DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Even as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar firm­ly stat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go will not be used as a launch­pad for at­tacks against Venezuela, one in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert has ques­tioned the tim­ing of joint mil­i­tary train­ing ex­er­cis­es.

Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les ac­knowl­edged Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s 10-point re­but­tal of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s cri­tique. Row­ley had ac­cused her of aban­don­ing T&T’s long-stand­ing stance of neu­tral­i­ty, plac­ing the coun­try in the line of fire amid ris­ing US–Venezuela ten­sions.

“The US has NEV­ER re­quest­ed use of our ter­ri­to­ry to launch any at­tacks against the peo­ple of Venezuela. Trinidad and To­ba­go ter­ri­to­ry will NOT be used to launch any at­tacks against the peo­ple of Venezuela. Trinidad and To­ba­go is a sov­er­eign state and does not blind­ly fol­low the US or any bloc such as Cari­com,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She al­so crit­i­cised Row­ley over the joint op­er­a­tions, not­ing, “Row­ley, while en­tranced with for­mer am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond, signed an up­dat­ed Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment (SO­FA) last year, which re­quires Trinidad and To­ba­go to co­op­er­ate with the US mil­i­tary in their train­ing ex­er­cis­es in the re­gion.”

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les agreed with Row­ley that the SO­FA does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mean the US will de­ploy troops for joint op­er­a­tions in T&T.

“I fail to see why we should have that now, know­ing that it is go­ing to be a provo­ca­tion to the Venezue­lans. I am not sure that, for in­stance, that train­ing ex­er­cise is be­ing used en­tire­ly for train­ing pur­pos­es here, or if it’s be­ing used to try to gath­er in­for­ma­tion or to in­tim­i­date the Venezue­lans. All of that needs to be clar­i­fied,” Gon­za­les said.

He al­so ques­tioned whether the Prime Min­is­ter’s as­sur­ances that T&T will not serve as a mil­i­tary base are en­tire­ly con­vinc­ing.

“You’re not sure whether she might be say­ing this but still prob­a­bly try­ing, on the oth­er hand, to col­lab­o­rate with the Amer­i­cans and do var­i­ous things. A lot of that is not clear,” he said.

Still, Gon­za­les ac­knowl­edged that, based on her state­ments, Venezuela has no rea­son to view T&T as a threat, not­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter has of­fi­cial­ly dis­tanced the coun­try from any mil­i­tary ac­tion.

Mean­while, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Bryan sup­port­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s as­sur­ance that T&T will not be used as a launch­pad for mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela. How­ev­er, he re­it­er­at­ed con­cerns about a per­ceived drift from the coun­try’s tra­di­tion­al neu­tral­i­ty.

“This is not a good sign, but I don’t think it rocks the boat com­plete­ly. There is room for ma­noeu­vre, room for diplo­mat­ic pos­tur­ing as well as re­al­i­ty. I do be­lieve that we are able to sus­tain our neu­tral­i­ty, re­gard­less of the state­ments that have been made,” Bryan said.

Both ex­perts urged cau­tion fol­low­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s in­di­ca­tion that he is open to talks with Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, even while re­fus­ing to rule out de­ploy­ing Amer­i­can troops.

“Trump’s shift­ing po­si­tions make such state­ments dif­fi­cult to in­ter­pret. You’re deal­ing with a mer­cu­r­ial fig­ure, a slip­pery one at best, which makes it dif­fi­cult to plan ahead for any even­tu­al­i­ty he might spon­sor,” Bryan said.

Both ex­perts agreed that the US and T&T gov­ern­ments are shap­ing nar­ra­tives rather than of­fer­ing full clar­i­ty, leav­ing the pub­lic to read be­tween the lines. They stressed that in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, ac­tion ul­ti­mate­ly speaks loud­er than words.