DRUGS DRAMA AND GEO-POLITICAL POWERPLAY IN CARIBBEAN WATERS

It looks like something straight out of a Hollywood drama. A high speed boat loaded with bad guys and contraband said to be drugs, tracked and summarily blown out of the water.

Confirmation came from none other than the US president Donald Trump that US naval forces had carried out the strike as part of a wider mission against drug traffickers operating in Caribbean waters said to be linked to Venezuela and its government.

Eleven drug traffickers are also reported to have been killed.

It’s not the first time that US forces have intercepted drug traffickers in the region’s waters, but it’s clearly been the most dramatic and highly publicised. Other international military forces have also routinely carried out drug intercepts in the region’s waters including the British, French and Dutch resulting in the arrest of traffickers and seizure of contraband.

Late last month, a huge US naval fleet started patrolling the waters of the southern Caribbean in the vicinity of Venezuela. The US calls it a strategic move against drug cartels said to be linked to Venezuela - and its socialist government. The current and previous US governments have been putting pressure on Venezuela over concerns of manipulated elections to keep its current socialist leader Nicolas Maduro in power, and as a potential threat to democracy in the Caribbean and Latin America. Further concerns about violent Venezuelan drug gangs operating in America, were recently ramped up by President Trump.

Venezuela now says that it is moving to a high state of military preparedness to respond to what its government calls US aggression.

Meanwhile, US interests are also at stake in Guyana following the discovery of vast oil reserves by the American company Exxon, much of it in an area of a longstanding bitter border dispute with Venezuela.

Guyana, for its own defence purposes and its relations with the US, has aligned itself with the heightened American naval presence.

The US deployment - and high seas action - has also been supported by the new Trinidad and Tobago government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Less so, is the sentiment of several other Caribbean and Latin American countries including Cuba - many which were beneficiaries of the Venezuelan cheap oil PetroCaribe initiative.

There is also the Chinese factor to consider with that country’s growing economic and diplomatic presence in the region, a sore point for US-Caribbean relations. China has condemned the US naval deployment in the area while restating its support for Venezuela.

In all this, once again the Caribbean finds itself as the battleground of another geo-political powerplay which threatens to test the bonds of the intra-region Caricom grouping and their competing global alliances.