US midterm voting puts T&T’s ties with Trump in focus

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

As the world watched with bat­ed breath for the out­come of yes­ter­day’s Unit­ed States midterm elec­tions, po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s close re­la­tion­ship with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion could come un­der greater scruti­ny in Wash­ing­ton if De­moc­rats gained con­trol of Con­gress.

All 435 seats in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and 35 of the Sen­ate’s 100 seats were up for grabs, while vot­ers in 36 states al­so elect­ed gov­er­nors.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia ahead of the re­sults yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor and poll­ster Dr Mwale Hen­ry warned that a shift in con­gres­sion­al con­trol could trig­ger in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean, po­ten­tial­ly rais­ing ques­tions about Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­volve­ment.

“There’s go­ing to be a lot of in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­ing out from the For­eign Af­fairs Com­mit­tee on for­eign pol­i­cy with­in the Caribbean re­gion, in­ter­ven­tions in Venezuela, look­ing at if there’s been a breach on hu­man rights is­sues. So all of that is go­ing to come un­der heavy scruti­ny.”

Dr Hen­ry al­so ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment had suf­fi­cient­ly con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a change in con­gres­sion­al con­trol when de­vel­op­ing its re­la­tion­ship with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry would not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­sult in ma­jor changes to ex­ist­ing se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments or US for­eign pol­i­cy.

In­stead, he said Con­gress could re­view fund­ing and the meth­ods em­ployed by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in pur­su­ing its se­cu­ri­ty ob­jec­tives across the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

“So there will be some dis­rup­tions. The re­al ques­tion is to what ex­tent,” he added.

Dr Hen­ry al­so warned that changes in Wash­ing­ton’s ap­proach to Venezuela could in­tro­duce fur­ther un­cer­tain­ty in­to T&T’s on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions to ac­cess Venezue­lan nat­ur­al gas.

Mean­while, for­mer Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rod­ney Charles warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go could find it­self diplo­mat­i­cal­ly ex­posed if De­moc­rats gained con­trol of Con­gress, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had aligned its for­eign pol­i­cy too close­ly with Trump rather than the Unit­ed States as a whole.

“T&T has teth­ered its for­eign pol­i­cy ab­solute­ly, to­tal­ly and seem­ing­ly ir­rev­o­ca­bly, not to the US gen­er­al­ly as it must, but more so to the lead­er­ship of Pres­i­dent Trump.”

Charles point­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for US se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean and its re­cent de­ci­sion to vote along­side Wash­ing­ton against a Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the Amer­i­can em­bar­go on Cu­ba.

He ar­gued that a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled Con­gress could in­ves­ti­gate re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion that cap­tured then-Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in Jan­u­ary.

Charles sug­gest­ed that such in­ves­ti­ga­tions could ex­am­ine com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween T&T and US of­fi­cials to de­ter­mine whether this coun­try had any in­volve­ment in con­tro­ver­sial Amer­i­can mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the re­gion.

He added, “My ad­vice to T&T is to recog­nise that for­eign pol­i­cy is too com­plex to be de­vel­oped on the fly. We have to give our­selves room to ad­just as cir­cum­stances change. It is vi­tal­ly nec­es­sary to en­gage re­spon­si­ble in­sti­tu­tions (like UWI’s In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions) in plan­ning for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tions that align with our na­tion­al in­ter­est for var­i­ous sce­nar­ios.”

Charles al­so sug­gest­ed adopt­ing a qui­eter diplo­mat­ic ap­proach while strength­en­ing eco­nom­ic re­la­tion­ships with oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed cau­tioned against mak­ing pre­ma­ture changes to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, he ex­plained that while Con­gress plays an im­por­tant role in ap­prov­ing bud­gets and ex­er­cis­ing over­sight, Trump would con­tin­ue to wield con­sid­er­able au­thor­i­ty over for­eign pol­i­cy and bi­lat­er­al agree­ments.

“Cer­tain ac­tions, fund­ing as it re­lates to cer­tain ac­tions that in­volves in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, mil­i­tary, de­fence, that sort of thing will need cer­tain ap­provals. So those things may change de­pend­ing on who wins, de­pend­ing on what is the re­quire­ment with re­gard to the ap­proval… I am not one to be alarmist, but I am one to say you have to be aware. And aware­ness is some­thing that gives you un­der­stand­ing and knowl­edge. And then it al­so al­lows you to start po­si­tion­ing, not switch­ing sides, not jump­ing ship, but start align­ing.”

Mean­while, both Dr Hen­ry and Charles raised con­cerns about the pend­ing Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion of T&T-born Jen­nifer John­son-Car­roll as the next US Am­bas­sador to this coun­try.

Both sug­gest­ed that a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic takeover of the Sen­ate could af­fect the con­fir­ma­tion process, po­ten­tial­ly de­lay­ing her ap­point­ment.