The re­al­i­ty is that Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean are strug­gling with prob­lems of their own, both those gen­er­at­ed with­in the re­gion and the mul­ti­tude which fil­ter down and up and in­to our space. How­ev­er, for a tiny por­tion of world civil­i­sa­tion with lit­tle in­flu­ence on how the world turns over on a dai­ly ba­sis, we must be at least aware of the ma­jor glob­al is­sues that cause con­cern for all of us liv­ing in the first quar­ter of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

That Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has an­nounced his in­ten­tion to in­ter­vene, oc­cu­py and take over the Pales­tin­ian en­clave of the Gaza Strip and con­vert it in­to Amer­i­ca’s ter­ri­to­ry, must be a cause for deep con­cern. That re­al­i­ty is in­ten­si­fied for small states vul­ner­a­ble to out­side in­ter­fer­ence by the pow­er­ful and ar­ro­gant.

Just in case there may be a thought that the threat­ened su­per­pow­er ac­tion in far off Gaza does not have rel­e­vance for us, Venezuela’s con­tin­u­ing threat to oc­cu­py and take con­trol of Guyana’s sov­er­eign space in the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion dis­pute should dis­suade us of such a no­tion.

More­over, that which is be­ing threat­ened by the US Pres­i­dent is against the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter, which “pro­hibits the use of force to take over sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry.” Al­ready, the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice has ruled that the present oc­cu­pa­tion of Gaza by Is­rael is il­le­gal. It should be the same for any in­ten­tion of the US to “take over Gaza,” as stat­ed by Pres­i­dent Trump.

As to whether Pales­tine, in­clu­sive of Gaza, is of­fi­cial­ly recog­nised as a state, as of June 2024, 146 of the 193 mem­ber states of the Unit­ed Na­tions agreed that that is the case. There­fore, the pres­i­dent of the US or any oth­er coun­try can­not uni­lat­er­al­ly de­clare an in­ten­tion to have his troops con­verge on Gaza, and make it over in­to a “Riv­iera.”

When the rest of the world stands qui­et­ly by and says noth­ing about such il­le­gal and re­pul­sive in­ten­tions of the on­ly true mil­i­tary su­per­pow­er in the world, this can lead to a com­plete break­down of in­ter­na­tion­al law and or­der and go against the post-World War II in­ter­na­tion­al sys­tem which was con­struct­ed to avoid yet an­oth­er world war.

But laws on pa­per, the breach­es of which re­main un­con­test­ed by coun­tries which have signed on to liv­ing with­in the in­ter­na­tion­al frame­work, soon be­come ir­rel­e­vant. We, there­fore, think it’s ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary to high­light this in­tend­ed de­par­ture from the in­ter­na­tion­al rules-based sys­tem im­me­di­ate­ly out of con­cern for the fate of Pales­tine and its peo­ple. How­ev­er, we al­so point to the re­al­i­ty that if such an in­ten­tion is put in­to ac­tion by the US pres­i­dent (and who will stop him if he choos­es to pro­ceed with it), it will have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for small states such as ours.

Re­al­is­ti­cal­ly then, the US and the West will not be able to op­pose Rus­sia’s vi­o­lent at­tempts to take hold of yet an­oth­er por­tion of Ukraine’s ter­ri­to­ry, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly con­fis­cat­ed and oc­cu­pied Crimea and oth­er parts of the south­ern por­tion of that coun­try.

It is thus nec­es­sary for small and mil­i­tar­i­ly weak states, such as T&T, to raise a voice when the in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal sys­tem, the on­ly bul­wark small states have against to­tal dom­i­na­tion by the pow­er­ful, is be­ing thrashed.