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, in January 2026 the US military carried out an operation inside Venezuela targeting the government of Nicolás Maduro. At least 80 people are said to have died, though 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.

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, and she is reported to have publicly called on outgoing CARICOM Secretary-General Carla Barnett to step down. Many island states, including Dominica, Jamaica, and Barbados, kept their distance without making their official positions clear, while Guyana is said to have staked out its own line.

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.

My Perspective

I have researched policy on the public funding of assistive and prosthetic devices and on disability, and I have walked the field in Latin America, including Costa Rica. That is exactly why, when news shakes a framework of regional cooperation like CARICOM, what catches my attention is the human question behind the talk of security and oil. The roughly 30,000 migrants who crossed the strait to escape, the island's health care and jobs that must absorb them, and the humanitarian and health-cooperation channels through which neighbors help one another across borders in a crisis — that quiet kind of solidarity is, I think, precisely what small nations have built over long stretches of time.

Before the dynamics of great powers, the choices of small island states tend to be reactive. Even so, the regional cooperation accumulated in climate, health, and agriculture is an asset that cannot easily be replaced. I want to keep watching, quietly, whether this rift damages not only security alignments but also the very footing of the health and humanitarian cooperation that supports migrants.

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.