RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Ja­maican am­bas­sador Cur­tis A Ward has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go is now firm­ly “in the crosshairs” and is like­ly to face se­ri­ous fall­out for what he de­scribes as its un­re­served sup­port of Unit­ed States mil­i­tary ac­tions against Venezuela, while sharply crit­i­cis­ing Caribbean lead­ers for what he called weak­ness and fear in the face of Wash­ing­ton.

In a strong­ly word­ed post pub­lished on Box­ing Day yes­ter­day, Ward ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go of align­ing it­self with US ef­forts aimed at regime change in Venezuela, ar­gu­ing that this de­ci­sion has placed the coun­try’s peo­ple, in­fra­struc­ture and econ­o­my at grave risk.

“Per­sad-Bisses­sar has placed a mil­i­tary tar­get on the backs of the coun­try and the peo­ple,” Ward wrote, as­sert­ing that T&T now faces con­se­quences far greater than any short-term ben­e­fits de­rived from clos­er ties with Wash­ing­ton. “It is a sce­nario in which more Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian than Amer­i­can cit­i­zens could be killed.”

Ward, a for­mer am­bas­sador and deputy per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Ja­maica to the Unit­ed Na­tions, claimed that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port for the US has el­e­vat­ed it from a tra­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty part­ner to an ac­tive col­lab­o­ra­tor in a mil­i­tary strat­e­gy against Venezuela. He warned that the in­stal­la­tion of a US mil­i­tary radar sys­tem at the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al air­port has trans­formed crit­i­cal civil­ian in­fra­struc­ture in­to a le­git­i­mate mil­i­tary tar­get.

“The T&T gov­ern­ment made the air­port perime­ter a mil­i­tary tar­get,” Ward said. “It has put T&T’s in­ter­na­tion­al civil­ian air­port, which is in­te­gral to the coun­try’s econ­o­my, in jeop­ardy – a tar­get on her back, T&T in the crosshairs.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ward, the radar sys­tem is not de­signed for civil­ian or mar­itime mon­i­tor­ing, as ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed, but is in­stead a war as­set in­te­grat­ed in­to an an­ti-mis­sile re­sponse net­work. In the event of es­ca­la­tion, he said, neu­tral­is­ing that sys­tem would be a pri­or­i­ty for the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary.

“What Venezuela has to of­fer is of far greater im­por­tance than what T&T has to of­fer the Unit­ed States in the long term,” Ward added, re­fer­ring to Venezuela’s vast oil re­serves and strate­gic lo­ca­tion.

Be­yond the risks to T&T, Ward al­so launched a cri­tique of re­gion­al lead­er­ship, ac­cus­ing Caribbean heads of gov­ern­ment of re­main­ing silent out of fear of US re­tal­i­a­tion.

“There is not even a dis­cernible whis­per of op­po­si­tion or crit­i­cism from most Caribbean lead­ers,” he wrote. “Some cow­er in fear of re­tal­i­a­tion by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. They lack courage. They com­pro­mise the dig­ni­ty and what is left of their coun­tries’ sov­er­eign­ty.”

Ward said the prin­ci­ple of non-in­ter­fer­ence was be­ing used as a shield for in­ac­tion, while the re­gion drift­ed clos­er to a broad­er mil­i­tary con­flict that could desta­bilise the Caribbean basin.

While warn­ing that the tip­ping point to­ward con­flict may al­ready have been crossed, Ward said Caribbean lead­ers still had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to speak out in favour of di­a­logue and peace.

“War is not the an­swer. War is not the on­ly op­tion. And war is not in­evitable,” he said, urg­ing both re­gion­al gov­ern­ments and cit­i­zens of T&T, at home and in the di­as­po­ra, to op­pose mil­i­tary es­ca­la­tion.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has pub­licly sup­port­ed US strikes on ves­sels it said were in­volved in drug traf­fick­ing from Venezuela, say­ing she and “most of the coun­try” were pleased that the US naval de­ploy­ment was “hav­ing suc­cess in their mis­sion.” She had said the ef­forts were al­ready hav­ing an im­pact on il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T.