Trinidad and Tobago has drawn sharp criticism from former leaders for backing United States military action in Caribbean waters, a move analysts warned on Friday could shatter the region’s long-held status as a Zone of Peace.
A rare joint statement issued on Thursday by 11 former CARICOM prime ministers – including Barbados’ former leader Freundel Stuart – urged that the Caribbean remain “a zone of peace on land, sea, and airspace where the rule of law prevails”.
It voiced “apprehension on the increased military security build-up and the presence of nuclear vessels and aircraft within the Caribbean archipelago”.
The former heads of government cautioned that militarisation risked pulling the region “into conflicts which are not of our making”.
Political scientist Peter Wickham told Barbados TODAY that Trinidad and Tobago’s Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her administration now stand uncomfortably apart from a growing regional consensus that rejects US-led military escalation.
In her speech to the United Nations 80th General Assembly in New York earlier this month, Persad-Bissessar dismissed the Caribbean zone of peace as an “elusive dream”.
“I was saying from the time she made the UN speech that it’s clear that Trinidad and Tobago has been isolated,” Wickham said, arguing that US foreign policy under Donald Trump is “intent on provoking some kind of confrontation with Venezuela” and that Persad-Bissessar “is intent on supporting whatever Trump does”.
He described Wednesday’s letter from the former leaders as “a unique moment in CARICOM history” that should not be underestimated.
“Seldom ever has CARICOM been united from the perspective of the leaders, far less the opposition,” he said. “You were able to identify ten Caribbean prime ministers… now 11 because subsequent to the letter’s release, Keith Rowley has signed on to it. So you have even the opposition in Trinidad and Tobago pushing back against the Kamla Persad-Bissessar position. So it’s clear that she’s isolated and the isolation in my view will grow.”
Wickham pointed to similar regional pushback on US-linked security installations, such as radar proposals being made towards Grenada.
“The leadership of the Caribbean is rallying around Grenada in terms of Grenada’s inclination to say no to the installation of radar equipment. Antigua has already said no,” he noted. “For all intents and purposes, that is a further indication that the region is very much unified regarding it being a Zone of Peace and regarding the extent to which there’s no desire to have the United States on board.”
But Wickham acknowledged the economic and geopolitical pressures small island states face. “Ralph Gonsalves made the point yesterday that 20 per cent of Grenada’s GDP is associated with St George’s Medical School. So our peculiar vulnerability is not lost on me.”
Despite this, the regional pollster and strategist insisted that the only workable pushback against escalation was collective resolve by CARICOM heads. He said: “You can’t stage any action in the Caribbean without the support of Caribbean governments… Right now, Trinidad and Tobago is on board, but none of the others appear to be on board.”
He framed Persad-Bissessar’s position as driven by energy security, particularly the Dragon Gas deal with Venezuela, and a belief that a US-engineered regime change or heavy pressure on Caracas could secure favourable terms. “That seems to be her strategy,” he said, calling it “illogical” given that even a limited conflict would destroy regional tourism growth.
In mirroring Wickham’s remarks, Professor Don Marshall, head of the UWI Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, warned that the integrity of CARICOM’s longstanding foreign policy coordination was itself now in peril.
“CARICOM is fractured by the position that Trinidad has taken in relation to allowing the United States permission to engage in all kinds of military and other kinds of manoeuvres, it’s just unprecedented,” he said. “We have to go back at least 40 years or so in the 1980s to bear witness to something similar.”
Professor Marshall argued that the region is witnessing a breakdown not in economic or integration protocols but specifically “in relation to how we will engage big powers”.
“I would be saying that Trinidad is defaulting on sovereignty,” he said. “There is a way in which we would treat narcotics trafficking on the high seas… that protocol should remain.”
He predicted that as Trump’s intentions become clearer, Trinidad and Tobago will face political and diplomatic embarrassment.
Professor Marshall said: “The more and more we get a clear unfolding of President Trump’s desires, the more embarrassed the Trinidad and Tobago government would be.”
On Friday, the US revealed that it is sending the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation in the build-up of military assets in the Caribbean.
Both analysts agreed that the implications of Caribbean waters becoming a theatre for American power projection are grave, and that a visibly unified CARICOM stance is now not aspirational, but existential.
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