On Sat­ur­day, the US Em­bassy in T&T is­sued a height­ened state of alert with the fol­low­ing mes­sage: “Due to a height­ened state of alert, please avoid and re­frain from vis­it­ing all US gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go through the hol­i­day week­end.”

This mes­sage, in con­junc­tion with the 10,000 troops, along­side air­craft and sur­face war­ships de­ployed to the Caribbean area, has put many on edge in the ex­pec­ta­tion of a pos­si­ble mil­i­tary ac­tion.

B-52 heavy bombers were flown from air­bas­es in the US to a po­si­tion off the coast of Venezuela, fore­shad­ow­ing a pos­si­ble bomb­ing mis­sion.

The US mil­i­tary has been fir­ing mis­siles at fish­ing boats since Sep­tem­ber, in an ef­fort to shut down a drug smug­gling cor­ri­dor that traf­fics an es­ti­mat­ed 250 tonnes of co­caine a year, val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$6.7 bil­lion.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that 29 peo­ple were killed and two were cap­tured dur­ing these op­er­a­tions.

The award of the No­bel Peace Prize to Maria Ka­ri­na Macha­do, the Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader, seems to be a sig­nal that the US and its part­ners are in­ter­est­ed in re­mov­ing the Nico­las Maduro regime.

At the time of writ­ing this col­umn on Sun­day, there have been no re­ports of bomb­ings on the Venezue­lan main­land.

This gives me hope that a diplo­mat­ic so­lu­tion is still on the ta­ble and the US will not have to bomb Maduro in­to sub­mis­sion.

I ad­vised per­sons in the Greater Ari­ma Cham­ber of Com­merce What­sApp group and oth­er groups I ad­min­is­trate to stock up on food items, in the event that an in­ci­dent does take place and gro­cery shelves be­come emp­tied out, as they were dur­ing the ear­ly days of the COVID-19 cri­sis.

The air of un­cer­tain­ty re­mind­ed me of the words of Je­sus Christ in Matthew 24:6: “You will hear of wars and ru­mours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must hap­pen, but the end is still to come.”

It is im­por­tant in an at­mos­phere of un­cer­tain­ty not to al­low pan­ic and mis­in­for­ma­tion to spread.

Since the last two states of emer­gency in De­cem­ber 2024 and Ju­ly 2025, the crime sit­u­a­tion has im­proved, and I trust that the TTPS and the De­fence Force have been col­lab­o­rat­ing with US in­tel­li­gence to mit­i­gate po­ten­tial risks in our na­tion.

In Venezuela, all male cit­i­zens be­tween the ages of 18 and 30 are re­quired to com­plete mil­i­tary ser­vice.

There is a risk that mil­i­tary-trained gang mem­bers res­i­dent in T&T may be ac­ti­vat­ed to pose a threat to US fa­cil­i­ties such as the Em­bassy.

How­ev­er, it is ex­pect­ed that the pow­ers grant­ed un­der the present State of Emer­gency, com­bined with in­tel­li­gence work, should be enough to ar­rest any po­ten­tial threats to our coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty.

Pres­i­dent Trump’s track record is heavy on airstrikes, with Joseph Stepan­sky, of Al Jazeera, re­port­ing “Ac­cord­ing to a re­port re­leased last week by the Armed Con­flict Lo­ca­tion and Event Da­ta Project (ACLED), since Trump’s re-en­try in­to of­fice on Jan­u­ary 20, the US has car­ried out 529 air at­tacks in 240 lo­ca­tions across the Mid­dle East, Cen­tral Asia and Africa.”

How­ev­er, Trump’s elec­tion cam­paign was built on keep­ing Amer­i­can troops out of un­nec­es­sary wars to pre­serve the lives of Amer­i­can troops.

Airstrikes are usu­al­ly low-risk en­deav­ours, es­pe­cial­ly when un­manned drones are used.

An in­va­sion of Venezuela is, there­fore, un­like­ly to take place.

Ar­ti­cle 2(4) of the UN Char­ter pro­hibits the threat or use of force in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions against the ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty or po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence of any state.

This is why the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has framed its op­er­a­tions as tar­get­ing nar­co-ter­ror­ists, not the state of Venezuela it­self.

Like­ly, any bomb­ing of Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry would al­so be framed as tar­get­ing nar­co ter­ror­ist sites, not as an act of war against the state of Venezuela it­self.

Russ­ian mil­i­tary ad­vi­sors are of­ten seen in Venezuela train­ing the lo­cal mil­i­tary to op­er­ate Russ­ian equip­ment such as an­ti-air­craft bat­ter­ies and fight­er jets.

An all-out cam­paign against mil­i­tary tar­gets in Venezuela has a risk of killing Russ­ian or even Chi­nese cit­i­zens who may be work­ing as tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sors on var­i­ous projects through­out Venezuela.

Re­gard­less of the po­ten­tial sit­u­a­tion, the naval block­ade of drug boats and the po­ten­tial bomb­ing cam­paign of Venezuela are un­like­ly to last be­yond 2026.

Chi­na has a stat­ed goal of re­tak­ing Tai­wan by 2027, by force if nec­es­sary.

This will like­ly cause a re­de­ploy­ment of the US Navy to Asia to de­ter a naval block­ade or in­va­sion of Tai­wan.

While Tri­nis on so­cial me­dia may be­lieve that Trump is thirsty for Venezuela’s oil re­serves, the eco­nom­ic im­por­tance of Venezuela’s nat­ur­al re­sources pales in com­par­i­son to the im­por­tance of Tai­wan’s chip man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor to tril­lion-dol­lar com­pa­nies like Nvidia & Ap­ple.

In my opin­ion, there is still a pos­si­bil­i­ty of a peace deal be­tween the Maduro regime and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

If there is an es­ca­la­tion, it will be lim­it­ed so as not to em­broil the US mil­i­tary in an all-out war, since re­sources will soon be redi­rect­ed to face off against Chi­na.