Last week, four days of heavy rain led to flood­ing and threats of flood­ing in the usu­al ar­eas. The re­spons­es were swift and com­mend­able. This was a good be­gin­ning to what promis­es to be a busy rainy sea­son.

Par­lia­ment re­sumed on Fri­day, and the ad­min­is­tra­tion com­menced its new term in of­fice. In­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ments in­creased the un­cer­tain­ty and com­plex­i­ty fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as it tries to main­tain its po­si­tion in the wider world.

We live in high­ly dis­rup­tive times. Lim­it­ed ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­putes and in­ter­state con­flicts abound. Ukraine, In­dia and Pak­istan, the Mid­dle East, and the South Chi­na Sea re­flect un­re­solved his­tor­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions. The flash­points have be­come in­creas­ing­ly tense but so far have re­mained lo­calised and asym­met­ri­cal.

Ma­jor West­ern pow­ers have a pres­ence in these dis­putes, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for one mis­cal­cu­la­tion to have fright­ful con­se­quences. Many of these coun­tries are nu­clear pow­ers, which in­ten­si­fies the dan­ger.

On Fri­day, Is­rael at­tacked Iran’s nu­clear pro­gramme fa­cil­i­ties and as­sas­si­nat­ed sev­er­al lead­ing mil­i­tary per­son­nel and nu­clear sci­en­tists. Is­rael has at­tacked Iran­ian fa­cil­i­ties be­fore and as­sas­si­nat­ed lead­ing mil­i­tary and sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cials.

What is dif­fer­ent on this oc­ca­sion is that Iran was ne­go­ti­at­ing a nu­clear deal with the Unit­ed States and had been giv­en as­sur­ances that no at­tack was im­mi­nent.

Mar­co Ru­bio, US Sec­re­tary of State and pro-tem Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er, re­spond­ed, say­ing that Is­rael had act­ed uni­lat­er­al­ly. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump con­tra­dict­ed that state­ment and urged Iran to agree to a new nu­clear deal “be­fore there is noth­ing left”, sug­gest­ing that fol­low-up Is­raeli at­tacks on the coun­try would be “even more bru­tal”.

Pres­i­dent Trump’s state­ment rais­es sev­er­al im­pli­ca­tions, not the least of which is the bona fides of the Unit­ed States and whether it can be trust­ed in any ne­go­ti­a­tion. This point is not to be un­der­rat­ed. Ul­ti­mate­ly, there is no in­ter­na­tion­al mech­a­nism to com­pel a ma­jor pow­er to be trust­wor­thy and main­tain its in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions. We need to con­sid­er this point care­ful­ly in the knowl­edge that the Unit­ed States has up­end­ed its North Amer­i­can Free Trade Area treaty oblig­a­tions by uni­lat­er­al­ly im­pos­ing tar­iffs on Cana­da and Mex­i­co. It has al­so un­der­mined all of its World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ments.

Lest we for­get, the US is al­so ne­go­ti­at­ing with Chi­na and the Eu­ro­pean Union on trade tar­iffs. The tar­iffs im­posed on April 2 have on­ly been tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed. Talks may be on­go­ing, but the ex­am­ple of Iran rais­es a ques­tion as to whether any agree­ment that can be reached will en­dure.

The is­sue of trust and the ca­pac­i­ty for en­force­ment lies at the heart of all trade agree­ments. World eco­nom­ic growth de­pends on in­ter­na­tion­al trade. The im­passe over tar­iffs has al­ready led the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, the World Bank and the OECD to cut growth fore­casts for 2025 and 2026.

It is al­so note­wor­thy that 59 per cent of the world’s for­eign cur­ren­cy re­serves are held in US dol­lars. That fact alone rais­es the spec­tre that un­pleas­ant eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ments in the US can af­fect the val­ue of every coun­try’s re­serve and for­eign wealth funds, as did the 2008 cri­sis in the US hous­ing mar­ket.

Oil prices have shot up and stock mar­kets tum­bled in im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the Is­rael/Iran mil­i­tary en­gage­ment. If this con­tin­ues, the world’s eco­nom­ic out­look may be­come more un­cer­tain.

The world’s mis­for­tune may have a pos­i­tive short-run im­pact on this coun­try’s en­er­gy sec­tor, but it can­not change the long-term im­per­a­tive of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. Pru­dence, tact and diplo­ma­cy are our on­ly shields in a dis­rup­tive world.