Secretary of State urges Caricom to confront transnational crime with US help

Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio has called for clos­er se­cu­ri­ty and en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Caribbean na­tions, warn­ing that transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works pose what he de­scribed as the most ur­gent threat to the re­gion.

Ru­bio de­liv­ered the re­marks dur­ing a closed-door ses­sion at the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment, out­lin­ing what he framed as a re­newed US fo­cus on the West­ern Hemi­sphere un­der Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

“We be­lieve that per­haps the most ur­gent se­cu­ri­ty threat in the re­gion—that in­cludes us, but ob­vi­ous­ly all of you—is the threat of these transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions,” he said, not­ing that some groups pos­sess fund­ing and fire­pow­er ri­valling that of the states.

He ac­knowl­edged that weapons sourced from the US have con­tributed to the prob­lem and pledged con­tin­ued ef­forts to curb arms traf­fick­ing. At the same time, he de­fend­ed Wash­ing­ton’s de­ci­sion to des­ig­nate cer­tain groups as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions and to sanc­tion in­di­vid­u­als ac­cused of sup­port­ing them.

“We recog­nise that it is an in­ter­locked chal­lenge that comes from a broad­er per­spec­tive. Num­ber one, they’re ob­vi­ous­ly fu­elled by nar­co­traf­fick­ing and oth­er il­lic­it means. Of­ten­times, those drugs and the pro­ceeds from those drugs—those drugs are des­tined for the Unit­ed States, but the pro­ceeds from those drugs, the mon­ey they’re ul­ti­mate­ly mak­ing, is be­ing made in the streets of our coun­try. This is a dan­ger in the coun­tries that they tran­sit, and it’s ul­ti­mate­ly a dan­ger to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States.

“We’ve al­so watched with alarm at the lev­el of ar­ma­ment that these groups have. We recog­nise that many of these groups are buy­ing weapon­ry from the Unit­ed States, and that we are com­mit­ted and con­tin­ue to work very hard with our law en­force­ment agen­cies to shut that down. I hope you have seen, both in the case of Haiti but in oth­er dy­nam­ics, that we have not shied away, not just from des­ig­nat­ing groups for what they are—these are ter­ror­is­tic or­gan­i­sa­tions—but even in­di­vid­u­als who are re­spon­si­ble for be­ing sup­port­ive of them. We’ve al­so gone af­ter them, and this is some­thing that we have as a shared dy­nam­ic.”

More­over, he said crim­i­nal net­works are get­ting stronger, and so too must US-Caribbean re­la­tions.

“I point you on­ly to some­thing not in the Caribbean Basin, but nonethe­less in­dica­tive of what we’re—the chal­lenges that we’re fac­ing here, and that is the role that these drug car­tels have es­tab­lished for them­selves in Mex­i­co. I’m not sure if you’ve seen some of the im­agery of these groups af­ter their leader was killed, but they’re out there with full mil­i­tary gear, mil­i­tary weapon­ry, armed trans­ports—very dan­ger­ous. And it is some­thing that we need to ad­dress col­lec­tive­ly and to­geth­er.”

He told re­gion­al lead­ers that the US want­ed to move be­yond what he de­scribed as “out­dat­ed or­tho­doxy” in hemi­spher­ic re­la­tions and in­stead pur­sue prac­ti­cal part­ner­ships cen­tred on shared chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties.

He al­so high­light­ed en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion dur­ing his ad­dress.

Ru­bio al­so ad­dressed de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela, de­scrib­ing progress un­der new in­ter­im au­thor­i­ties fol­low­ing what he re­ferred to as the cap­ture of for­mer Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

He ar­gued that sta­bil­i­ty had been re­stored and said Wash­ing­ton was now shift­ing its fo­cus to­ward re­cov­ery and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic le­git­i­ma­cy.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, in or­der for them to take the next step to tru­ly de­vel­op that coun­try and to tru­ly ben­e­fit from that coun­try’s rich­es for the ben­e­fit of their peo­ple, they will need the le­git­i­ma­cy of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic- fair, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions,” Ru­bio said.

He framed a sta­ble and pros­per­ous Venezuela as a po­ten­tial en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic part­ner for Caribbean states, while em­pha­sis­ing the need to avoid in­sta­bil­i­ty and mass mi­gra­tion.

On his talks with Prime Min­ster Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Ru­bio said: “In my meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, we talked about mak­ing our part­ner­ship even stronger to make our peo­ple more pros­per­ous and safe. T&T’s on­go­ing sup­port for US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the South Caribbean Sea is one ex­am­ple of many and is help­ing us pro­tect both our cit­i­zens from the scourge of drug traf­fick­ing.” - Da­reece Po­lo in St Kitts