A US Operation in Venezuela
Split CARICOM

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The framework of regional cooperation built by the islands of the Caribbean is now under serious strain. According to reports, in January 2026 the US military carried out an operation in Venezuela, and Trinidad and Tobago is said to have provided facilities to US forces. As a result, the half-century-old Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is reported to be facing an unprecedented internal rift. Let me try to set out the facts as I understand them.

What Happened

According to reports, on January 3, 2026 the US military carried out an operation inside Venezuela, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and taking them out of the country. The Maduro government collapsed as a result, and then vice president Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president. At least 80 people are said to have died, though casualty figures vary between accounts and many details of the operation remain unconfirmed at this point.

What widened the crisis was the report that Trinidad and Tobago provided an air base and surveillance capabilities to US forces. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar openly backed the US position, while other CARICOM members were reported to have voiced grave concern over a violation of sovereignty, and the bloc's unity was badly shaken. The prime minister, however, had already denied as early as December 2025 — before the operation — that "the US has ever requested use of our territory to launch attacks," dismissing the US presence on the islands as little more than "a radar, a support tent and some portable latrines" (she also said she had herself asked the US embassy for the radar). After the operation she has maintained that Trinidad and Tobago is not a party to any ongoing military action, so the very characterization of a "base" remains contested.

Background

The strait separating Trinidad and Tobago from Venezuela is, at its narrowest, only about 11 to 12 kilometers wide. Roughly 30,000 migrants and refugees who fled Venezuela are said to have settled on the island, and within a society of about 1.5 million people, anti-migrant sentiment — the sense that they are straining crime, housing, and jobs — had been building, according to reports.

Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar reportedly framed the cooperation as a response to a security reality that CARICOM had failed to protect, and pushed back by name against the members who criticized her. The energy dimension cannot be ignored either: an offshore gas field development agreement with Venezuela is a large project involving Shell and BP, and the US sanctions framework on Venezuela has shaped whether it can move forward.

The Fault Lines

After the operation, a tug-of-war over the wording of CARICOM's external statements is reported to have continued. The prime minister went so far as to say that CARICOM does not represent Trinidad and Tobago's geopolitical interests. The confrontation has since spread to the leadership of the secretariat. At the heads of government meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis in February 2026, CARICOM Secretary-General Carla Barnett was reappointed to a second term beginning in August. Persad-Bissessar, however, argues that the process breached the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas — no formal vote was held, in her account — and declared in May that her country would not recognize Barnett as secretary-general after August; in July she signaled that she would seek a ruling from the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). Most member states, Jamaica among them, back the reappointment, leaving Trinidad and Tobago conspicuously isolated.

CARICOM was founded in 1973 as a framework for small island states to gain collective bargaining power. Cooperation on climate change, agriculture, health, and trade has steadily accumulated, but when security and geopolitics become the issue, national interests diverge sharply. As the Trump administration intensifies pressure across Latin America and the Caribbean, the difficulty of keeping countries dependent on the US for energy and security in the same body as those with deep ties to Venezuela has come to the surface. A Chatham House analysis frames this as a fault line in the regional order driven by US–China rivalry.

The Author's View

What strikes me about this story is the structural dilemma built into CARICOM as a "coalition of the small." On their own, tiny island states have almost no leverage against a great power. That is exactly why they spent half a century building a framework to speak with one voice — yet the moment security and how to position oneself toward a major power become the issue, holding that single voice together can collide with each country's own survival strategy. For Trinidad and Tobago, the security and energy stakes just 11 kilometers offshore were evidently more pressing than the bloc's collective stance.

And yet, when the machinery of solidarity grinds, the losses are real. The reason the small states of the Caribbean have carried weight on the world stage — in climate talks, in disaster response — is that they moved as a bloc. Whether this rift ends as a personal feud among prime ministers, or instead becomes an occasion to rethink the rules of consensus itself, is the open question. Now that the fight over the secretary-general's reappointment looks set to reach the courts, what is really being tested is less the appointment itself than the legitimacy of how CARICOM decides anything at all. I'll be watching what happens from August onward.

Glossary

CARICOM (the Caribbean Community) is a framework for economic and political integration in the Caribbean, founded in 1973. With multiple island and coastal states as members, it has functioned as a vehicle for acting in concert on trade, diplomacy, and disaster response. As in this case, its structure makes differences among members surface easily whenever security or relations with a major power become the issue.

With a crisis only eleven kilometers away, CARICOM's professed solidarity has reached its moment of trial.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.