Some months ago, I wrote of “a wel­come new mo­men­tum in re­la­tions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the lead­er­ship of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.” US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio al­so spoke of the “close part­ner­ship” and looked for­ward to “con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion in pur­suit of re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic growth and last­ing sta­bil­i­ty.” The PM re­spond­ed that Ru­bio’s words “reaf­firm the en­dur­ing bonds be­tween our coun­tries-ground­ed in shared de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and our com­mon com­mit­ment to peace, pros­per­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.”

Last Sat­ur­day, the diplo­mat­ic ef­fort bore fruit. Per­sad-Bisses­sar joined 11 lead­ers from Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries and Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali in sign­ing the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion, a his­toric hemi­spher­ic shield led by the Unit­ed States against nar­co-traf­fick­ing in the hemi­sphere. At the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Mi­a­mi, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said “the heart of our agree­ment is a com­mit­ment to us­ing lethal mil­i­tary force to de­stroy the sin­is­ter car­tels and ter­ror­ist net­works once and for all.”

This de­vel­op­ment is in sync with what the prime min­is­ter told the Unit­ed Na­tions last year. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “The glob­al drug econ­o­my desta­bilis­es in­sti­tu­tions, cor­rodes democ­ra­cy, and un­der­mines de­vel­op­ment. It is a war with­out bor­ders, mea­sured in mur­dered chil­dren, bro­ken fam­i­lies, and stolen fu­tures. If left unchecked, gangs could re­place gov­ern­ments, and States may stand in name but col­lapse in sub­stance.”

Guyana Pres­i­dent Ali has al­so point­ed to “these crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions hav­ing the ca­pac­i­ty to over­whelm state in­sti­tu­tions, un­der­mine democ­ra­cy, per­vert the rule of law and threat­en hu­man dig­ni­ty and de­vel­op­ment.”

In­deed, in the last 25 years, small Trinidad and To­ba­go had over 10,000 mur­ders; and last year, over forty per cent of the 623 killings were gang-re­lat­ed, dri­ven by nar­cotics and firearms.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mind­ed the Unit­ed Na­tions that, “un­less force­ful and ag­gres­sive ac­tions are tak­en, these evil drug car­tels will con­tin­ue” their de­struc­tion. “That is why,” she said, “we will­ing­ly sup­port the in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty al­liance in­volv­ing the US and sev­er­al coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca to com­bat drug-traf­fick­ing in the hemi­sphere.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of all its in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, bi-lat­er­al, mul­ti­lat­er­al and re­gion­al. But it would be both fool­ish and fool­hardy not to see our part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed States as par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant. This is the world’s su­per­pow­er, our most pow­er­ful al­ly, largest trad­ing part­ner and main source of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment. Most im­por­tant­ly, it is part of our hemi­spher­ic neigh­bour­hood.

We must pre­serve and strength­en that re­la­tion­ship, which was sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­aged dur­ing the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion. One re­calls Row­ley go­ing on the ex­ces­sive of­fen­sive, thun­der­ing in par­lia­ment, “I take um­brage. I take um­brage at the Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador mak­ing a pub­lic state­ment crit­i­cis­ing the ac­tions of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. And as far as tak­ing in­struc­tions from the US Em­bassy on Mar­li Street, leave the PNM out of that!” He was sup­port­ed by PNM MPs jeer­ing, “What Trump could do we?!”

Rhetoric and re­ac­tion for a po­lit­i­cal ral­ly at Pig­got’s Cor­ner, not the diplo­mat­ic are­na!

Un­der Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the re­la­tion­ship is back on track, adding to di­men­sions al­ready in place. We have the ship-rid­er agree­ment with the US es­tab­lished in 1998 un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion, as well as the Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment (SO­FA) signed in 2013 un­der the first Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion and main­tained by all ad­min­is­tra­tions there­after.

Trinidad and To­ba­go needs the Unit­ed States. Our large­ly un­pa­trolled bor­ders ren­der this coun­try vul­ner­a­ble to transna­tion­al preda­tors and in­fil­tra­tors who are as or­gan­ised and po­tent as any mod­ern army. They have es­tab­lished links with crim­i­nal el­e­ments in many coun­tries of the hemi­sphere, in­clud­ing ours. Ecuador re­cent­ly made head­lines when it asked the US mil­i­tary for help com­bat­ing its drug gangs. And Mex­i­co was in the glob­al news when its se­cu­ri­ty forces killed a no­to­ri­ous car­tel leader, El Men­cho, set­ting off a wave of vi­o­lence around the coun­try. El Men­cho’s car­tel mem­bers went on a ram­page, burn­ing cars and su­per­mar­kets, set­ting up road­blocks and killing at least 20 mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Guard in a warn­ing to the au­thor­i­ties that they would not go down with­out a fight.

Such mur­der­ous may­hem could eas­i­ly hap­pen here. We al­ready have abun­dant ev­i­dence of the pos­si­bil­i­ty. In Mi­a­mi last week, Trump point­ed to “rough com­mu­ni­ties” that have de­vel­oped and threat­en the rule of law in some coun­tries, sug­gest­ing transna­tion­al gangs have tak­en over parts of the West­ern Hemi­sphere. He says the US will help deal with “blood­thirsty car­tels that im­pose their will through mur­der, tor­ture, ex­tor­tion, drug traf­fick­ing, bribery and ter­ror.”

“These bru­tal crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions pose an un­ac­cept­able threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. They’re can­cer. And we don’t want it spread­ing,” Trump said.

In­deed. The Pres­i­dent firm­ly be­lieves we must de­ploy the pow­er of our mil­i­taries in this bat­tle. For the past ten years, I have re­peat­ed­ly writ­ten that we must bring our De­fence Force to join with the po­lice in the fight against crime. I point­ed to the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) pol­i­cy and its tremen­dous suc­cess in Ja­maica, based on ef­fec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the army and the po­lice. Our Gov­ern­ment tried to in­tro­duce it here but did not get the re­quired par­lia­men­tary sup­port. Trag­ic. Thank­ful­ly, the US is com­ing to the res­cue.