In late Au­gust 2025, the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion de­ployed a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of naval and air as­sets to the south­ern Caribbean with the stat­ed goal of com­bat­ing drug traf­fick­ing. This ac­tion was pur­suant to the Jan­u­ary 2025 Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 14157, which la­belled cer­tain West­ern Hemi­sphere drug car­tels as for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions and spe­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed glob­al ter­ror­ists.

Since the de­ploy­ment, 10 ves­sels (main­ly fish boats) have been de­stroyed, eight in Caribbean wa­ters and two in the Pa­cif­ic, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 deaths, in­clud­ing two T&T na­tion­als.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took the lead on this mat­ter, say­ing that the de­ploy­ment had the full sup­port of the T&T Gov­ern­ment. She al­so said she had no in­ten­tion of en­gag­ing Cari­com mem­ber states, and each mem­ber state could speak for it­self on this is­sue. With each dead­ly strike, the Prime Min­is­ter has main­tained her sup­port for such ac­tions, deny­ing that the ac­tions are ex­tra­ju­di­cial. “Crim­i­nals are crim­i­nals, and we have to wipe out crim­i­nals,” said the Prime Min­is­ter, a se­nior coun­sel, at a func­tion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.

Apart from in­di­cat­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who died in the at­tacks and the al­le­ga­tions that the boats were trans­port­ing nar­cotics, no pub­lic ev­i­dence has been pro­vid­ed to sup­port these al­le­ga­tions. Venezuela may be a ma­jor tran­sit point for co­caine pro­duced else­where in Latin Amer­i­ca, but the east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean is the ma­jor tran­sit point for co­caine, not the Caribbean.

US of­fi­cials have at­tempt­ed to jus­ti­fy the de­struc­tion of the ves­sels and oc­cu­pants on the du­bi­ous le­gal the­o­ry that the boats are af­fil­i­at­ed with “des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions”. The at­tacks have prompt­ed wide­spread con­dem­na­tion in US le­gal cir­cles, civ­il lib­er­ty groups, and South Amer­i­can coun­tries, as these at­tacks trans­gress the norms of in­ter­na­tion­al law. The T&T Gov­ern­ment's sup­port for these ac­tions jeop­ar­dis­es T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela and com­pli­cates the po­si­tion with our Cari­com neigh­bours.

Pres­i­dent Trump’s con­fir­ma­tion last Wednes­day that he had au­tho­rised the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency to per­form covert op­er­a­tions in Venezuela fur­ther com­pli­cates the pic­ture. On Fri­day, it was re­vealed that an air­craft car­ri­er was be­ing moved to wa­ters off South Amer­i­ca as part of the US ad­min­is­tra­tion’s stat­ed cam­paign to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing.

Tak­en to­geth­er, the moves sug­gest a strat­e­gy to force regime change. Al­so, many of the claims of Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tives' in­volve­ment in drug traf­fick­ing stem from US for­eign pol­i­cy in­stru­ments and should be un­der­stood with­in the con­text of po­lit­i­cal and diplo­mat­ic con­flict.

The Prime Min­is­ter is caught on the horns of a dilem­ma. An agree­ment was signed with PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela, SA) to ac­cess nat­ur­al gas de­posits in the Drag­on Field in De­cem­ber 2023, as this was con­sid­ered a strate­gic ini­tia­tive to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al gas for the en­er­gy sec­tor. The re­quest for and the grant of a new OFAC li­cence from the US is ev­i­dence that this strat­e­gy is still in play. How­ev­er, the overt sup­port for the US and the in­tem­per­ate lan­guage when ad­dress­ing Venezuela’s lead­ers are not eas­i­ly rec­on­cil­able.

All states must be re­al­is­tic in pur­suit of their le­git­i­mate self-in­ter­ests and ul­ti­mate­ly their sur­vival. Small states have lit­tle ma­noeu­vring room when deal­ing with great pow­ers such as the US, which has con­sid­er­able soft and hard (mil­i­tary) pow­er.

T&T’s eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion re­quires care­ful man­age­ment, and it can­not af­ford ei­ther coun­ter­vail­ing du­ties or high­er tar­iffs on its ex­ports to the US mar­ket by a mer­cu­r­ial US Pres­i­dent. Sim­ply put, the US is a greater pow­er than Venezuela. In these cir­cum­stances, prin­ci­ple goes through the win­dow. The rest is the­atrics.