Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@cnc3.co.tt

Caribbean an­a­lysts are warn­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gov­ern­ment that regime change in Venezuela could desta­bilise the en­tire re­gion.

The lat­est re­ports out of the Unit­ed States and Venezuela yes­ter­day sug­gest­ed both the Don­ald Trump and Nico­las Maduro regimes were prepar­ing for war.

Trump told re­porters on Wednes­day that his ad­min­is­tra­tion was prepar­ing to take the US Navy op­er­a­tions cur­rent­ly in the Caribbean Sea to land. Maduro mean­while con­firmed the de­ploy­ment of short-range, man-portable sur­face-to-air sys­tems de­signed to tar­get drones, he­li­copters, cruise mis­siles, and low-fly­ing air­craft as a di­rect re­sponse to in­creased US mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in the Caribbean.

For­mer Grena­da House Speak­er Chester Humphrey ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar of ca­pit­u­lat­ing to US pol­i­cy in a way that was not be­fit­ting of the of­fice she held.

“This is what is hap­pen­ing to the prime min­is­ter­ship in Trinidad and To­ba­go! It is be­ing des­e­crat­ed by some­one who, first of all, may be in a state of stu­por, does not un­der­stand the prin­ci­ples in­volved in the zone of peace,” Humphrey said.

Zones of Peace are ar­eas des­ig­nat­ed to pro­mote sta­bil­i­ty. In the state­ment from Cari­com heads at the con­clu­sion of a meet­ing of re­gion­al heads last Thurs­day, all coun­tries save T&T “reaf­firmed 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.”

Un­de­terred, T&T is­sued its own re­lease, ex­press­ing full sup­port for the US strikes.

“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.”

But as Humphrey point­ed out, zones of peace have noth­ing to do with do­mes­tic crime.

How­ev­er, in jus­ti­fy­ing T&T’s iso­la­tion­ist stance on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia, “No oth­er coun­try be­sides the US is will­ing to as­sist us to ag­gres­sive­ly fight the drug and arms traf­fick­ers. I am not go­ing to toe Cari­com’s line while our coun­try is go­ing to hell with drugs, vi­o­lent crime and mur­ders.”

But po­lit­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist and lec­tur­er at UWI’s Mona Cam­pus, Dr Christo­pher Charles, said one must con­sid­er that as a small twin-is­land state, this coun­try does not have much room to refuse a re­quest, or per­haps even an or­der from the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said the on­ly way a Cari­com state would take this po­si­tion is if it was ap­proached di­rect­ly by the US to do so.

“Giv­en who Don­ald Trump is as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, he won’t take no for an an­swer,” Dr Charles said. “Does Trinidad and To­ba­go have a choice? I would say no giv­en the like­ly reper­cus­sions.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance is be­ing seen more favourably in Guyana. For­mer Guyanese politi­cian and lawyer Ralph Ramkar­ran, who served as Speak­er of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly from 2001 to 2011, said many na­tion­als wel­comed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s hawk­ish talk, but that is based on Guyana’s tense re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela, which is linked to their long-stand­ing bor­der dis­pute. Re­gion­al heads at­tempt­ed to me­di­ate the mat­ter in­volv­ing the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion in De­cem­ber 2023 in St Vin­cent, re­sult­ing in the Ar­gyle Agree­ment. But Venezuela has en­gaged in provo­ca­tions since.

Asked why Guyana wasn’t as sim­i­lar­ly tough talk­ing on the is­sue of Venezuela, Ramkar­ran spoke to T&T’s rel­a­tive priv­i­lege. He said while T&T is on­ly 11km apart from Venezuela at its clos­est point, Guyana shares a land bor­der with them and is al­so con­stant­ly wor­ried about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Venezue­lan mil­i­tary in­cur­sions.

While many in the re­gion are con­cerned about pos­si­ble US mil­i­tary ac­tion in Venezuela, Ramkar­ran said, “Many peo­ple in Guyana be­lieve Venezuela is prepar­ing for a mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion and there­fore, Guyana does not want to do or say any­thing that will pro­voke any such ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Mean­while, speak­ing on Tues­day at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ (UWI) Vice-Chan­cel­lor’s Fo­rum at the Mona Cam­pus, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves la­belled T&T’s sup­port for the US ac­tion “mis­guid­ed.”

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port on his pre­sen­ta­tion in the Ja­maica Glean­er yes­ter­day, Gon­salves warned that “one state’s ac­tion should not in­ter­fere in the busi­ness of an­oth­er state.” He said regime change is not a sim­ple mat­ter and could have a desta­bil­is­ing ef­fect in the Caribbean, as “many bad ac­tors could seek to take ad­van­tage of such ac­tions to move to oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, and this could be­come a cri­sis.” Gon­salves said the re­gion need­ed more states­men and stateswomen to close the for­eign pol­i­cy gaps keep­ing the is­lands of the Caribbean apart.