06/10/2025
🛑🛑 WAR IN THE CARIBBEAN🛑 🛑
US military influence in the Caribbean - Guyana's Sovereignty and Survival at risk and threatened.
In recent months, while Barbados Prime Minister has expressed some amount of dissatisfaction with foreign influence in the Caribbean region, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago (TT) has openly endorsed the deployment of U.S. military assets into the southern Caribbean with the goal of dismantling “terrorist drug cartels.”
President, Mohamed Irfan Ali of Guyana and Prime Minister Kamla Persad‑Bissessar of Trinidad and Tobago have declared full support for the U.S. naval deployment, including destroyers, a nuclear submarine, and marines, as an inevitable response to escalating crime, especially violence tied to narcotics, arms, and human trafficking.
This posture marks a continuation of a long pattern in the Caribbean: post‑colonial states aligning with U.S. strategic and security agendas, sometimes willingly, often because they feel they have no viable alternative.
Endorsing U.S. Military Action Without Regional Consensus
Guyana's President and TT’s Prime Minister did not consult CARICOM on the matter. While TT's Prime Minister explicitly said she had “no intention of engaging” the regional integration grouping regarding U.S. military deployment, Guyana's president said, "The government of Guyana underscores the necessity for strengthened cooperation concerted efforts at the national. regional, hemispheric and global levels to effectively combat this menace." This signals a willingness to side with U.S. policy individually rather than with regional solidarity or joint decision‑making.
Framing Narratives in U.S. Terms
Guyana and TT’s leadership has adopted language familiar from U.S. counter‑narcotics framing: “terrorist drug cartels,” “narco‑trafficking,” invoking “law‑of‑conflict,” etc. The Prime Minister praised U.S. strikes and even said that all traffickers “should be killed violently.”
Dependence for Security
Guyana much like TT admits it lacks sufficient resources, capacity, or jurisdictional reach to police transnational crime, porous sea lanes, arms and drug smuggling, etc. Support for U.S. presence is justified in part by inability to manage these threats alone.
Aligning with U.S. Geopolitical Goals
While the explicit goal is counter‑narcotics, the presence of U.S. naval might in the Caribbean, especially near Venezuela, also carries the potential for pressure against regimes considered adversarial by the U.S. Some in the region perceive this not just as crime control, but as geopolitical positioning.
1. Compromised Sovereignty and Public Risk
When a small country like Guyana allows foreign military presence (or publicly supports foreign strikes in regional waters), it risks being drawn into conflicts or operations that impinge on its own sovereignty. Mistaken strikes, collateral damage, or diplomatic blowback are risks. Also, local populations (fishers, coastal communities) may suffer from disruption, dangers, or restrictions. Guyana has already begun to within and feel the blunt of such disruptions and danger within and along the borders of the rivers between them and Venezuela.
2. Erosion of Regional Solidarity and Voice
Guyana at the head of CARICOM has long maintained, or aspired to maintain, principles like the Caribbean as a "Zone of Peace" and non‑interference. Individual member countries supporting U.S. military deployment unilaterally weaken the ability of the region to negotiate from a unified front, impose collective conditions, or resist U.S. pressure. TT’s refusal to engage CARICOM on this matter weakens regional cohesion.
3. Legal Ambiguities and Potential Violations
Strikes in international waters, the question of whether U.S. operations respect international law, whether cartels are "terrorist organizations," etc., are contested issues. Caribbean governments may lack the capacity to independently verify or challenge U.S. claims, leaving them vulnerable to legal and moral criticisms.
4. Dependency and Weak Internal Capacity
Because states like Guyana and TT feel they cannot handle crime alone, they lean heavily on U.S. military, intelligence, funding, training. This dependency reduces incentives or opportunities to build internal capacity, judicial systems, policing, community resilience, etc. Over time, this can weaken sovereign governance.
5. Public Backlash and Domestic Political Costs
The Guyana government’s alignment may be unpopular with segments of the population who see foreign military presence as threatening or as undermining national dignity or sovereignty. It can also provoke opposition parties.
6. Geopolitical Vulnerability
By aligning closely with one superpower, Guyana and Caribbean countries might alienate other regional powers or neighbors (e.g., Venezuela), reducing diplomatic flexibility. They also may become pawns in larger U.S. geopolitical strategies (e.g. U.S. vs Venezuelan tensions) without direct benefits beyond security assurances.
Economic Dependency
Trade, foreign direct investment, remittances, aid, tourism—all of which often flow from or through the U.S. or U.S.‑tied markets—are crucial to many Caribbean economies. Governments fear economic consequences of opposing U.S. policies.
Security & Enforcement Gaps
With the recent resurfacing of a controversial border dispute between Guyana and Venezuela Maritime boundaries, law enforcement, customs, border control, intelligence gathering and auspicious aerial supervision are costly, and technically demanding. Guyana and very few Caribbean states can patrol large sea zones, monitor trans-shipment, or police organised crime alone. U.S. cooperation often offers capacity that otherwise doesn’t exist.
Debt and Aid Dependence
Like many other Caribbean countries, Guyana is indebted, rely on loans or grants from international institutions in which the U.S. has influence (e.g., World Bank, IMF, multilateral development banks). Thus, pushing back strongly against U.S. policy can risk aid suspension, economic penalties, or adverse treatment in multilateral forums.
Political and Institutional Constraints
Smaller island states have limited diplomatic corps, limited technical capacity to evaluate military/legal claims (about international law, rules of engagement), or to sustain prolonged diplomatic conflict with an external power.
Historical / Cultural Legacy of Colonialism
The institutions, alliances, legal systems, foreign policy orientations of Guyana and many Caribbean states were shaped during colonial rule by the British, French, Dutch, etc. Over time, these have created patterns of deference, foreign dependency, and norms that favor alignment with powerful external actors over regional assertiveness.
Lack of Unified Regional Mechanisms
CARICOM aims to provide collective bargaining power, but in practice its capacity to enforce unified foreign policy or security policy is weak. Member states often act independently. Disagreements, different threat perceptions, political ideologies, and domestic priorities make coherent regional opposition difficult.
Conclusion
Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago’s recent statements and policy choices are a case study in how post‑colonial Caribbean states grapple with imperfect sovereignty. On one hand, leaders publicly align with U.S. military actions and rely on U.S. capacity to counter threats they say they cannot handle alone. On the other hand, this alignment carries risks: loss of autonomy, legal, moral, and diplomatic exposure, domestic political costs, and potential erosion of regional unity.
For CARICOM and other regional bodies, the challenge is to find a way to assert collective decision‑making, strengthen internal capacities (judicial, security, border control), and negotiate terms with external powers from a position of greater leverage. But given the economic, security, institutional, and historical realities, full independence in decision‑making vis‑à‑vis a superpower like the U.S. remains difficult.
Story - A Cheddi Sepaul
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