Orin Gor­don

A few hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s speech at the open­ing of the Cari­com sum­mit in St Kitts on Tues­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump de­liv­ered his State of the Union ad­dress in Wash­ing­ton. He praised Mar­co Ru­bio as a “great Sec­re­tary of State”, who “I think will go down as the best ever.”

As New York Times jour­nal­ist Mag­gie Haber­man not­ed in her book, “Con­fi­dence Man”, Trump’s dom­i­nant im­pulse is self-praise. What he said about Ru­bio was strik­ing.

Ru­bio gave a curt, un­fussy ac­knowl­edge­ment, left the Capi­tol for a few hours’ sleep, got on a plane to St Kitts, and ar­rived the next morn­ing. He sat down to busi­ness with the full as­sem­bly of lead­ers and Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett. The State De­part­ment made men­tion of four bi­lat­er­als – speed dat­ing style – with PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar, host Dr Ter­rence Drew, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali and Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness.

Trump and Ru­bio have come a long way since they trad­ed in­sults in the 2016 Re­pub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­maries. Ru­bio’s en­thu­si­as­tic ex­e­cu­tion of his boss’s for­eign pol­i­cy meant jet­ti­son­ing long-held po­si­tions on US soft pow­er, in­ter­na­tion­al aid, and Russ­ian ag­gres­sion in Ukraine.

Ru­bio is smart, ar­tic­u­late and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s best per­former in TV in­ter­views in de­fence of their poli­cies – even when he strug­gles to put lip­stick on live­stock such as ex­tra­ju­di­cial ex­e­cu­tions of drug sus­pects at sea. What­ev­er your view of US for­eign pol­i­cy, Ru­bio is im­pres­sive – a stand­out in an ad­min­is­tra­tion with a gen­er­ous al­lot­ment of peo­ple of ques­tion­able qual­i­ty. He is now one of the world’s most in­flu­en­tial fig­ures.

In Bas­seterre, Per­sad-Bisses­sar start­ed well… light on her feet, jovial and col­le­gial; show­ing in flash­es that when she’s on her game, she’s a good and ef­fec­tive pub­lic speak­er. How­ev­er, while she ap­peared to blunt some of the harsh crit­i­cism she had lev­elled at them from a dis­tance, she con­tin­ued to ra­tio­nalise US mil­i­tarism as law en­force­ment. No, Madame PM, US war­ships sent to pre­pare for the ouster of Maduro did not re­duce mur­ders in T&T.

That US mil­i­tary buildup and the ab­sence of due process in ex­e­cut­ing drug sus­pects hung in the air. Cari­com lead­ers had steered clear of di­rect crit­i­cism and op­po­si­tion to the two de­vel­op­ments, but their care­ful com­ments about the Caribbean be­ing a zone of peace had caused un­nec­es­sary apoplexy in Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The Caribbean Basin had not seen armed con­flict since Grena­da 43 years ago, and that ab­sence is cen­tral to its eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty. Trump’s han­dling of the ouster of Maduro put him more in line with con­flict-averse Cari­com lead­ers than with his chief cheer­leader, Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The US Pres­i­dent ruled out a full-scale regime change war be­cause he said the mil­i­tary cost would be too high. He elect­ed to work with Del­cy Ro­driguez, who, by the US’s own sanc­tions, was as com­plic­it as Maduro in the crimes they ac­cused him of.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that Cari­com “chose to lend sup­port to (Nico­las Maduro), de­spite… re­peat­ed threats against two fel­low Cari­com mem­bers, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana.”

Those claims are un­true. Cari­com has reg­u­lar­ly and pub­licly ex­pressed sup­port for Guyana’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty in re­sponse to Venezuela’s claim to more than two-thirds of the coun­try, and called for a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of the mat­ter. St Vin­cent and the Grenadines host­ed peace talks be­tween the pres­i­dents of Venezuela and Guyana in De­cem­ber 2023, and heads of sev­er­al Cari­com coun­tries made a phys­i­cal show of sup­port for the Guyanese Pres­i­dent at the tense meet­ing. Cari­com helped to re­duce ten­sions in late 2023, when Venezue­lan mil­i­tary ac­tion seemed a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty. On T&T, Cari­com has nev­er sided with Venezuela in any dis­agree­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was right about Cu­ba and the ab­sence of democ­ra­cy there – the biggest fail­ure of the six-decades-long en­gage­ment of Cu­ba’s hemi­spher­ic al­lies. How­ev­er, her men­tion of free speech grat­ed, com­ing from a leader who sup­ports US visa re­stric­tions on her own cit­i­zens who ex­er­cise that right.

Some po­lit­i­cal pun­dits en­gaged in breath­less and over­heat­ed analy­sis of PM’s meet­ing with Ru­bio in St Kitts, and her in­vi­ta­tion by Trump to a sum­mit of key, like-mind­ed hemi­spher­ic al­lies at his Flori­da golf re­sort, Do­ral, on Sat­ur­day. We shouldn’t mea­sure our worth and ac­com­plish­ments through the lens of US ap­proval. It is time we out­grew the pol­i­tics of pa­ter­nal­ism.