tion with Mr Young on April 18, ac­cord­ing to a re­port on the De­part­ment of State web­site. In that con­ver­sa­tion, Mr Ru­bio “recog­nised that en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty is im­por­tant to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pros­per­i­ty and econ­o­my. Any out­comes of sanc­tions up­on the Maduro regime and Venezuela is in no way in­dica­tive of our re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go and the val­ue we place on it.”

One would imag­ine that their meet­ing on March 26—be­fore the re­vo­ca­tion of the OFAC li­cences—and the tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion on April 18, af­ter the re­vo­ca­tion—would both have fo­cused on Drag­on gas.

It is, there­fore, al­so note­wor­thy that Mr Ru­bio called Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar “to con­grat­u­late her on be­ing elect­ed” on May 2, 2025.

“They dis­cussed strength­en­ing our part­ner­ship to ad­vance re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and mu­tu­al pri­or­i­ties. The Sec­re­tary reaf­firmed the Unit­ed States’ strong and en­dur­ing part­ner­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go, ground­ed in deep his­toric ties and shared goals for re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pros­per­i­ty,” ac­cord­ing to the US State De­part­ment’s read­out of the dis­cus­sion.

Ques­tions:

1) Why would the US Gov­ern­ment re­voke the two OFAC li­cences grant­ed to T&T’s pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, but de­cide to pro­vide the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion with a six-month Drag­on gas OFAC li­cence?

2) Did Mr Ru­bio per­ceive Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar to be more in line with the US think­ing than Mr Young?

3) What changed in the US sanc­tions regime against Venezuela be­tween the re­vo­ca­tion of the two OFAC li­cences on April 8, un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the grant of the short-term OFAC li­cence to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion on Oc­to­ber 8?

3) What was the na­ture of the dis­cus­sion be­tween the US Sec­re­tary of State and the cur­rent T&T Prime Min­is­ter on “strength­en­ing our part­ner­ship to ad­vance re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty” and on the “shared goals for re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty?”

4) Did the T&T Prime Min­is­ter make any firm com­mit­ment to Mr Ru­bio on “strength­en­ing our part­ner­ship to ad­vance re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty?”

5) What progress have the Gov­ern­ment and NGC made on ad­vanc­ing the Drag­on gas project, since the sign­ing of the OFAC li­cence on Oc­to­ber 8?

6) Has the NGC iden­ti­fied the US com­pa­nies that the OFAC li­cence for the Drag­on field stip­u­lates must ben­e­fit from the de­vel­op­ment of the gas field?

7) Does the T&T Gov­ern­ment plan to reach out to Mr Ru­bio to con­tin­ue lob­by­ing for a green light for Drag­on gas?

8) In De­cem­ber, the cur­rent in­ter­im Pres­i­dent of Venezuela, Del­cy Ro­driguez, blamed Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar for fa­cil­i­tat­ing the seizure of a Venezue­lan oil tanker. Ms Ro­driguez de­cid­ed to im­me­di­ate­ly break off all ne­go­ti­a­tions and con­tracts with T&T for the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas.

“This of­fi­cial has turned the ter­ri­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a US air­craft car­ri­er to at­tack Venezuela, in an un­equiv­o­cal act of sub­servience. Giv­en her com­plic­i­ty in steal­ing oil, the Bo­li­var­i­an Gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro is ter­mi­nat­ing any con­tract or ne­go­ti­a­tion that in­volves the sup­ply of gas to this neigh­bour­ing coun­try,” said Ms Ro­driguez, ac­cord­ing to the El Pais web­site.

Giv­en this harsh rhetoric, who in Venezuela does the T&T Gov­ern­ment speak to about Drag­on gas?