Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Mo­ments af­ter the Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion added Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro and his gov­ern­ment to the US State De­part­ment’s list of the world’s most dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, news emerged that the Unit­ed States’ high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cer will meet with the Prime Min­is­ter to­day.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the Unit­ed States Em­bassy said Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Dan Caine, will vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day to meet Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter put out a brief state­ment yes­ter­day, say­ing, “The meet­ing is be­ing held at the re­quest of the Unit­ed States and will fo­cus on the two na­tions’ strong bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship, strength­en­ing re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty and the vi­tal im­por­tance to both coun­tries of coun­ter­ing the il­lic­it traf­fic in drugs and transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

The me­dia re­lease added, “The Prime Min­is­ter wel­comes the vis­it. Fur­ther de­tails will be shared with the me­dia af­ter the meet­ing.” No time or lo­ca­tion was pro­vid­ed.

Mean­while, the US Em­bassy’s re­lease re­in­forced what the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice said about the No­vem­ber 25 vis­it.

Caine is the 22nd Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the Unit­ed States’ high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary of­fi­cer—and serves as the prin­ci­pal mil­i­tary ad­vis­er to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth, and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

He as­sumed the chair­man­ship on April 11, 2025, af­ter serv­ing as As­so­ciate Di­rec­tor for Mil­i­tary Af­fairs at the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency. His ca­reer spans a broad range of op­er­a­tional, staff, and joint as­sign­ments, pri­mar­i­ly as an F-16 fight­er pi­lot, weapons of­fi­cer, spe­cial op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer, and mem­ber of the White House staff.

Com­mis­sioned in 1990 through the ROTC pro­gramme at the Vir­ginia Mil­i­tary In­sti­tute, Caine holds an MA in Air War­fare from the Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Uni­ver­si­ty and has com­plet­ed mul­ti­ple na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and lead­er­ship pro­grammes at in­sti­tu­tions in­clud­ing the Har­vard Kennedy School and Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty’s Maxwell School.

A com­mand pi­lot with more than 2,800 hours in the F-16, in­clud­ing over 150 com­bat hours, Caine al­so served part-time in the Na­tion­al Guard be­tween 2009 and 2016 while work­ing as a se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur and in­vestor.

His vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go comes af­ter the US of­fi­cial­ly de­clared Maduro the head of the “Car­tel de los Soles.” The an­nounce­ment, which re­clas­si­fied Maduro from a cor­rupt dic­ta­tor to the leader of a for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion, marks an un­prece­dent­ed step. US Pres­i­dent Trump main­tains that this des­ig­na­tion gives him the au­thor­i­ty to con­duct strikes in­side Venezuela, though some ex­ter­nal ex­perts have ques­tioned the rea­son­ing be­hind it.

On No­vem­ber 21, Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth said de­clar­ing Venezuela’s state-em­bed­ded crim­i­nal net­work, Car­tel de los Soles, a ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion will bring “a whole bunch of new op­tions” to how the US deals with nar­co-ter­ror­ists in that re­gion.

‘Kam­la in­flu­en­tial’

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said Gen­er­al Caine’s vis­it is a tes­ta­ment to the in­flu­ence Per­sad-Bisses­sar holds.

“That is in­tel­li­gence, that is gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment. That is in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. That is re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty. That is plan­ning. That is ex­e­cu­tion. That is strat­e­gy. That is a lot of things that are way above any of our pay grades. It is im­por­tant, it is very crit­i­cal. It sends a very huge sig­nal. It tells us as well that we are un­der­es­ti­mat­ing the pow­er that the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go holds in terms of our ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion, our ju­ris­dic­tion, our se­cu­ri­ty abil­i­ties,” Mo­hammed said.

He added, “Peo­ple have un­der­played that. But the fact that the Joint Chief of Staff is com­ing to meet the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, a head of gov­ern­ment, tells you a lot of things. That puts in­to per­spec­tive all of what I was say­ing about the geopol­i­tics and the geoe­co­nom­ics, and the po­si­tion­ing of the coun­try. All of those things are very im­por­tant. I mean, yes, but that is gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment, that is not Re­pub­li­can to UNC.”

This coun­try’s De­fence Force re­cent­ly con­clud­ed a joint train­ing ex­er­cise with the 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) from No­vem­ber 16 to 21.