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The tiny Caribbean island nation of Barbados — with a population roughly the size of Anchorage, Alaska, or Lincoln, Nebraska — might not be the country one would first imagine taking the lead to stand up to U.S. military actions and ambitions in the region. But as the Trump administration continues to attack boats, first in the Caribbean Sea and now in the Pacific, leaders in Barbados have been vocal.

“As a small state, we have invested tremendous time and energy and effort in establishing and maintaining our region as a zone of peace,” Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said at a conference in late October. “Peace is critical to all that we do in this region, and now that peace is being threatened, we have to speak up.”

Mottley called on other leaders in the region to denounce the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and the U.S. strikes on more than 18 vessels that, as of November 7, had killed at least 70 people in the Caribbean and Pacific.

U.S. officials say these boats are carrying dangerous drugs like fentanyl and cocaine to the United States. They say the people killed on these boats are drug traffickers. They provide no evidence for these claims, and in fact, administration officials have also admitted that the military doesn’t identify the individuals on the boats before hitting them.

Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur for the protection of human rights while countering terrorism, has called the attacks a “crime against humanity.”

Family members of the victims who have been found say the people on the boats are just fishermen. They accuse the United States of flouting international law to push its military agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“I believe that the time has come for us, therefore, to be able to ensure that we do not accept that any entity has the right to engage in extrajudicial killings of persons that they suspect of being involved in criminal activities,” said Mottley. “We equally do not accept that any nation in our region or the greater Caribbean should be the subject of an imposition upon them of any unilateral expression of force and violence by any third party or nation.”

Mottley is one of many of Caribbean leaders who have condemned the Trump administration’s actions. But there is also division, particularly due to the outsized role of the U.S. in the region.

On October 18, Mottley met with the leaders of the other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member nations. They released a joined statement reaffirming the need for peace, dialogue, and the “unequivocal support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries in the Region.”

“The fact that they’re speaking up is highly significant,” Alexander Main, the Director of International Policy at the........

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