Max­ie Cuffie

The re­al rea­son be­hind the vis­it of US vice-pres­i­dent Joe Biden was the de­ci­sion by T&T to rat­i­fy a Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment (SO­FA) with the Unit­ed States that now makes T&T a vir­tu­al base for US Forces and de­fence con­trac­tors. And the rea­son he was fol­lowed by Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jing­ping is that Chi­na, which is de­ter­mined­ly dog­ging the Amer­i­cans through a cy­ber cold-war, does not in­tend to al­low the Amer­i­cans un­tram­melled ac­cess to this coun­try.

Fol­low­ing the elec­tion of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1999, the US gov­ern­ment had been per­sis­tent in its at­tempt to set up a vir­tu­al (as op­posed to phys­i­cal) base in T&T to keep a close eye on Venezuela and pro­vide some form of US pres­ence, to counter what it saw as a threat to its in­ter­est in the re­gion. Amer­i­can anx­i­ety was in­creased with the cre­ation of the so-called "ax­is of evil" with Iran.

Ac­cord­ing to a US diplo­mat­ic ca­ble on a March 3, 2006, meet­ing be­tween for­mer For­eign Af­fairs min­is­ter Knowl­son Gift and US deputy chief of Mis­sion, Eu­gene Sweeney, which was re­vealed by the Wik­ileaks Web site, T&T, clear­ly see­ing the im­pli­ca­tion for its re­la­tions with Venezuela, was re­sist­ing the sign­ing of any such agree­ment.

The meet­ing was called os­ten­si­bly to dis­cuss oth­er is­sues, but Sweeney re­port­ed that he raised the US gov­ern­ment's "long­stand­ing and of­ten re­peat­ed re­quest to the GOTT (Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go) for a Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment with the USG (Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment)." The Amer­i­can diplo­mat ad­mit­ted in the ca­ble that the US recog­nised T&T's op­po­si­tion to an Ar­ti­cle 98 agree­ment which would give the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary of­fi­cials blan­ket im­mu­ni­ty from the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court for any ac­tion tak­en here.

Sweeney em­pha­sised "that the USG would ap­proach any dis­cus­sions of a SO­FA with the GOTT with flex­i­bil­i­ty, so that, if any pro­pos­als tabled by the US would re­quire com­plex leg­is­la­tion or a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to im­ple­ment, we would en­ter­tain counter-pro­pos­als from the GOTT which could be more read­i­ly im­ple­mentable."

Gift promised to get back to him but there is no ev­i­dence that he did, even as ca­bles re­leased by Wik­ileaks showed the US with a grow­ing anx­i­ety over Venezuela and seek­ing to get T&T's co-op­er­a­tion.

In an­oth­er meet­ing, for­mer US am­bas­sador Roy Austin, sought to have T&T pub­licly de­nounce an at­tack on a US diplo­mat sta­tioned in Venezuela. He re­port­ed that "Gift was eva­sive, mov­ing to a dif­fer­ent sub­ject." He saw this as a wari­ness in line with "past GOTT re­luc­tance to be­come in­volved in the ac­ri­mo­nious ex­changes be­tween the US and Venezuela."

The US ca­bles showed that T&T was con­scious of the eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions of any agree­ments with the US which would jeop­ar­dise its eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests, par­tic­u­lar­ly in pro­duc­tion-shar­ing arrange­ments, through which this coun­try ex­ploits oil and nat­ur­al gas re­sources with its South Amer­i­can neigh­bour.The then gov­ern­ment did sign a tem­po­rary agree­ment to cov­er the US pres­ence dur­ing the Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as but that end­ed with the 2009 sum­mit.

What then could have brought T&T to the point where it has se­cret­ly rat­i­fied an agree­ment with the US that has such ma­jor im­pli­ca­tions that it bought Chi­na to im­me­di­ate­ly ce­ment its re­la­tion­ship with T&T and even sched­ule a rec­i­p­ro­cal state vis­it, diplo­mat­ic em­bar­rass­ments notwith­stand­ing?

In a world where mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty is in­creas­ing­ly cy­ber-based, the US gov­ern­ment does not need to es­tab­lish a phys­i­cal pres­ence or base in T&T. What it needs is free pas­sage for its ves­sels and ve­hi­cles (in­clud­ing war­ships and drones); ra­dio spec­trum for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and es­pi­onage; right of en­try; and im­mu­ni­ty from T&T laws for its sol­diers and de­fence con­trac­tors who will have the right to car­ry arms with­out need­ing to seek a per­mit. All of which have been guar­an­teed to the Amer­i­cans un­der the SO­FA.

The agree­ment al­so guar­an­tees the Amer­i­cans im­mu­ni­ty from civ­il ac­tion and crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. Should any cit­i­zen of T&T be harmed in the Amer­i­cans' ex­er­cise to pro­tect their na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, they will be mere­ly col­lat­er­al dam­age not open to any le­gal ac­tion.

This is prob­a­bly why for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, pos­si­bly see­ing per­son­al im­pli­ca­tions, de­scribed the agree­ment as akin to re­coloni­sa­tion and a threat to the coun­try's sov­er­eign­ty. It could al­so ex­plain why, a week af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter's re­turn from the US, he was out.

Such a sig­nif­i­cant agree­ment was made in se­cret and its ex­is­tence on­ly made pub­lic by the US vice-pres­i­dent who, in an in­ter­view with Ex­press re­porter Ria Taitt, con­firmed that the agree­ment was rat­i­fied on Wednes­day May 22, 2013, the same day the Prime Min­is­ter spoke in the Par­lia­ment on the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion to de­ny "email­gate".

Nei­ther she, nor the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Win­ston Dook­er­an, who had al­so pre­vi­ous­ly spo­ken in the de­bate, men­tioned the sign­ing of the SO­FA agree­ment that has sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for this coun­try's sov­er­eign­ty and econ­o­my.

Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of Biden's an­nounce­ment, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said the pres­ence of Amer­i­can forces would be by mu­tu­al agree­ment, when ex­er­cis­es be­came nec­es­sary. Some­how, I sus­pect that would be no com­fort to the Venezue­lans.

There has not even been word on the leg­is­la­tion which needs to be brought to Par­lia­ment to ef­fect this agree­ment. But al­ready there is pro­vi­sion in the pro­posed draft amend­ment of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act for spec­trum to be se­cret­ly award­ed for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pur­pos­es with­out le­gal av­enues for dis­clo­sure.

The SO­FA agree­ment is not unique to T&T and is usu­al­ly ac­com­pa­nied by gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tions of US aid to coun­tries which sign them. In our case, we owed the Amer­i­cans a sig­nif­i­cant debt for Ish and Steve, so that we were on­ly of­fered four used war­ships in com­pen­sa­tion.When one takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that the pur­suit of "email­gate" al­so re­quires the ac­tive co-op­er­a­tion of the US gov­ern­ment, the full ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this agree­ment are just too trou­bling.

Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.