T&T-Venezuela re­la­tions have al­ways been com­plex and dy­nam­ic. They are deeply root­ed in cen­turies of shared his­to­ry but al­so in­flu­enced by con­tem­po­rary eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

For decades, the sev­en miles of wa­ters be­tween this coun­try and the north­east coast of Venezuela have been a flash­point for dis­putes over ter­ri­to­r­i­al rights and re­source al­lo­ca­tion.

The fish­ing dis­putes of the not-too-dis­tant past, which were set­tled on­ly af­ter the two na­tions ne­go­ti­at­ed a com­pre­hen­sive agree­ment in 1978, are ev­i­dence of the chal­lenges faced by neigh­bour­ing states with over­lap­ping mar­itime ju­ris­dic­tions.

Fish­ing is no longer a source of fric­tion but on­go­ing con­cerns about drug traf­fick­ing, hu­man smug­gling and oth­er il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties that ex­ploit the porous T&T-Venezuela mar­itime bound­aries, fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by the geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions over the near­by Es­se­qui­bo re­gion, make for an un­easy co­ex­is­tence.

It cer­tain­ly doesn’t help that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse to un­proven claims by Venezue­lan of­fi­cials about groups with “weapons of war” at­tempt­ing to en­ter their coun­try through T&T in­clud­ed a warn­ing about dead­ly force.

That fer­vent de­c­la­ra­tion, in­tend­ed to send a strong mes­sage to the Nicolás Maduro regime about this coun­try’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to safe­guard its ter­ri­to­r­i­al sov­er­eign­ty, has es­ca­lat­ed diplo­mat­ic ten­sions be­tween the na­tions.

This more res­olute, hard­line stance to­ward Venezuela by the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion is a de­par­ture from the prag­mat­ic, mul­ti-pronged ap­proach of the Dr Kei­th Row­ley gov­ern­ment, which sought to care­ful­ly bal­ance eco­nom­ic in­ter­ests and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

The strong­ly word­ed of­fi­cial re­sponse from Maduro, who deemed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments to be “irate and un­jus­ti­fied,” has raised con­cerns about a rapid de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in long­stand­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions and the wider im­pli­ca­tions for re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

Giv­en the cur­rent US-Venezuela dy­nam­ics, this tit-for-tat is like­ly to res­onate with Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, such as Guyana and Colom­bia, who are al­so deal­ing with transna­tion­al threats, might al­so view T&T’s mea­sures favourably.

How­ev­er, the im­me­di­ate con­cern is the ex­tent to which the stance of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­min­is­tra­tion could widen the rift with Venezuela, po­ten­tial­ly prompt­ing a re­sponse from that na­tion that could es­ca­late from diplo­mat­ic ten­sion to con­fronta­tion.

That is a sit­u­a­tion that T&T, out­num­bered by Venezuela on sev­er­al fronts, should avoid at all costs.

As crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant as it is to pro­tect na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty, the need to main­tain sta­ble diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions should not be over­looked.

Diplo­ma­cy should have been the first re­sort, not the Prime Min­is­ter’s off-the-cuff state­ment at a me­dia brief­ing. It is the safe­ty valve and com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel that could have de-es­ca­lat­ed ten­sions and clar­i­fied mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions be­tween the coun­tries.

Diplo­ma­cy has of­ten proven to be the most ef­fec­tive mech­a­nism to ad­dress dis­putes be­fore they es­ca­late in­to overt se­cu­ri­ty con­flicts, par­tic­u­lar­ly on sen­si­tive is­sues of mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty, transna­tion­al crime, and ir­reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion long sim­mer­ing be­tween the na­tions.

Be­yond that strat­e­gy to defuse the mount­ing ten­sions, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion al­so calls for oth­er longer-term so­lu­tions.

It is time to mod­ernise and ex­pand mar­itime sur­veil­lance to im­prove sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness in the Gulf of Paria for rapid re­sponse to any unau­tho­rised in­cur­sions. An­oth­er pri­or­i­ty should be pur­su­ing deep­er lev­els of en­gage­ment through Cari­com and bi­lat­er­al agree­ments with friend­ly na­tions to cre­ate a stronger col­lec­tive se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment.

These are more ef­fec­tive ways for T&T to deal with the rapid­ly evolv­ing geopo­lit­i­cal chal­lenges in our re­gion.