When Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kerrie Symmonds recently warned that the Caribbean Sea must remain a “zone of peace,” he was not invoking a mere slogan. His intervention addressed a pressing reality: the build-up of United States military forces off Venezuela and its implications for Caribbean sovereignty.
The trigger for regional concern was the early September strike by US forces that destroyed a vessel leaving Venezuelan waters, killing 11 people. That incident, followed by the deployment of additional naval assets and F-35 fighter aircraft to Puerto Rico, confirmed that Washington’s operations in the Caribbean are no longer framed as training exercises. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth stated bluntly that these deployments represent “real-world operations” aimed at ending the flow of drugs and weapons into American communities.
The stated mission resonates with a core Caribbean concern. Guns and narcotics have long driven crime and instability in small states. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) foreign ministers’ letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that these threats demand cooperation. Barbados, like its neighbours, cannot ignore rising firearm violence. In 2024, murders on the island rose by 29 compared with the previous year, while drug offences again increased. Elsewhere, the situation is even more stark. The Turks and Caicos Islands recorded 48 murders in 2023, giving the territory the region’s highest per-capita homicide rate.
Yet the contradiction cannot be overlooked. According to the United States Government Accountability Office, nearly three-quarters of the firearms recovered from crimes across the Caribbean between 2018 and 2022 were traced back to US retail sources. Handguns dominate this flow. While Washington projects power at sea in the name of interdiction, its own domestic gun market continues to export instability into the region. Caribbean leaders are right to insist that this imbalance be acknowledged and addressed, not masked by military gestures.
The issue is not only the flow of weapons. It is also sovereignty. CARICOM foreign ministers made clear that any external operations with the potential to affect the region must be subject to consultation and advance notice. Symmonds underscored that point: while the fight against drugs and guns is shared, the unilateral presence of a foreign armada risks undermining the Caribbean’s hard-won security posture.
Divergence of views within CARICOM is expected. Sovereign governments will not always take identical positions. But Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister, in applauding the US strike in language that celebrated lethal force, crossed a troubling line. The risk here is not only the endorsement itself, but the way such rhetoric strips away context: Venezuela’s crisis, the cartels’ entanglement in Caribbean societies, and the US’s own role in supplying the very arms and ammunition that destabilise the region. To treat this chain of cause and effect as a simple story of “good versus bad” is to indulge the same kind of narrative distortion that drives disinformation in our time. Rhetoric and decisions taken in isolation, or leaning on selected facts, are dangerous — especially when the Caribbean’s security and sovereignty are at stake.
History makes this sensitivity unavoidable. The United States’ intervention in Grenada in 1983 demonstrated the ease with which regional sovereignty could be brushed aside in the name of strategic stability. That moment left an enduring lesson for Caribbean states: foreign powers will act when it suits them, unless the region presents a unified, assertive voice. The language of a “zone of peace” is rooted in that memory, and it signals that Caribbean states have no interest in becoming the stage for geopolitical confrontation between Washington, Caracas, or any other power.
The stakes are high. Citizens across the region demand safety in their communities, but they also expect their governments to guard sovereignty with vigilance. Accepting external support in interdiction is one thing; ceding the ability to determine the terms of security cooperation is another. For small states, the latter is existential.
The Caribbean cannot afford silence or passivity in this moment. Regional governments must continue to insist on dialogue, transparency, and respect for sovereignty in every engagement with Washington. They must also strengthen collaboration among themselves to address the drivers of crime: tighter border management, harmonised laws on firearms, and renewed investment in social resilience.
The Caribbean Sea is not simply a transit point in America’s alleged drug war. It is the shared space on which regional life depends — for trade, tourism, and identity. To protect it, cooperation with larger powers may be necessary, but never at the cost of sovereignty. The “zone of peace” must remain more than rhetoric. It must be the guiding principle of Caribbean foreign policy at a time when external pressures are mounting once again.
The post Caribbean sovereignty demands consultation on US military presence appeared first on Barbados Today.
