Dependency and Geopolitics: How "Development" and "Security" Support US (and Western) Imperialism in the Caribbean
On September 1st, 2025, the day before it would become public information that a United States (US) military airstrike occurred in the Caribbean Sea, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister (PM) Kamla Persad-Bissessar rejected claims by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that the growing presence of US troops and warships in the southern Caribbean Sea aimed to pose a threat to Venezuela.[1] However, the truth was that on the day that the Trinidadian PM lied about US military activities in the region, the US government had already quietly begun its airstrike campaign in the Caribbean Sea. The first target was a boat in Sucre (between Venezuela and Trinidad) that was bombed on Monday, September 1st after it left Venezuela on Sunday, August 31st.[2] The airstrike and extrajudicial murder of 11 people aboard the boat was made public by the US government on Tuesday, September 2nd, when official US government accounts began posting a grainy video on social media showing a small boat being destroyed by an aerial bomb.[3]
The US government declared that the video, courtesy of Canadian military technologies,[4] depicted a “drug boat” that had left Venezuela and was destroyed once it reached international waters.[5] There, the US government claims the boat entered the US “SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” allowing the Trump administration to carry out an airstrike to destroy the “drug vessel,” and in the process murder 11 alleged “narco-traffickers.” The US government claimed that these “narco-traffickers” would have eventually posed a threat to US national security, should the “drugs” they carried reached US shores. The day after it was confirmed that the US conducted an airstrike in the Caribbean Sea murdering 11, Trinidadian PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar declared that drug traffickers “should all be killed violently.”[6] Meanwhile, CARICOM sent communications to the US requesting a warning in advance when it conducts airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea, indicating that they expected more instances of aerial bombings to occur in the region.[7] Based on the actions of the Trinidadian government—which includes lying to Venezuela—and the PMs response after US military action was confirmed to have killed people in the region, it is not illogical to assume that Trinidad & Tobago—and potentially other governments in the region—were privy to war information of some kind, and that the US intended to provoke Venezuela for the purposes of regime change in that country.
Additionally, after 32 people were murdered in the Caribbean Sea by October 14th—over a month after the US airstrike campaign in the region began—CARICOM, save for Trinidad and Tobago, released a presser affirming the region to be a “Zone of Peace.”[8] This presser released by CARICOM failed to affirmatively reject US militarism, imperialism, and extrajudicial murders in the region at all. As of November 24th, an official statement by the Guyana-based CARICOM Secretariat has yet to be issued.[9] The slowness of CARICOMs presser and that as of November 24th there still has yet to be an official CARICOM statement cannot be separated from the fact that after the first US airstrike in the region was confirmed on September 2nd—Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago stood with a minority of states in the region to side with US military buildup in the region—which prevented the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) from producing an official statement in opposition to growing US “extra-regional military deployments” in the region.[10]
As of November 24th, the US has carried out 11 airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea, 11 airstrikes on South America’s Pacific coast, and 1 raid on a tuna fishing boat in the Caribbean Sea—as part of what the US has declared to be a war against “narco-terrorists.” Thus far, this one-sided war by the US has taken the lives of 81 people and have drastically reshaped the lives of fishermen in the region and the environment. To date, no evidence exists that US airstrikes have targeted narcotraffickers or boats carrying narcotics[11]—although even if such evidence did exist, it would not excuse extrajudicial murder. Instead, evidence provided by Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador suggests that US airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea have almost exclusively targeted Caribbean and Latin American fishermen. More still, fishing communities around the Caribbean Sea and South America’s Pacific Coast continue to report missing family members—meanwhile the 3 survivors of these airstrikes have been returned to countries of origin without charge. Trinidad and Tobago’s complicitly in US crimes of extrajudicial murder in the region is only made clearer given in the October 14th airstrike, where Trinidadian nationals are believed to have been murdered, the administration of Kamla Persad-Bissessar maintained this as simply the price Trinidadians must be willing to pay for “security.” According to Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar:
No other country besides the US is willing to assist us to aggressively fight the drug and arms traffickers. I am not going to toe Caricom’s line while our country is going to hell with drugs, out-of-control violent crime and murders for the last 20 years.[12]
The claim that the US cares about the security interests of Trinidad is made even more laughable in a global environment that has watched a publicly documented genocide in Palestine for over 2 years. In this timeframe, Israel has targeted states that collaborate with the US on “security,” like Qatar, that receive no defense from US military forces, because US geopolitical and national interests override any security it would allegedly extend to Qatar. In this context, the remark by the Trinidadian PM is clear: the incumbent political elites in Trinidad and Tobago have forfeited the country as a proxy to US imperialism in the region.
These present realities call for renewed regional political educational and for greater unity of people in the Caribbean region—where so often, the conservatism and reactionarism of the state have pushed social division between Caribbean people based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and geography. Too often, in imperialism’s dependent states, both political parties and even the state itself—thus the dominant managerial and/or comprador classes—use their power in ways that advance division in the Caribbean for their own political longevity. Toward that end, they rely on access to imperial forces, rather than national and regional unities.
Development and Security Are Not Neutral Terms
In the Caribbean region discourses on “development” and “security” often mean subservience to Western capital and US geopolitical interests.[13] To the extent that those in opposition to dependence (subservience to western capital) were to gain power anywhere in the region, intervention against them is justified by any number of collaborator states at any given point in time. First, “development” and “security” are not neutral processes or terms; they have a class politic and geopolitical implications that stem from them. Development frameworks proliferated in the Caribbean region are capitalistic, thus exploitative, allowing mechanisms of colonial drain to operate due to the lavish accommodations afforded to foreign capital in these economies and societies. This accommodation of largely Western foreign investors, a colonial process unto itself, creates an incentive to hold in high esteem the whims of the external environment at the expense of the internal one, maintaining a situation of dependency under a “development” label, even as what gets promoted is underdevelopment. For example, almost 52% of CARICOM’s security funding comes from the US, Canada, and other European partners which allows their preferences on security, and which security initiatives, are taken seriously in the region versus the internal security demands.[14] This means that many CARICOM states spend more resources on external priorities like border management and enforcement, training to protect oil rigs, and guarding against left politics in their societies versus actual internal security concerns related to crimes caused by poverty—such as thieving and murder for money and goods—which requires the creation of safe schooling, the provision of well-paid jobs, and infrastructural developments. Relatedly, the same is true of “security.” These external security preferences are propped up at the expense of addressing “crime” in the Caribbean that exists at the intersection of poverty and the capitalist system—that these state elites are given incentives to uphold in dependent ways.
The external economic orientation of Caribbean states requires repressive and anti-democratic structures. Historically and in the present, anti-democratic measures such as censorship, states of emergency, and security assistance and military trainings from the US were successful at constraining and isolating Caribbean resistance movements, protests, and expressions of Black Power and Marxist politics—be they social democratic or Marxist-Leninist. This was actively done at the expense of social, national, and regional unities within individual Caribbean states amongst people, and between the states themselves. Practically, this process uplifted conservative and reactionary elements in these societies, as this brand of state managers do not oppose Caribbean dependency. Dependency on the external environment increased competition between states in the Caribbean on a wide range of activities: from export markets shares in agriculture and resource products, to tourism arrivals from higher income countries, and to slots in temporary workers programs abroad where people could send back remittance. Today, as far as many of the state structures in the Caribbean region are concerned, states are even further away from pursuing—or wanting to pursue—things like federation, which would strengthen principles of sovereignty, economic integration, and regional collaboration.
These facts have been made clearer today given US airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea and South America’s Pacific Coast, that have so far led to the extrajudicial murders of over 80 people—hailing from various Latin American and Caribbean states. While Caribbean states have largely been silent about these extrajudicial murders, Latin American states like Venezuela, Colombia, and to limited extent Ecuador—the latter currently experiencing a mass wave of protests due to the US backed military dictatorship there—have taken to defending their nationals. This raises questions about Caribbean states and their responsibilities to their citizens, considering ongoing US imperialist aggression targeting nationals in the region.
CARICOM Silence as US Bombs Reign Down in the Caribbean; Can Nothing be Done about Imperial Collaborators?
Any discussion of increased militarization in the Caribbean region is impossible without addressing the role of Caribbean governments themselves, neocolonial in orientation and aligned with US imperialism and militarism.[15] On October 25th,1983, then Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga—who not only supported the invasion of Grenada but also despised the revolutionary government there—addressed the Jamaican parliament after returning from a CARICOM conference:
If we ignore the occurrence of brutal military take-over or political overthrows of governments, we will immediately give heart to every subversive group within the region.... No democratic system of government would have a chance of carrying out the programs of development which it was elected to implement if in its midst was a group of subversives, anarchists and terrorists bent on destruction of the foundations of stability which under-pin the whole system of democracy.... Today’s Caribbean leadership is determined that instances of military and revolutionary take-overs must be dealt with in such a [invasive] manner.[16]
Seaga’s comment is indicative of the type of environment that was crafted in the Caribbean region in the 1980s and the type of environment that Caribbean resistance had to establish itself against—the intensification of neoliberal processes, foremost amongst them being state repression and militarist aggression supported by a an increasingly hegemonic US. Conservative Caribbean governments in the 1970s and 1980s worked tirelessly to label all forms of radicalism in derogatory terms so that Caribbean people were propagandized to be “more worried about the alleged plan of Communists to enslave the world than about the fact that the governments who preach[ed] about this conspiracy to them were until recently their real enslavers and still support the current enslavers.”[17] Fundamentally, the 1983 invasion of Grenada and the role that states like Jamaica (Edward Seaga), Dominica (Eugenia Charles), Barbados (Tom Adams), and St. Lucia (John Compton) played in it—highlighted disunities that existed in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on matters related to foreign policy and security cooperation. Over forty years have passed, and we see similar dynamics in play, with almost no lessons learned and different state actors.
Today, we must think of creative ways to overcome colonial divisions in favor of a regional unity that supports and uplifts Caribbean people versus external interests rebranded in “security” and “development” language. What is required in this moment are mass Caribbean movements, with regional connections, that are in opposition to western imperialism and dependency that the Caribbean ruling classes uplift. The interest of Caribbean ruling elites is fundamentally antagonistic and in opposition to Caribbean people’s right to life, prosperity, and humanity.
Speaking to reporters, The Bahamas Minister of National Security, Wayne Munroe, advised Bahamians to “stay out of go-fast boats leaving Venezuela”—a tacit admission that the US airstrike campaign in the region is targeting all boats with engines. The Minister went on to document the Caribbean region’s inability, or cowardice, at confronting US imperialism even when it directly threatens their own citizenry:
In fact, if [the US] were to choose to sail in your harbor, there’s nothing you could do. It would be a breach of your sovereignty, and you could complain, but you couldn’t stop them.[18]
Munroe’s comments are also indicative of why Caribbean people, and even CARICOM, have opted to utilize the ‘Zone of Peace’ language: This concept speaks to the fact that Caribbean states lack capabilities (e.g., nuclear weapons) that could deter the aggression of other more powerful states, especially that of the US. However, there is a hypocrisy with CARICOM using this term given its orientation. For instance, interventions and invasions in the region have been commonplace, and it is not accidental that in the same year that drones were given the green light to operate in Haiti, with support from CARICOM—that airstrikes are now happening in the region.[19] For two decades, Haitians have had to deal with the US and others installing illegitimate governments, while Caribbean and Latin American states launder myths of “security assistance,” ignoring that the biggest security threat for Haitians has been the denial of their right to sovereignty and self-determination. Now it is this same threat that has been extended to other states in the region more forcefully, for US national (security) interests.
Conclusion
For the Caribbean region to be a true Zone of Peace, the US must not only stop its airstrike campaigns in the region, but must also be taken to task as a frequent violator of Zone of Peace principles.[20] This is something that CARICOM and the majority of Caribbean politicians are not equipped to deal with, given their own complicity in this system of US and western domination. To be a true Zone of Peace, all states in the region must uphold principles that defend and guard against imperialism. This includes guarding each other against imperialist interventions, invasions, occupations, and calls for regime change—which is a clear indication of one’s intent to violate another state’s sovereignty. It is this task that requires people’s movements to take power away from ruling elites and return it to the hands of the people who understand war to be ruinous for them and everyone else in the region.
This is a tremendous task, given the militaristic power of the US and Caribbean elite alignment with the US-led capitalist imperialist system. Hence, as we think about the creation of new movements, we must also devise new strategies of regional transformation that involves regional mechanisms of accountability so that we do not have another Trinidad as we do at present—or another Barbados, St. Lucia, Jamaica, and Dominica as we had in the past. We need more of Bishop’s Grenada, liberated Cuba, and Bolivarian Venezuela—and in particular the kind of critical journalistic apparatuses allowed to grow and develop in these spaces to hold elites in power accountable to ourselves and to the international audiences. The time for us to start strategizing and getting involved in organizational movements in our region aiming to take power away from oppressive two-party parliamentarian systems is not only long overdue—but has reached an emergency status, made more apparent by the ongoing murders of people in our region by external US forces, and allowed by our governments. I began this piece when only 21 persons had been murdered, and as I end it, now well over 80 people have been murdered.
Tamanisha John is a member of AISC. ____________________________________________________________________________________
[1] Tack, Clint Chan. “PM Denies US War Plot, Says Naval Buildup Is for Drug Interdiction, Not Invasion of Venezuela .” Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, September 2, 2025.
[2] Diego Quesada, Juan & Florantonia Singer. “The Mystery of the Boat Pulverized by a Missile in the Middle of the Caribbean .” El País, September 5, 2025.
[3] Donald J. Trump. “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strikes against .” Truth Social, September 2, 2025.
[4] Gallagher, Kelsey. “Targeted from Above: Canadian Sensors Facilitating Unlawful U.S. Airstrikes in the Caribbean .” Project Ploughshares, October 2025.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Associated Press. “Trinidad and Tobago Leader Praises Stike and Says US Should Kill All Drug Traffickers ‘Violently’ .” CNN, September 3, 2025.
[7] NY Carib News. “CARICOM Awaits U.S. Response on Military Strikes in Caribbean Waters .” NYCaribNews, September 16, 2025
[9] The Gleaner. “CARICOM Leaders Meet to Discuss US Request to Grenada .” The Jamaica Gleaner, October 21, 2025.
[10] Watts, Jay. “CELAC Unity Shattered by Minority Siding with US Imperialism .” Mexico Solidarity Media, September 4, 2025
[11] CNC3TV. “Minister of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs Sean Sobers was asked during the post cabinet media conference if he had evidence that any of the vessels destroyed in the US Kinetic strikes were in fact carrying illegal items .” X, October 30, 2025.
[12] Haynes, Kejan. “PM ‘Doesn’t Care’ If T&T Loses Regional Support For UN Security Council Bid .” Trinidad & Tobago Guardian, October 21, 2025.
[13] John, Tamanisha J. 2024. “Guyana: Myth of Capitalist Resource Extraction as Development .” The Extractive Industries and Society.
[14] John, Tamaisha J. 2024. “Capitalism, Global Militarism, and Canada’s Investment in the Caribbean .” Class, Race and Corporate Power.
[15] John, Tamanisha J. “The Historical and Contemporary Role of Neocolonial Caribbean Governments in Supporting US Militarism and Imperialism in the Region ” Black Agenda Report, September 10, 2025
[16] Central Intelligence Agency. “Grenada Quotes File”
[17] Burrowes, Reynold. 1988. “Revolution and Rescue in Grenada.” Bloomsbury Publishing , pg. 114
[18] Scott, Rachel. “Munroe Tells Bahamians to ‘Stay Out of Go Fast Boats Leaving Venezuela’ .” The Nassau Guardian, October 20, 2025.
[19] Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. “Haiti: Children Killed During Drone Attack .” CBC, September 24, 2025.