By A.T. Freeman
Recent weeks have seen a dramatic increase in the United States military presence in the southern Caribbean. On 18 August, news agencies reported that the US military build-up in the area involved 3 destroyers, more than 4,000 marines, a submarine, a reconnaissance aircraft, a guided missile cruiser and amphibious landing troops, with further vessels reported to be joining them. It is evident that this armada is designed for aggression and has nothing to do with fighting crime. The obvious intention is to threaten the government and people of Venezuela as part of the US policy of carrying out regime change in that country and installing a puppet government there. Nevertheless, as is its standard practice, the US immediately started peddling the ridiculous and transparent lie that this squadron has been assembled to “fight drug cartels and narco-trafficking”.
Recognising that this 19th century gunboat show of force by the US poses a real threat to peace in the region and endangers the lives of those who live here, people have sprung into action. On 20 August, the member states of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) convened an extraordinary summit of its heads of state and government and issued a strongly worded statement condemning the illegal US military provocation and demanding “the immediate cessation of any military threat or action violating the territorial integrity and political independence of the states of Latin America and the Caribbean”. The Trinidad and Tobago based organisation, Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), also issued a statement condemning the US threats against Venezuela, exposing the lie that this military force is any way connected with fighting drug cartels or drug trafficking, pointing out that US agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] have a long, documented history of involvement in drug trafficking and called on the people of the Caribbean to step up and defend peace in our region.
In the face of this imminent threat to peace, CARICOM’S silence has been deafening. This is a stark contrast to the speed with which, in 2022, it condemned Russia’s military action in Ukraine, thousands of miles away from the Caribbean. Addressing the ALBA-TCP extraordinary summit, Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, accurately summed up the situation when he declared, “..the whole region is under threat and only with integration can we fight against that because the United States intends to define the options to subjugate us or be objects of aggression”.
Unfortunately, there are political forces in the Caribbean whose loyalty to the US corporations and their imperial state far exceeds their concern for the welfare and well-being of the people who live here. On 22 August , the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government of Guyana issued a statement in which it repeated the US state department’s talking points about fighting ‘narco-terrorism’ in the region and went so far as to identify the ‘Cartel de los Soles of Venezuela’ as one such group. Not surprisingly, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other US war hawks immediately pounced on this statement and started sharing it online. With these actions, the PPP government is playing a dirty role in helping the US build public opinion to facilitate military aggression against Venezuela. This is playing with fire and it could have catastrophic consequences for all of us. That today’s PPP is engaged in such activity is evidence of just how far that political organisation has degenerated. It is difficult to believe that it was this organisation, led by Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham, which was overthrown by the British and Americans in 1953 because they stood up for the liberation and upliftment of the Guyanese people from the shackles of colonialism. Today, the PPP is a willing tool in the hands of the US as it tries to set the Caribbean on fire.
Modern war is not a joke. Anyone can look at Afghanistan or Ukraine to see what it means for ordinary people. If the US makes a reckless move and carries out aggression against Venezuela, we in the Caribbean will not escape the consequences. There is no justification for facilitating US warmongering in the Caribbean. Moreover , it is a cynical insult to people’s intelligence for the PPP to claim that doing so can contribute to defending our region as a zone of peace. It is also ironic that as the PPP repeatedly condemns the Zionist genocide in Gaza, it is in bed with those who are carrying out this genocide and even claiming that these genociders are the ones that the people of Guyana should rely on for their safety.
As if the PPP statement was not bad enough, on 23 August, Kamla Persad Bissessar, leader of the United National Congress (UNC) and Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago also issued a statement in which she declared, “The US Government’s deployment of American Military assets into the Caribbean region to destroy the terrorist drug cartels has the full support of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago”. It is difficult to find a more craven statement of national humiliation made by the political leader of a country than this. Not surprisingly, it has been denounced as bringing shame on the name of Trinidad and Tobago. Persad Bissessar laments the rise of crime in Trinidad and Tobago and across the region while saying not one word about the causes of this, which is the social devastation being caused by the ruthless application of the neo-liberal social and economic policies that Washington insists upon. These policies are wrecking communities, worsening poverty and spreading social despair. Assembling military armadas to bomb and kill people is not the answer. Like the Guyana government’s statement, Bissessar repeats the US state department lie that the problem of crime in the Caribbean is primarily an issue of cartels and what is needed is a fight against these cartels. This is a clear effort to build public justifications for US military action in the region. After pushing the US state department narco-terrorism narrative, she finally cuts to the chase and declares, “However, I want to make it very clear that if the Maduro regime launches any attack against the Guyanese people or invades Guyanese territory and a request is made by the American Government for access to Trinidadian territory to defend the people of Guyana, my government will unflinchingly provide them that access”. This statement from the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago exemplifies her absolute lack of respect for Caribbean sovereignty and her slavish commitment to the US. For her, it is the US which will act to protect Guyana, while she will show her courage by allowing Trinidad and Tobago to be used by the US for its war against Venezuela.
Unfortunately for the likes of the UNC and PPP, the people of the Caribbean know very well that the US only carries out military action to protect the interests of its corporations. It most certainly does not act to protect people in the oppressed countries whether that be Afghanistan, Trinidad and Tobago or Guyana. The US wants to fight Venezuela not because it has some land dispute with Guyana [see below] but because it wants to overthrow the Venezuelan government and grab Venezuela’s oil. After all, when Burnham was President of Guyana, the US supported Venezuela in the land dispute. This dispute is a running sore left over from the days of European colonisation which today is being used by the US to stoke regional tensions and enable Exxon Mobil to plunder the natural resources of the Essequibo. Furthermore, people fully understand that the so-called fighting narco-terrorism narrative is just another warmongering narrative that Washington comes up with to justify its military aggression against various countries. People remember the weapons of mass destruction narrative, the fight against Islamic terrorism narrative and today the fight against criminal gangs narrative, under which it is once again subjugating Haiti. What those in the PPP and the UNC, who are on the wrong side of history, need to remember is Kissinger’s famous words that the US has no permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests. They would do well to take a look at the fate of those who at various points decided to make themselves willing pawns of the US in its drive for global domination. They are on the road of Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega and they may come to find out, like Zelensky of Ukraine, that the US will use you and discard you when it no longer has uses for you.
The people of the Caribbean cannot allow the US and its lackeys to set fire to our home.