Bold moves or risky bets?

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

One year ago to­day, on April 28, 2025, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go went to the polls and de­liv­ered a man­date that would do more than just change a do­mes­tic agen­da.

For years, the na­tion’s for­eign pol­i­cy was char­ac­terised as a left-lean­ing stance cen­tred on non-in­ter­fer­ence, of­ten po­si­tion­ing T&T as a sov­er­eign ac­tor dis­tinct from the in­flu­ence of glob­al pow­ers.

Since the 2025 man­date, how­ev­er, the ad­min­is­tra­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has shift­ed this tra­jec­to­ry, mov­ing to­ward a se­cu­ri­ty-based al­liance with the Unit­ed States un­der the frame­work of the “Don­roe Doc­trine.”

This de­par­ture from tra­di­tion­al pol­i­cy is framed by a state­ment from for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who had em­pha­sised a strict ad­her­ence to au­ton­o­my dur­ing a Par­lia­men­tary sit­ting on Jan­u­ary 25, 2019: “We in Trinidad and To­ba­go, un­der all our gov­ern­ments, all our gov­ern­ments, we have pre­served the sov­er­eign po­si­tion of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. If to­day there are peo­ple in the op­po­si­tion who be­lieve they have to take in­struc­tions from some­body else and the US Em­bassy on Mar­li Street, then you’re on your own. Leave the PNM out of that.”

Fol­low­ing the 2025 elec­tion, though, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has re­cal­i­brat­ed this po­si­tion, a change ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in Sep­tem­ber 2025.

Ad­dress­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, she stat­ed that “Trinidad and To­ba­go re­minds the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that un­less force­ful and ag­gres­sive ac­tions are tak­en, these evil drug car­tels will con­tin­ue their so­ci­etal de­struc­tion. Be­cause they be­lieve af­fect­ed na­tions will al­ways un­re­served­ly sub­scribe to morals and ethics and hu­man rights and val­ues, which they them­selves bla­tant­ly flout. And there­fore we will fight fire with fire with­in the law.”

That tougher stance has al­so re­shaped re­gion­al re­la­tions and strained ties with Venezuela.

In Oc­to­ber last year, Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly de­clared the Prime Min­is­ter per­sona non gra­ta, ef­fec­tive­ly ban­ning her from the coun­try amid ac­cu­sa­tions of align­ment with Don­ald Trump’s pol­i­cy.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been un­apolo­getic.

More­over, she has since called for de­mo­c­ra­t­ic change in Cu­ba, which re­gion­al an­a­lyst Pe­ter Wick­ham la­bels pe­cu­liar.

“It was in­ter­est­ing when she spoke of the lack of democ­ra­cy in Cu­ba and the prob­lems this has cre­at­ed. And this is a coun­try (Trinidad) that is well in bed with the Chi­nese, and I don’t re­mem­ber them hav­ing an elec­tion any­time re­cent­ly. So I found it an odd com­par­i­son,” he said, ques­tion­ing if this was a clear pol­i­cy or me­an­der­ing to the Unit­ed States.

“One of­ten has to adopt po­si­tions like that when one wants to es­sen­tial­ly stand be­hind Un­cle Trump and al­so ap­pear pro­gres­sive in the con­text of a coun­try that has ac­tu­al­ly been quite good to Trinidad and To­ba­go in the past, and the rest of the Caribbean,” he said.

At the UN­GA, Per­sad-Bisses­sar reaf­firmed sup­port for the US war against “evil car­tels” and re­ject­ed talks by Cari­com lead­ers that the re­gion was a “zone of peace.”

This pol­i­cy shift was for­malised on March 7, 2026, when T&T joined the US-led Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC) and signed the Do­ral Char­ter, pledg­ing mil­i­tary and in­tel­li­gence co­op­er­a­tion to com­bat transna­tion­al crime. This re­align­ment has co­in­cid­ed with in­creased fric­tion with­in Cari­com.

The Gov­ern­ment has de­scribed the re­gion­al bloc as “dys­func­tion­al,” “dis­hon­est,” and plagued by “rot,” specif­i­cal­ly cit­ing the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at’s si­lence fol­low­ing the 2022 Brent Thomas af­fair, where the Trinida­di­an na­tion­al was re­moved from Bar­ba­dos and re­turned to Trinidad by mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice ser­vice in a move that court has ruled was il­le­gal.

At the 50th Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary, the Prime Min­is­ter raised is­sue over the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to her when she raised the Thomas mat­ter then as Op­po­si­tion leader, say­ing, “That re­sponse, non-re­sponse, it may be the re­sult of poor man­age­ment, lax ac­count­abil­i­ty or most con­cern­ing, that one ceas­es to be recog­nised by the sec­re­tari­at as a mem­ber cit­i­zen of Cari­com when not in gov­ern­ment.”

Ad­dress­ing the re­gion­al re­sponse to her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s po­si­tions, she re­marked, “You know in Trinidad there is a say­ing, who vexed loss!”

Ten­sions fur­ther es­ca­lat­ed when For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers was re­port­ed­ly ex­clud­ed from a heads-on­ly re­treat to Nevis, lead­ing to the Gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal to recog­nise the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett as Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al.

The diplo­mat­ic rift spilled in­to the pub­lic do­main as a dig­i­tal proxy war, fol­low­ing the un­prece­dent­ed leak of in­ter­nal cor­re­spon­dence and sen­si­tive doc­u­ments on­line. This breach catal­ysed a sharp pub­lic spat be­tween T&T and Cari­com Chair­man, Dr Ter­rence Drew.

A war of words al­so erupt­ed be­tween Sobers and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Op­po­si­tion leader Ralph Gon­salves.

The For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter ac­cused Gon­salves of telling “bold-faced lies,” af­ter he (Gon­salves) sug­gest­ed Sobers had failed to make the trip to Nevis due to an is­sue with sea­sick­ness.

While re­gion­al frac­tures deep­ened, the ad­min­is­tra­tion si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly strength­ened ties with Wash­ing­ton, ac­cept­ing the in­stal­la­tion of a radar in To­ba­go and sup­port­ing dead­ly US mil­i­tary strikes against al­leged drug traf­fick­ers in the Caribbean Sea.

These de­ci­sions have had re­gion­al and do­mes­tic con­se­quences.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Michał Paw­ińs­ki, not­ed that Trinidad was con­spic­u­ous­ly skipped dur­ing re­cent re­gion­al vis­its by Venezuela’s Del­cy Ro­driguez, who was in Bar­ba­dos yes­ter­day. He de­scribed the move as “symp­to­matic of the ten­sions that were cre­at­ed by the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment in the past three to four months while sup­port­ing the US for­eign pol­i­cy in the re­gion.”

He raised con­cerns about T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy, as Pres­i­dent Trump will demit of­fice in a few years. Fur­ther­more, he be­lieves T&T’s on­go­ing rift with Cari­com could hin­der its bid for a non-per­ma­nent seat on the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

“Con­sid­er­ing the de­tach­ment or iso­la­tion of Trinidad from Cari­com, while at the same time align­ing it­self strong­ly with the US, it might ques­tion the le­git­i­ma­cy and po­ten­tial sup­port of Cari­com for this bid. This is, of course, very dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine. Nonethe­less, this dis­cus­sion alone is high­light­ing the ten­sions that are ex­ist­ing be­tween Trinidad and Cari­com.”

Paw­in­s­ki added that T&T’s cur­rent for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion could have long-term ef­fects for suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“His­to­ry doesn’t for­get. The state­ments made in the past will not be for­got­ten, and they will al­ways have some sort of im­pact on the fu­ture for­eign pol­i­cy and the fate of na­tions, in­clud­ing small na­tions in the Caribbean.”

Do­mes­ti­cal­ly, the ap­pli­ca­tion of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act on April 13 to black­list Hezbol­lah, Hamas and the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard prompt­ed in­ter­nal de­bate.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor David Nakhid, a de­vout Mus­lim, when ques­tioned on the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Mid­dle East stance when the war had just start­ed, said, “On those I keep to my­self. My sym­pa­thy, my sup­port are with my Mus­lim broth­ers and sis­ters. And the views of the par­ty is the view of the par­ty and we fol­low our leader. But my views on those are with the Is­lam­ic re­sis­tance.”

Mean­while, Wick­ham ar­gues that T&T’s re­liance on the US is based on a trans­ac­tion­al re­la­tion­ship, which he deems “un­wise.”

“Frankly, I am a bit sur­prised that peo­ple se­ri­ous­ly thought that Trump would be los­ing sleep at night over Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture. He’s trans­ac­tion­al. He want­ed some­thing,” he said.

“What we’re see­ing is that a year in, you know, the gas has not start­ed to flow. No fur­ther con­ver­sa­tion has been held in re­la­tion to that. And in­ter­est­ing­ly, Del­cy Ro­driguez seems more in­ter­est­ed in vis­it­ing Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos than she is vis­it­ing Port-of-Spain to, you know, sign a deal. I haven’t heard Kam­la-Per­sad-Bisses­sar ven­tur­ing to Cara­cas to sign a deal there.”

Con­gress of the Peo­ple founder and for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter, Win­ston Dook­er­an, re­cent­ly penned a note for an in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal that stands in stark con­trast to the cur­rent “fire with fire” tra­jec­to­ry.

“The goal is not to choose sides in the com­pe­ti­tion among great pow­ers, but to choose wise­ly the in­stru­ments through which to shape their own fu­ture,” Dook­er­an wrote.

He ar­gued for a diplo­ma­cy “that sus­tains growth, deep­ens sov­er­eign­ty and se­cures the re­gion’s strate­gic place in an evolv­ing glob­al or­der.”

The Gov­ern­ment has al­so failed to fill key diplo­mat­ic posts, in­clud­ing in Venezuela.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers was con­tact­ed for com­ment but did not re­spond up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.