The first hur­dle hav­ing been crossed, that be­ing the ad­mis­sion by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that she lied to the na­tion about the US Gov­ern­ment’s sur­rep­ti­tious in­stal­la­tion of a radar sys­tem in To­ba­go, the ques­tion now re­mains: to what ends?

Is the radar sys­tem one with deep ca­pa­bil­i­ties reach­ing be­yond mere­ly de­tect­ing ves­sels mov­ing through the Caribbean Sea with car­goes of guns, am­mu­ni­tion, and il­lic­it drugs? What oth­er ca­pac­i­ties does the sur­veil­lance equip­ment have? For in­stance, can it de­tect mil­i­tary equip­ment on the ground in Venezuela, track its move­ment, or send in­for­ma­tion to the US South­ern Com­mand to in­flict dam­age on Venezue­lan forces on the ground? In­deed, can the equip­ment be used to de­ter­mine whether an at­tack is be­ing planned on an Amer­i­can al­ly—Trinidad and To­ba­go—in close ge­o­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty to Venezuela?

Or is the radar mere­ly for the pur­pose of keep­ing watch over boats com­ing out of Venezuela with drug pay­loads des­tined to cause phys­i­cal and men­tal dam­age to Amer­i­can cit­i­zens? Was there a con­nec­tion be­tween the re­cent vis­it here by Gen­er­al Dan Caine, Chair­man of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the in­stal­la­tion of the sur­veil­lance equip­ment post­ed in To­ba­go? And did Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so de­ceive the na­tion about the re­al pur­pose of that meet­ing?

The re­al­i­ty is that one ba­sic and ma­jor pur­pose of in­stalling radar sys­tems is to al­low a mil­i­tary es­tab­lish­ment to iden­ti­fy tar­gets so that ground and sea forces can make in­formed de­ci­sions on where and when to strike.

The fact is that US mil­i­tary craft have al­ready demon­strat­ed their abil­i­ty to strike small boats tra­vers­ing re­gion­al wa­ters with­out hav­ing to de­pend on so­phis­ti­cat­ed radar sys­tems to col­lect and re­lay in­for­ma­tion. Such a re­al­i­ty lends cre­dence to the view that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment has am­bi­tions that stretch far be­yond coun­ter­ing the drug trade in the Caribbean.

The re­al­i­ty for us in Trinidad and To­ba­go is that our Gov­ern­ment has ven­tured be­yond its ca­pac­i­ty; it is now sub­ject not to an agen­da of its own, but rather caught in a geopo­lit­i­cal con­test be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela. This coun­try and its peo­ple have been wedged be­tween com­pet­ing re­gion­al in­ter­ests, and it is now im­pos­si­ble for the Gov­ern­ment to ex­tri­cate it­self from the con­se­quences. In­ter­est­ing­ly, while it has been the pos­ture of the cur­rent Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Far­ley Au­gus­tine, to in­sist that To­ba­go must have a ma­jor say in every­thing af­fect­ing To­ba­go, he ap­pears in­tent on dis­tanc­ing him­self from this geopo­lit­i­cal tan­go.

Of great con­se­quence is that Chi­na and Rus­sia have shown keen in­ter­est and in­volve­ment in the Wash­ing­ton–Cara­cas im­broglio.

The pre­sump­tion must be that, at present, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar now un­der­stands how Trinidad and To­ba­go can be af­fect­ed by the ten­sions—and pos­si­ble phys­i­cal out­comes—of con­flict be­tween the US and Venezuela. There is lit­tle wig­gle room to emerge un­scathed should hos­til­i­ties erupt. The de­ci­sion on what hap­pens next re­sides, as it al­ways has, with the lead­er­ship in Wash­ing­ton and the ob­jec­tives of the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent, and in how Pres­i­dent Maduro choos­es to re­spond. We re­main mere pawns in this geopo­lit­i­cal dance.