Unit­ed States drug en­force­ment in the Caribbean Sea has, un­til now, been a co­op­er­a­tive law en­force­ment ef­fort be­tween the US Coast Guard and Caribbean gov­ern­ments. The de­ploy­ment of a fleet which now in­cludes the largest US air­craft car­ri­er, Ger­ald R Ford, and the de­struc­tion of “drug boats” have mil­i­tarised this ac­tiv­i­ty.

The US has act­ed uni­lat­er­al­ly with over­whelm­ing force, ig­nor­ing in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal norms in what amounts to ex­tra­ju­di­cial killing. This is a cal­cu­lat­ed geopo­lit­i­cal state­ment to demon­strate US om­nipo­tence. In this con­text, every Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can coun­try, in­clud­ing Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go, is a small state with­out the means to re­verse US mil­i­tary pow­er and its abil­i­ty to es­ca­late and in­ten­si­fy its pres­sure.

Nei­ther drugs nor hy­dro­car­bon re­serves are at stake. These ac­tions are de­signed to demon­strate, un­equiv­o­cal­ly, the US ca­pac­i­ty to dom­i­nate and con­trol events in its “back­yard”. This is the Mon­roe Doc­trine writ large. The US is ex­tend­ed on mul­ti­ple fronts, in the Mid­dle East (Gaza, Iran, Yemen), in Ukraine, and in the South Chi­na Sea. Wars are ex­pen­sive, and the US Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment is in shut­down mode with­out cred­i­ble fi­nan­cial arrange­ments.

Al­though for­mi­da­ble at 15,000 troops, the US armed forces cur­rent­ly de­ployed to the Caribbean are in­suf­fi­cient to ini­ti­ate any in­va­sion of Venezuela. Iraq’s pop­u­la­tion was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 mil­lion peo­ple at the time of the 2003 US in­va­sion, rough­ly equiv­a­lent to Venezuela’s cur­rent pop­u­la­tion. The in­va­sion force amount­ed to 170,000 ser­vice­men, 11 times the size of the force cur­rent­ly de­ployed in the re­gion.

One may con­clude that the pur­pose of the US de­ploy­ment is to shock, desta­bilise and pres­sure Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro and the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment. The US is al­so send­ing a mes­sage to any­one who may doubt its re­solve. Un­der­stand­ably, Cari­com gov­ern­ments and peo­ple are con­cerned.

What should T&T’s po­si­tion be? Venezuela is T&T’s clos­est neigh­bour, an ir­refutable ge­o­graph­i­cal fact, and it makes sense to be on good terms with one’s neigh­bour. The US is T&T’s largest trad­ing part­ner and a world hege­mon. Main­tain­ing good re­la­tions with a hege­mon is al­so good sense. Nei­ther Pres­i­dent Maduro nor Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump will be in of­fice for­ev­er, nor could T&T re­move them from of­fice. There will be a pol­i­cy shift when both men leave, as they ul­ti­mate­ly must. There­fore, T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion should be cal­i­brat­ed to pro­mote T&T’s self-in­ter­est in the short and long term.

First, we must nav­i­gate the cur­rent ten­sion-fu­elled re­la­tions be­tween Venezuela and the US. Giv­en the US po­si­tion, T&T can nei­ther block nor al­ter US mil­i­tary ac­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, nor in Venezuela. If they have the ben­e­fi­cial im­pact of curb­ing, re­duc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing the in­flux of drugs in­to T&T, those ac­tions serve our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests. This need not re­sult in a ver­bal war with Cara­cas, nor does it re­quire overt en­dorse­ment of US ac­tions. 

In the longer term, T&T is in­vest­ed in ac­cess­ing across-the-bor­der gas in Venezue­lan wa­ters and in co­op­er­at­ing with Venezuela to mon­e­tise shared cross-bor­der fields like Man­a­tee and Cocuina re­gard­less of which po­lit­i­cal par­ty forms the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment. This may be im­pos­si­ble now, giv­en the US sanc­tions against Venezuela.

Our re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela has been dam­aged by ill-ad­vised state­ments, hope­ful­ly not ir­rev­o­ca­bly, and can be re­vived with time and good sense. Stok­ing fears about Venezue­lan mi­grants, cre­at­ing di­vi­sions with Cari­com, in­flam­ing fears with­in the coun­try, play­ing the vic­tim, and us­ing in­tem­per­ate rhetoric to ad­dress Venezuela com­pounds a com­pli­cat­ed sit­u­a­tion. While it may ad­vance a nar­row po­lit­i­cal ob­jec­tive, it does not ad­vance the na­tion­al in­ter­est.