Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

As the USS Grave­ly war­ship ar­rives at the Port-of-Spain Port this morn­ing, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern at “men­ac­ing mil­i­tary” US ves­sels across the Caribbean Sea. She has called for di­a­logue to pre­vent war from start­ing.

“The vi­o­lent ac­tions this build-up has led to need to be the sub­ject of di­a­logue. Let us have di­a­logue to pre­vent the war from start­ing,” Mot­t­ley de­clared, ad­dress­ing last night’s Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty’s 86th an­nu­al con­fer­ence in Bridgetown.

Mot­t­ley al­so sent cer­tain warn­ings to the US. Fur­ther, she thanked for­mer Cari­com prime min­is­ters for their re­cent call to or­der against the US mil­i­tary pres­ence and for ter­ri­to­ries to re­frain from host­ing mil­i­tary as­sets with the po­ten­tial to cause re­gion­al con­flicts.

This comes as the USS Grave­ly and the 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) dock at 9 am. The 500-foot-plus, mis­sile-ready de­stroy­er is drop­ping an­chor in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­til Thurs­day. The Grave­ly is part of 11 US war­ships in the re­gion since Au­gust, when the US Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion launched a drug car­tel-curb­ing mis­sion—an ini­tia­tive sup­port­ed by Trinidad and To­ba­go. The lat­est war­ship was the USS Ger­ald Ford, the world’s largest air­craft car­ri­er.

The US fo­cus on Venezuela as a drug traf­fick­ing source has been seen by Venezuela—and oth­er quar­ters—as cov­er for a US at­tempt at regime change tar­get­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro. The US mil­i­tary pres­ence, and its de­struc­tion of sev­en boats and 34 peo­ple al­leged­ly trans­port­ing drugs, has at­tract­ed strong push­back from hemi­spher­ic en­ti­ties. This in­clud­ed present Cari­com lead­ers (mi­nus Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar) and 11 past Cari­com lead­ers (in­clud­ing for­mer T&T prime min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley).

To­day, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said US of­fi­cials from the ves­sel will meet cer­tain UNC gov­ern­ment min­is­ters af­ter the Grave­ly docks. The me­dia will not be al­lowed on the ship.

Yes­ter­day, Bar­ba­dos PM Mot­t­ley’s wide-rang­ing ad­dress in­clud­ed the ten­sions in the re­gion. Mot­t­ley cit­ed her par­ty as an ex­am­ple of good gov­er­nance in the Caribbean, which would con­tin­ue cham­pi­oning democ­ra­cy, hu­man rights, and the rule of law in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“Our voic­es in in­ter­na­tion­al fo­ra will al­ways stand on prin­ci­ple, whether speak­ing up for the sov­er­eign­ty of small na­tions or call­ing for coun­tries like Cu­ba to be pro­tect­ed and brought back in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty by re­mov­ing em­bar­goes, or call­ing out glob­al in­equities.

“If ever we need­ed a re­minder of how un­sta­ble and how dan­ger­ous this world that we live in is, and how vul­ner­a­ble our Caribbean re­gion is, it is now with us—fac­ing a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of threats,” she added.

“We don’t need to look any fur­ther than the men­ac­ing ves­sels—mil­i­tary ves­sels from the Unit­ed States across the Caribbean Sea, in­clud­ing what is re­put­ed to be the world’s largest war­ship. These are not times of pi­rates any­more—this is 2025, and we have cause to be du­ly con­cerned.”

She not­ed that amid this, the North­ern Caribbean was fac­ing a hur­ri­cane threat.

“Peace is crit­i­cal to all that we do in this re­gion! And now that peace is be­ing threat­ened, we have to speak up!”

Mot­t­ley thanked the for­mer prime min­is­ters of the com­mu­ni­ty for the very strong state­ment is­sued by them for the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that was agreed up­on on the for­ma­tion of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty by Dr Er­ic Williams. “I want to thank them be­cause, with­out their state­ment, we are pos­si­bly go­ing to have oth­ers think that those who now lead gov­ern­ments are speak­ing in vain with­out re­flect­ing on the fact that this has been a core prin­ci­ple of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty from its very in­cep­tion. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, prime min­is­ters!”

Mot­t­ley be­lieves the time has come “... for us there­fore, to be able to en­sure that we do ac­cept that any en­ti­ty has the right to en­gage in ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of per­sons they sus­pect of be­ing in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. We stand for the rule of law, and we be­lieve that if there is oth­er in­tel­li­gence avail­able that would cause you to take ac­tion that is an im­me­di­ate threat to you as a na­tion, then you have a du­ty to share it with us. But on the face of it, con­flat­ing law en­force­ment with mil­i­tary ac­tion is a dan­ger­ous step”.

“We equal­ly do not ac­cept that any na­tion in our re­gion or the greater Caribbean should be the sub­ject of an im­po­si­tion up­on them of any uni­lat­er­al ex­pres­sion of force and vi­o­lence by any third par­ty or na­tion.”

Mot­t­ley said if there are con­flicts or dis­putes that need res­o­lu­tion, the place they need to be tak­en for res­o­lu­tion is the Unit­ed Na­tions.

She said the method­ol­o­gy that must be de­ployed for the res­o­lu­tion is “... one of ne­go­ti­a­tion and peace­ful ac­tions tak­en in or­der to en­sure that we can set­tle dis­putes”.

“Bar­ba­dos has al­ways been that place, and that is why we were the lo­ca­tion for the op­po­si­tion and gov­ern­ment in Venezuela to sign the pact here a few years ago, be­cause we are friends of all and satel­lites of none.”

Mot­t­ley stressed, “The vi­o­lent ac­tions this build-up has led to need to be the sub­ject of di­a­logue. Al­most every war in the world in his­to­ry has been end­ed by di­a­logue, so let us have di­a­logue to stop the war—rather, to pre­vent the war from start­ing, rather than to stop it when it has start­ed.”

Venezue­lans in T&T anx­ious, stressed

A num­ber of Venezue­lans last Fri­day night ex­pressed great anx­i­ety and con­cern at the height­en­ing sit­u­a­tion not on­ly in their home­land but al­so in T&T. Sev­er­al, speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said, “Many of us who were in max­is and trans­port go­ing home were stuck in road­blocks for a long time that night, and the ex­er­cise trig­gered a lot of fear … every­one’s afraid.

“A friend just goes to work and goes home and shuts his door. Peo­ple don’t know what is go­ing to hap­pen in the is­sues right now, and there is al­so stress since peo­ple don’t know whether work per­mits will con­tin­ue af­ter De­cem­ber.”

An­oth­er Venezue­lan added, “Peo­ple are not feel­ing se­cure be­cause we don’t know if the state of emer­gency T&T has is go­ing to get worse or when it will end. No­body minds pay­ing tax­es, but we have rights, and right now, with what is go­ing on all around our com­mu­ni­ty, it doesn’t feel that way.”

Sev­er­al oth­ers who came to T&T to work said they have not re­turned home in re­cent months as ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela be­gan soar­ing. “Since Sep­tem­ber, when some ves­sels were blown up, the le­gal sea traf­fic is al­so jeop­ar­dised.”

The height­ened spot­light on T&T amid the US-Venezue­lan ten­sions has at­tract­ed in­ter­na­tion­al war cor­re­spon­dents, in­clud­ing Ital­ian war cor­re­spon­dent Ste­fa­nia Bat­tis­ti­ni, who cov­ered the Ukraine–Rus­sia war.