This is the first article in a two-part series on US interventions in island nations across the Caribbean Sea.

Port of Spain: In a realistic Bond or Mission Impossible film, 007 or Ethan Hunt would be the villain. As White House memes attest, either agent would be assisting the likes of 2025 Operations Southern Spear and Absolute Force that involved months of missile strikes on fishing boats and stealing of oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea leading up to the January 3, 2026 aerial invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolas Maduro. On March 30, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth might as well have unfurled his Greater North America map that depicted all North and South American nations north of the equator as vassals while picking his teeth with his pinky like Dr. Evil.

Adding to the hundreds of casualties US belligerence has racked up in the region in this second Trump term is the conception of the Caribbean as a “Zone of Peace”. Formally adopted as a policy at the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in 2014 in Havana, Cuba, “Zone of Peace” is an eight-point agreement, to which CELAC as well as Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states have renewed commitments in 2025, pledging among other things to abide by international law, respect national sovereignty, practice non-intervention, and make a “permanent commitment to solve disputes through peaceful means with the aim of uprooting forever threat or use of force”.

The Caribbean as a Zone of Peace

With its “Cuba next” posture after the Caribbean fishing boat strikes and Venezuela regime change invasion, the US has ended the decade that the region has served as a Zone of Peace. In fact, as David Abdulah, trade unionist and leader of the political party Movement for Social Justice in Trinidad and Tobago points out, the Zone of Peace agreement was crucial in deterring Maduro himself from laying claim to Guyana’s Essequibo River in 2023. As tensions mounted, then St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister and CELAC President Ralph Gonsalves mediated a meeting between Guyanese Prime Minister Irfaan Ali and the Venezuelan president, along with leaders of Bahamas, Barbados, Brazil, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.

“So, the Zone of Peace actually was important in getting Maduro to not proceed with any military intervention in Essequibo,” says Abdulah, speaking also as executive member of the civil society organisation Assembly of Caribbean People. “This is the Zone of Peace that Ms Persad Bissessar declared in the United Nations General Assembly as a falsehood by falsely conflating murders within a country and an imperial power coming into our space and using force to achieve their interests.”

Kamla Persad Bissessar. Photo: Facebook/Kamla Persad Bissessar

Abdulah is referring to Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar departing from predecessor Dr Keith........

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