Trinidad and Tobago went all in with the US – it will prove a costly misjudgment | Kenneth Mohammed
There is a saying in Trinidad and Tobago: “Cockroach should stay out of fowl business.” It captures a hard truth. Small states that stray into great-power conflicts rarely emerge unscathed. They are not players; they are expendables. It’s a statement that frames the reality of where Trinidad and Tobago sits uneasily today. For small states, geopolitics is not a theatre for bravado but a discipline of diplomacy and survival. That discipline has now collapsed. Trinidad and Tobago will pay the price of auctioning off its sovereignty to its neocolonial master, the US. The nation now sits dangerously exposed, economically, diplomatically, and potentially militarily, after the US attack on Venezuela and the extraordinary kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro. With Delcy Rodríguez now installed as Venezuela’s president and Diosdado Cabello still embedded, the Maduro regime remains largely intact. Trinidad and Tobago now faces an openly hostile neighbour whose senior leadership has denounced the dual island state’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, as a complicit enabler of US aggression and designated her persona non grata. This is not misfortune. It is the price of strategic misjudgment. This crisis did not arrive overnight. Through rhetorical excess, Persad-Bissessar has steadily narrowed our country’s room for manoeuvre. What is now unfolding is the predictable outcome of decades of amateurish improvisation masquerading as governance. Successive administrations have failed to articulate a coherent foreign policy for what was once the wealthiest country in the Caribbean. For small states, the cardinal sin is not choosing the “wrong” side but collapsing strategic ambiguity. That is precisely what Trinidad and Tobago did. Persad-Bissessar boxed her country in. Her public alignment with Washington’s racist dictator in chief, combined with disparaging remarks toward respected Caribbean leaders and a casual dismissal of regional diplomacy and historic ties, has left Trinidad and Tobago isolated at precisely the moment when geopolitical flexibility was necessary.
During her earlier term, memorably declaring that Trinidad and Tobago was “not the ATM of the Caribbean”, Persad-Bissessar signalled to our Caribbean community (Caricom) that regional solidarity was conditional and transactional. Yet Caricom is not a marketplace; it is a family. Disagreements are inevitable, but they are meant to be managed privately, with a public posture of unity that small states depend on for collective strength and survival. Today, the cost of that posture is coming due. After the action in Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago finds itself isolated from one of its largest trading partners. Across the region, calls for boycotts have begun circulating. Leadership in geopolitics is not about sounding tough or forcing false choices. On that test, this administration has failed. This is not a story about choosing between Washington and Caracas. It is about what happens to small states when they mistake alignment for strategy.
Much ink has been spilled portraying Trump as the hero and Maduro as the villain. For small states, this distinction offers little protection. Both leaders operate through pressure, spectacle and intimidation. Both personalise power, elevate loyalty over competence, and govern through permanent crisis. Trump does so within institutions that are still resilient but eroding; Maduro atop institutions he had hollowed out. Both are widely perceived as corrupt. Both have enriched their families, allies, cronies and themselves. Both have the same instincts but different power. Small states, such as Trinidad and Tobago, do not get the luxury of moral binaries when caught between rival strongmen. They get consequences. Venezuela’s relationship with the Caribbean has been economic and strategic. Several states became structurally exposed to Caracas through energy dependence, most notably through PetroCaribe, launched in 2005 under Chávez, which offered concessional oil financing framed as development support rather than commercial exchange. These arrangements created not only economic ties but political memory. It is notable that the largest number of Venezuelan refugees in the Caribbean live in Trinidad and Tobago.
Against this backdrop, expanding US military activity in Trinidad was sold as counter-narcotics cooperation. Radar installations, “capacity building”, joint exercises – all while killings continued unexplained off the Venezuelan coast. Trump confirmed what many suspected: this was never about drugs. It is about oil, gas and minerals – what he frames as wealth “stolen” from US corporations during Venezuela’s nationalisation drive. From ExxonMobil to ConocoPhillips, US corporations were systematically expelled under Chávez and Maduro. Demanding sovereignty has always been the real crime in the region, from Cuba in the north to Venezuela in the south. Without the selective amnesia that often accompanies western commentary, let’s state plainly: Venezuela is a sovereign state whose sovereignty has been repeatedly violated by the US and the UK. Since 2015, US sanctions have immiserated a society, accelerating the collapse of what was a wealthy country and displacing millions of people. The most egregious symbol of this pattern was Britain’s seizure of roughly $1.95bn (£1.4bn) in Venezuelan gold held in London – funds refused to Venezuela even during Covid, when they could have financed medicines and humanitarian relief. This was not an anomaly but precedent. First was the refusal to recognise Maduro after Chávez. Then the farce of Juan Guaidó – a western-backed fiction who never won an election and never governed. The script has been recycled with María Corina Machado, burnished with accolades and recast as a “president in waiting”, despite inviting foreign military intervention against her own country. She, too, has now been discarded by Trump as not having “respect within the country”. Persad-Bissessar would do well to note the pattern.
Many Venezuelans may despise Maduro. But it is misreading to assume this translates into affection for Washington. Among Venezuelans there is hostility, the US seen as an architect of imperialism. The illusion that Trinidad and Tobago could host US security infrastructure without becoming entangled in Trump’s vendetta was always just that – an illusion by a naive leader. But this crisis cannot be pinned on one government alone. Former prime minister, Keith Rowley, pursued the opposite folly: courting Caracas, indulging in displays of friendship with Maduro, alienating Washington. Rowley and Persad-Bissessar are opportunists. One flirted with the Caracas dictator; the other leans toward Washington’s authoritarianism. Neither built a doctrine grounded in Caribbean collective security. The result is exposure without leverage. None of this is unprecedented. In 2003 Nelson Mandela said, “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings. “To say, look, this is the power that we have, if you dare oppose what we do, this is what is going to happen to you. Who are they now, to pretend that they are the policemen of the world?”
That same year Noam Chomsky described a US “grand imperial strategy” bent on securing global dominance regardless of international law or human cost. All that is new today is brazenness. Invoking the colonial Monroe doctrine to justify stealing Venezuelan oil is pathetic. Under Trump, dissent is framed as unpatriotic, even treasonous. Allies are coerced. Smaller states are used and discarded. Targets are selected solely for resource endowment: oil, gas, minerals. So where does this leave Trinidad and Tobago? Internally, the country is divided – and soon distracted by carnival. Evasive explanations about “airport works” and US radar installations will fade from public memory. But regionally, Trinidad will remain estranged. If perceived – fairly or not – as complicit in US military action against Venezuela, there will be no oil and gas deals with a Rodríguez-led government. The potential loss exceeds $1.2bn annually. Should conflict escalate, Trinidad will bear the costs – economic collapse, refugee inflows, long-term instability – while Washington moves on to its next theatre in Greenland or Cuba. In the end, the hard truth is this: small states such as ours are not geopolitical actors but geopolitical spaces. When leaders forget that distinction, their people are impoverished and their countries become expendable pawns.
