An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The ar­rival of the USS Grave­ly in Port-of-Spain just af­ter 9 am yes­ter­day cre­at­ed a stir among cu­ri­ous on­look­ers, who still be­lieved it was not too late for the Gov­ern­ment to adopt a neu­tral po­si­tion in the ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

Ex­press­ing ap­pre­hen­sion and con­cern as he watched the naval ves­sel be­ing es­cort­ed in­to the har­bour by two tug­boats— one man who had been wait­ing from as ear­ly as 7 am—point­ed to it and re­marked, “That’s it? It not look­ing any big­ger than our Coast Guard boat.”

De­spite this, those gath­ered along the Hy­att Wa­ter­front, ex­cit­ed­ly snapped pic­tures of the ves­sel as it was guid­ed to its moor­ings near the Cruise Ship Com­plex at Dock Road, un­der the watch­ful eyes of the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) —as well as a height­ened se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket of plain clothes and uni­formed of­fi­cers.

The ver­sa­tile war­ship with a crew of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 sailors, which was com­mis­sioned in 2010 and is ca­pa­ble of per­form­ing a range of mis­sions, in­clud­ing an­ti-air, an­ti-sur­face and an­ti-sub­ma­rine war­fare, will be in Trinidad from Oc­to­ber 26-30, for what Gov­ern­ment says is a drill/train­ing ex­er­cise with the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF).

De­spite its size, the Ar­leigh Burke-class aegis-guid­ed mis­sile de­stroy­er is equipped with a five-inch can­non and ver­ti­cal launch­ing sys­tems for mis­siles, and is caus­ing con­cern among the lo­cal pop­u­lace.

The vis­it­ing law en­force­ment agents are ex­pect­ed to en­gage 60 mil­i­tary per­son­nel, in­clud­ing in­fantry sol­diers, spe­cial forces, medics, sig­nallers and en­gi­neers, over the next five days.

The ar­rival of the USS Grave­ly will be fol­lowed by the USS Ger­ald R Ford, which is ex­pect­ed in the com­ing days in the re­gion.

The stag­gered ar­rivals of the ves­sels come amidst height­ened geo-po­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela, and fol­low sev­er­al bomb­ings of al­leged nar­co-ter­ror­ist ves­sels through­out the re­gion by US forces since the be­gin­ning of Sep­tem­ber.

Of the ten in­ci­dents be­tween Sep­tem­ber 1 to Oc­to­ber 24, a to­tal of 43 per­sons, in­clud­ing two T&T na­tion­als, have re­port­ed­ly been killed, while two peo­ple who sur­vived an airstrike were cap­tured.

Fol­low­ing the dead­ly drone strikes, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ened to take sim­i­lar ac­tion on land tar­gets in the re­gion—forc­ing Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries to ei­ther of­fer sup­port or main­tain neu­tral­i­ty.

T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ex­pressed sup­port for the US, and the sanc­tioned move has left cit­i­zens un­easy and wor­ried.

Cit­i­zens: Still time
for neu­tral­i­ty

A Freeport fa­ther and his teenage son, who went to the wa­ter­front to wit­ness what they claimed was his­to­ry in the mak­ing, de­scribed the ar­rival of the war­ship as “un­set­tling.”

Like sev­er­al oth­ers present, he too called for greater trans­paren­cy by the Gov­ern­ment over the in­tent and pur­pose of the vis­it by US forces, and this coun­try’s for­eign pol­i­cy di­rec­tion re­gard­ing any loom­ing war.

Re­fus­ing to pro­vide his name, the fa­ther said, “With what’s hap­pen­ing glob­al­ly and the rhetoric we’ve been hear­ing from the White House and the Pen­ta­gon, I can’t be­lieve this ship is here just for a friend­ly vis­it or just for train­ing as the Gov­ern­ment has said pub­licly.”

He de­clared, “I think this is a strate­gic move.”

Dis­miss­ing ear­li­er as­sur­ances by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er Cab­i­net min­is­ters for cit­i­zens not to pan­ic, he said, “Our lead­ers are telling us to stay calm, but there’s al­ways calm be­fore the storm. We’re not get­ting the full pic­ture.”

A sec­ond man, who al­so de­clined to be named but claimed to be a mil­i­tary en­thu­si­ast, re­vealed he was con­cerned enough to have stocked up on food and emer­gency sup­plies to last for ap­prox­i­mate­ly two weeks should any sit­u­a­tion arise.

In­di­cat­ing his vis­it was more sen­ti­men­tal, as he re­called view­ing a sim­i­lar op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing a US war­ship years ago as a child with his fa­ther, he ex­pressed ap­pre­hen­sion about the po­ten­tial fall­out for T&T as a for­ward op­er­at­ing base for the US.

He said, “If Venezuela ever de­cides to re­spond to a per­ceived threat, it’s log­i­cal they’d tar­get the clos­est for­ward base.”

Hope­ful that the Gov­ern­ment had con­sid­ered the long-term risks as­so­ci­at­ed with its cur­rent de­ci­sions, he asked, “What hap­pens if there’s an es­ca­la­tion in Venezuela?

“Even if we’re not part of the con­flict, we’ll still feel the ef­fects, whether it’s through mi­gra­tion, eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty, or se­cu­ri­ty risks. If Trinidad is seen as co­op­er­at­ing with the US, then we could eas­i­ly be viewed as an en­e­my by oth­ers.”

While he, too, is wait­ing to see what the com­ing days will bring, he said flee­ing T&T is a last re­sort for him and his fam­i­ly.

A Ukrain­ian woman re­sid­ing in Trinidad for the past 13 years said she was not fear­ful about any war.

Hold­ing tight to her young son as she said cu­rios­i­ty had dri­ven her to the har­bour, the for­eign­er said T&T was well-po­si­tioned po­lit­i­cal­ly and oth­er­wise to get through this sit­u­a­tion main­ly un­scathed.

She said, “I’m not wor­ried and I don’t think this is a cause for con­cern as yet. Though the op­tics are cu­ri­ous."

She added, "We should re­main neu­tral and fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing our own coun­try.”

A Chi­nese na­tion­al fish­ing near­by al­so said he was not wor­ried about war break­ing out.

“I’ve been here for more than a year. The pres­ence of a ship doesn’t wor­ry me. If war breaks out else­where, that’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, and Trinidad may ex­pe­ri­ence the fall­out—but for now, this is not some­thing to fear. It’s a boat dock­ing.”