Trinidad and Tobago’s participation in the Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, along with 17 other nations in this hemisphere, should come as a surprise to no one, given Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s attendance at the Shield of the Americas Summit held at the Trump National Doral Miami resort in Florida on March 7.
The main outcome of the summit was the establishment of the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition to coordinate military and law enforcement against drug cartels and other transnational criminal organisations.
At the summit, the host, President Donald Trump, told the presidents and prime ministers gathered, “The heart of our agreement is a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks once and for all. We’ll get rid of them. We need your help.”
If T&T is going to participate in a coalition of the willing to use lethal military force to destroy the cartels and terrorist networks in this hemisphere, the first thing the Government needs to do is provide clarity on exactly what will be the extent of the participation of T&T’s Defence Force in this coalition.
Some specificity on the terms of engagement of the T&T military forces would be very useful at the start of participation because nine days after the Florida summit, Mr Trump said, “I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba.”
T&T, along with its Caricom colleagues, Barbados, Guyana and Jamaica, established formal diplomatic relations with Cuba on December 8, 1972, and English-speaking Caribbean nations have derived benefits from that relationship, particularly in the areas of healthcare assistance and in the training of medical professionals.
The populations of T&T – and the other Caribbean nations participating in the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition – deserve to know whether their soldiers and sailors will be involved, in any way, in “taking Cuba.”
If not handled with sensitivity, the issue of Cuba raises the possibility that this new military engagement could become another wedge to divide the foreign policy positions of the Caricom member states. The administration in Port-of-Spain, therefore, needs to engage consciously with Caricom leaders to ensure that, over time, their positions become more aligned.
Before T&T forces are called into action, another area that requires some clarity is the legality of the kenetic strikes conducted by the US last year on boats that traversed the Caribbean Sea. The US Government’s position is that those strikes were legal, but T&T needs to procure its own opinions from experts in international law, to stave off the possibility of future legal exposure.
It is clear, though, that the new Joint Task Force presents significant opportunities for T&T. As leading regional security expert, Garvin Heerah, pointed out on Wednesday, among the advantages of this country’s involvement is the likelihood of stronger intelligence sharing, joint training exercises and coordinated operations. The goal here must be to ensure that the maritime border between T&T and Venezuela – from where much of the illegal narcotics, firearms and trafficked women emanate – becomes as impregnable as possible. That alone could contribute to a continuing reduction in the gang conflicts that have resulted in this country.
On the face of it, this initiative has much that is positive going for it, not least of which is the likelihood that T&T’s fighting forces will learn new tactics and methods in the fight against crime.
