AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

As anx­i­eties grow over Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to de­clare Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar per­sona non gra­ta to that coun­try, end its gas agree­ments with T&T and the im­pend­ing ar­rival of the US air­craft car­ri­er USS Ger­ald R Ford in­to the re­gion, ex­perts re­main di­vid­ed on the im­pact and this coun­try’s re­sponse.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al Carl Al­fon­so, a for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, called on cit­i­zens not to pan­ic.

“I keep hear­ing that there’s go­ing to be a war, and Venezuela is go­ing to at­tack Trinidad and so on and so on. I don’t know where they got all their in­tel­li­gence from. I don’t think Venezuela is go­ing to at­tack Trinidad. Why would Venezuela at­tack Trinidad? Why would Amer­i­ca at­tack Venezuela, is an­oth­er sto­ry. And I think we all know the sto­ry,” Al­fon­so said.

Al­fon­so, who joined the De­fence Force in 1963 and was the first Caribbean of­fi­cer trained at a top Unit­ed States mil­i­tary acad­e­my, said he is “ex­cit­ed” to see the USS Ger­ald R Ford.

But while re­cent de­vel­op­ments be­tween the US and Venezuela are con­cern­ing, he stressed that the pub­lic should re­main “calm” and “cool.”

Mean­while, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions lec­tur­er at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Keron Niles, said re­la­tions with Venezuela are cur­rent­ly strained and “not good” fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s sus­pen­sion of gas deals with T&T.

He added that fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties for di­a­logue ex­ist, de­pend­ing on po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments in Cara­cas.

“This no talk about Drag­on [gas] be­ing de­vel­oped with this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in Venezuela. Now, if per­sons are spec­u­lat­ing that there’s go­ing to be regime change in Venezuela, that’s an­oth­er is­sue,” Niles said.

“Would it be pos­si­ble with a new regime? We’d have to wait and see…What’s be­fore us is the ad­min­is­tra­tion that is cur­rent­ly in Cara­cas has made its po­si­tion clear, and that has im­pli­ca­tions for our de­vel­op­ment.”

With the US pres­ence in Trinidad and through­out the Caribbean, deemed a “zone of peace,” Niles de­scribed it as psy­cho­log­i­cal op­er­a­tions, where both the US and Venezuela may want to pro­voke the oth­er in­to mak­ing a pre­ma­ture strike. Giv­en the pow­er of the US mil­i­tary, how­ev­er, he said such a move would be “un­wise” for Venezuela.

Niles urged cit­i­zens not to let height­ened ten­sions fu­el anx­i­ety.

“What you should be do­ing is sim­ply plan­ning for your­self and your fam­i­ly. And as lead­ers, what our lead­ers should be do­ing is mak­ing sure that they plan for our fu­ture col­lec­tive­ly.”