Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Sen­ate Re­pub­li­cans vot­ed yes­ter­day to re­ject leg­is­la­tion that would have put a check on US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s abil­i­ty to launch an at­tack against Venezuela, as De­moc­rats pressed Con­gress to take a stronger role in Trump’s high-stakes cam­paign against Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

The move comes as an­a­lysts re­mained hope­ful there would be no mil­i­tary ac­tion by the US, but in­stead di­a­logue.

The votes al­so came days af­ter Trump, dur­ing an in­ter­view on CBS’s 60 Min­utes, said he did not want to go to war but warned that Maduro’s days were num­bered.

The US has de­ployed sev­er­al naval ves­sels in the wa­ters of the south­ern Caribbean as part of its cam­paign against nar­co traf­fick­ing, which Trump said has been im­pact­ing the US.

Since Sep­tem­ber 2, there have been 16 strikes on drug-smug­gling boats, which re­port­ed­ly left 67 dead.

But de­spite the vote by the US Sen­ate, an­a­lysts re­mained op­ti­mistic that re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela will im­prove, es­pe­cial­ly if there is no mil­i­tary ac­tion by the US. They said if this is the case, then T&T should use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­sume talks with Venezuela on the Drag­on gas project.

Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, for­mer head of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine shared this view.

Gon­za­les point­ed out that a new ship­ment of arms from Rus­sia to Venezuela is one like­ly rea­son for the US to move cau­tious­ly.

“In ad­di­tion, the cost of an in­va­sion is be­com­ing more pro­hib­i­tive with the use by Venezuela of so­phis­ti­cat­ed Russ­ian mis­siles that can de­stroy US war­ships and planes. In this con­text, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion seems to be weigh­ing the ben­e­fits of ne­go­ti­a­tions,” he said

He said any move to­wards di­a­logue by the US, would make it wise for T&T to re­pair its re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela and re­turn to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble.

“If the US is head­ing in the lat­ter di­rec­tion, then T&T would want the US which will most like­ly get more ac­cess to Venezue­lan oil, to favourably con­sid­er grant­i­ng T&T the OFAC li­cences to ex­ploit the Drag­on and gen­er­al­ly cross-bor­der gas. T&T would al­so want to start talk­ing with Venezuela with the aim of restor­ing good neigh­bourly re­la­tions and get­ting ac­cess to its gas.”

For­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, Win­ston Dook­er­an, who has writ­ten many aca­d­e­m­ic pa­pers on re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, told Guardian Me­dia that peace­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions open up many pos­si­bil­i­ties for T&T.

“If this is so, this will pro­vide an open­ing for a non-mil­i­tary phase in the im­passe. As such, ne­go­ti­a­tions and strate­gic diplo­ma­cy may be on the ta­ble—many ques­tions re­main—the geopo­lit­i­cal ac­tors—Rus­sia, Chi­na and Iran—may pre­fer a diplo­mat­ic out­come.  Back-chan­nel diplo­ma­cy may be tak­ing place. This au­gurs well for T&T too.”

Venezue­lan ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­lez said she ig­nores spec­u­la­tive in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia re­ports and re­mains op­ti­mistic that the Maduro regime’s days are num­bered.

“It is a mat­ter of time be­fore Maduro and his regime come to an end. It could hap­pen any­time. I stand with the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T,” she said.

Ru­bio’s role?

Mean­while, Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo ac­cused ing US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio of giv­ing T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar the or­ders to re­duce the num­ber of work per­mits that Venezue­lan mi­grants cur­rent­ly use.

“It was the same man of war, Mar­co Ru­bio, who or­dered the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the trai­tor to her coun­try, to sus­pend the work per­mits for Venezue­lan mi­grants liv­ing in that coun­try.”

He made these al­le­ga­tions on Wednes­day night, read­ing from a let­ter from a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween two Venezue­lans, one who is al­leged­ly an “un­der­cov­er col­lab­o­ra­tor in Trinidad” dur­ing his week­ly pro­gramme “Con El Ma­zo Dan­do.”

He al­so said that Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader and No­bel Peace Prize win­ner  María Co­ri­na Macha­do has not com­ment­ed on the fate of Venezue­lans in T&T and “re­mained qui­eter than a clown at a wake.”

A Sun­day Guardian re­port stat­ed that the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has slashed the num­ber of work per­mits is­sued to Venezue­lans from 4,275 in 2024 to a mere 757 this year. This re­flects a de­cline of 3,518 per­mits, or an 82 per cent de­crease.