Ten former leaders of Caribbean nations on Friday called on the current governments across the region to unite in a diplomatic effort to counter President Donald Trump’s unprovoked escalation, in which the US has struck at least 10 vessels in less than two months, claiming without evidence that the Trump administration is fighting “narco-terrorists” from Venezuela.
Former prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, and St. Lucia signed a joint statement titled “Caribbean Space: A Zone of Peace on Land, Sea and Airspace Where the Rule of Law Prevails,” and called on current leaders to recall the 1972 regional meeting at Chaguaramas, Trinidad and Tobago.
At the summit, noted the St. Vincent Times, “peace was enshrined as the guiding principle of Caribbean development.”
The former leaders wrote that “from this platform our region has always maintained that international law and conventions not war and military might must prevail in finding solutions to global challenges.”
“We are impelled to urge a pullback from military buildup to avoid any diminution of peace, stability, and development within our regional space,” the statement reads. “Our region must never become a pawn in the rivalries of others.”
They called on Caribbean leaders to avoid hosting foreign military assets.
“Our cooperation with international partners must never override our collective sovereignty or the principles of international law.”
“The gravity of the present signals demands that we use all existing channels for dialogue to perpetuate a Zone of Peace,” the leaders said. “We fully support our current heads of government in assisting the peaceful resolution of all conflicts and disputes.”
“We must not endanger our citizens in any crossfire, nor risk economic and human loss from wars that are not ours,” they added.
They noted that Caribbean nations have Shiprider Agreements with the US to “ensure that illicit drug traffickers could be tracked, pursued, searched, and lawfully apprehended without extrajudicial killing and the destruction of that which could provide conclusive evidence of criminal operation.”
“Our cooperation with international partners must never override our collective sovereignty or the principles of international law,” they wrote.
Since early September, the Trump administration has killed at least 43 people by striking vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific. Officials have claimed the boats have been operated by drug traffickers with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and other groups, but have provided no evidence for the claims. Fentanyl, which kills thousands of people per year in the US from overdoses, is not trafficked out of Venezuela, according to US and international drug and crime agencies.
“Although the United States Coast Guard interdicts staggering quantities of illegal drugs in the Caribbean each year, it does not encounter fentanyl on the high seas,” wrote Nick Miroff at The Atlantic. “South American cocaine and marijuana account for the overwhelming majority of maritime seizures, according to Coast Guard data, and there isn’t a single instance of a fentanyl seizure—let alone ‘bags’ of the drug—in the agency’s press releases.”
On Friday, the Pentagon revealed that it had deployed the USS Gerald Ford, an aircraft carrier, to the southern Caribbean Sea to “disrupt narcotics trafficking.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has accused Trump of seeking regime change in his country, and the former officials urged regional leaders to reject any such efforts.
“We have remained steadfast in our repudiation of external intervention to effect regime change,” they wrote. “Military action in our maritime waters must always be governed by international law—not might.”