The drug trade, which goes be­yond co­caine and in­volves any­thing that can make mon­ey, is a com­pli­cat­ed busi­ness that weaves a com­plex web of coun­tries stretch­ing from Ja­maica, Ba­hamas and St Vin­cent, to Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pana­ma and Mex­i­co and every­thing in be­tween. Coun­tries as big as Brazil and as small as Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­cause of lo­ca­tion and un­pro­tect­ed coast­lines, end up with porous bor­ders. Any con­ve­nient coun­try, like Ecuador, can be a trans­ship­ment point. Easy mon­ey fa­cil­i­tates cor­rup­tion. One pres­i­dent, El Sal­vador’s Nay­ib Bukele, has tak­en charge of its in­ter­nal af­fairs. He has cleaned out the drug car­tels, in­car­cer­at­ed thou­sands of peo­ple, vi­o­lat­ing hu­man rights, and turns a blind eye to pris­on­er abuse. But his coun­try is peace­ful for the ma­jor­i­ty, and crim­i­nals are the ones now liv­ing in fear.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion this week de­cer­ti­fied Colom­bia, which now pro­duces four times more co­caine than in Pablo Es­co­bar’s time, be­cause it is not co-op­er­at­ing enough with the US on stem­ming the pro­duc­tion and flow of drugs. The Colom­bian pres­i­dent says the prob­lem is US de­mand. If Bukele is the mod­el the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion wants oth­er coun­tries to fol­low, it will be a hard pill to swal­low in some places. While cit­i­zens of any coun­try want hu­man se­cu­ri­ty and peace, they al­so want con­sti­tu­tion­al re­straints.

It is not a big leap for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to be sup­port­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s war on drug car­tels in the re­gion so ve­he­ment­ly. The Prime Min­is­ter ob­vi­ous­ly thinks T&T is sur­round­ed, over­whelmed, that too lit­tle has been done for too long and the coun­try needs help. What af­ter the State of Emer­gency?

In sup­port­ing US ac­tion against drug car­tels in the sur­round­ing seas, our Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that should Venezuela at­tack or in­vade Guyana, she will agree to US troops land­ing on T&T soil in sup­port of a Cari­com coun­try - a bold but not un­rea­son­able po­si­tion, but with at­ten­dant risks. Our Prime Min­is­ter did not have to say that but she did. She has set the tone for Cari­com’s re­sponse to ag­gres­sion to­wards a re­gion­al coun­try, mind­ful of a sit­u­a­tion where the Op­po­si­tion in T&T, and some Prime Min­is­ters in Cari­com coun­tries, have cozy re­la­tion­ships with Maduro and may find them­selves con­flict­ed. Maduro has been gen­er­ous to some Cari­com coun­tries by re­duc­ing and wip­ing off Petro Caribe debt. But our Prime Min­is­ter has been un­equiv­o­cal­ly con­sis­tent against Maduro for the last 10 years.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made it dif­fi­cult for Cari­com to be doubt­ful in a sit­u­a­tion where a Maduro in­va­sion of Guyana may force a choice. She wants it to be Cari­com not Maduro; and she wants it to be Trump not Maduro. Per­sad-Bisses­sar seems will­ing to part com­pa­ny on these two things with Cari­com. And whether it will come to that de­pends en­tire­ly on Maduro, who must in­vade first to trig­ger T&T’s re­sponse, and on Cari­com, who will have to re­spond on­ly if Venezuela in­vades. She has de­clared her po­si­tion way out front.

Maduro has a choice of whether to at­tack Guyana to trig­ger a US-T&T mil­i­tary col­lab­o­ra­tion or to at­tack T&T. Some have called Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance reck­less be­cause no Cari­com coun­try has the mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ty to match Venezuela.

The big­ger prob­lem in all of this is Pres­i­dent Trump, the is­sue of re­spect for in­ter­na­tion­al law, the con­sid­er­a­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al norms and the US Pres­i­dent’s per­pet­u­al con­sti­tu­tion test­ing ap­proach­es to get­ting things done in his own coun­try, which of­ten vi­o­lates con­sti­tu­tion­al and le­gal lim­its as, for in­stance, the use of fed­er­al troops chal­leng­ing state au­ton­o­my and may­oral ju­ris­dic­tion of cities. There is a pat­tern of ar­bi­trari­ness.

How much can one re­ly on this Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent? It is not an idle ques­tion. Will he per­sist with the drug war in the Caribbean Sea and for how long? Will he in­tim­i­date his way to regime change in Venezuela, or pull back to de­ploy a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy? Will T&T have to find the means to cool the tem­per­a­ture with Maduro? Will Pres­i­dent Trump de­mand hard­line poli­cies by Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean gov­ern­ments with Amer­i­can help against gangs and crim­i­nals? And what will that do to the ethos of these so­ci­eties and the body politic?

And what about the fun­da­men­tal eco­nom­ic chal­lenges of trade, in­vest­ment, move­ment of peo­ple and de­vel­op­ment that this hemi­sphere, which is the most un­equal re­gion in the world, faces? Where, in this world of tar­iff ne­go­ti­a­tions, is there a dis­cus­sion on that? There has to be a di­a­logue be­yond drugs, gang­sters and crime, notwith­stand­ing the im­por­tance of this. How will the coun­tries of the west­ern hemi­sphere move for­ward peace­ful­ly to­geth­er af­ter this round ends?