Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Nicholas Mor­ris, act­ing as Leader of Gov­ern­ment House busi­ness yes­ter­day, gave an op­ti­mistic run­down for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s at­ten­dance at the US’s Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit.

Mor­ris, who act­ed for House leader Bar­ry Padarath, leaves to­day to join Padarath and the rest of the PM’s del­e­ga­tion, as Per­sad-Bisses­sar takes a seat at noon at Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ta­ble for the sum­mit - her lat­est lega­cy ac­com­plish­ment.

She’s among half of Latin Amer­i­ca’s lead­ers at a crit­i­cal, his­toric junc­ture, amid churn­ing war and fall­out since the US/Is­rael at­tack on Iran, killing Iran’s leader. A sce­nario so ex­treme that the US sub­ma­rine sink­ing an Iran­ian ves­sel on Thurs­day was the first such oc­cur­rence since World War II. Con­fu­sion was added by ini­tial (against) and cur­rent (pro) po­si­tions by some Eu­ro­pean coun­tries.

Over­all glob­al im­pact has, there­fore, deep­ened the sig­nif­i­cance of to­day’s US hemi­spher­ic sum­mit talks on se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy and part­ner­ships.

The grim glob­al land­scape had an echo in T&T with an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE), as au­thor­i­ties bat­tled crim­i­nal el­e­ments’ resur­gence post - pre­vi­ous SoE. Feed­back’s in­formed Gov­ern­ment that while tol­er­a­ble cur­rent­ly, con­tin­ued SoE - an emer­gency mea­sure - doesn’t as­sist T&T seek­ing in­vest­ment and it on­ly sig­nals Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure on the crime fight.

But SoE tim­ing may prove to the US T&T’s need for more tan­gi­ble se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance, since the US’s radar and mil­i­tary pres­ence re­gion­al­ly hasn’t curbed T&T’s crime.

To­day’s sum­mit at Trump’s Do­ral ho­tel - near Mi­a­mi’s air­port - was pro­mot­ed as form­ing “an his­toric coali­tion” to work to­geth­er ad­dress­ing crim­i­nal nar­co-ter­ror­ist gangs/car­tels and counter il­le­gal/mass mi­gra­tion in­to the US and West­ern Hemi­sphere. Along­side Trump, Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali are the US-aligned lead­ers of Ar­genti­na, Bo­livia, Chile, Cos­ta Ri­ca, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ecuador, El Sal­vador, Hon­duras, Pana­ma and Paraguay.

That list show­cas­es Latin Amer­i­ca’s split favour­ing the US, sim­i­lar­ly as T&T and Guyana’s sum­mit at­ten­dance shows Cari­com frag­men­ta­tion - rais­ing queries about what im­pact sum­mit re­sults will have on Cari­com.

Sum­mit tim­ing has been aus­pi­cious. Word was out since ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, af­ter oth­er de­vel­op­ments were ap­par­ent­ly in the works since last year, ear­ly in the Trump tenure: cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, em­bar­go on co-tar­get Cu­ba, Iran straf­ing.

A new US-led hemi­spher­ic or­der co­a­lesc­ing from the meet­ing may as­sist Amer­i­ca’s em­bat­tled sit­u­a­tion, jug­gling many is­sues.

The Iran war has served two-fold: re­gard­ing Is­rael’s pur­pose and al­so telegraph­ing US might to ad­ver­saries and al­lies. On the side­lines are US’s Ukraine/Rus­sia peace-bro­ker­ing, de­layed by the Iran war. “At­ten­tion” to Cu­ba post Iran. US mus­cle flex­ing oust­ing Maduro and killing Iran’s leader, cur­tail­ing oil sources.

All of which has been wit­nessed by Chi­na’s Xi Jing­pin, whom Trump meets mon­thend. This, af­ter Chi­na, Rus­sia, In­dia and North Ko­re­an lead­ers, last Sep­tem­ber in Chi­na, shift­ed to an an­ti-hege­mon­ic glob­al or­der to pro­mote Chi­na-led gov­er­nance, by­pass­ing US-dom­i­nat­ed sys­tems - fur­ther ba­sis for to­day’s sum­mit.

Ef­fect on the Sum­mit im­age is ahead, af­ter the ap­point­ment of fired Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty head Kristi Noem as Sum­mit En­voy. But T&T, a strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed high-pro­file Caribbean en­er­gy state stead­fast­ly sup­port­ing the US, holds sig­nif­i­cant po­si­tion.

It’s ahead what re­turns arise from the “Vest­ed Part­ner” agree­ment for­mer Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie re­vealed will be of­fered by the US to­day: bi­lat­er­al US part­ner­ship, strength­en­ing part­ners’ ca­pac­i­ty to deal with gangs, nar­coter­ror­ism, na­tion­al/re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and as­sist­ing T&T’s en­er­gy prospects.

T&T’s al­ready ben­e­fit­ed with a suc­cess­ful US$1.6 bil­lion bond. It’s ahead if a re­fin­ery part­ner could in­volve Chevron (cur­rent­ly work­ing lo­cal­ly).

Dam­age from ex­pand­ed Mid­dle East War at­tacks raised oil prices 50 per cent; Qatar yes­ter­day pro­ject­ed reach­ing US$150 in a few weeks. Fi­nance of­fi­cials yes­ter­day pro­ject­ed ad­di­tion­al oil rev­enue. But the ef­fects un­fold on Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plans af­ter war-strained UAE and sim­i­lar states re­view over­seas in­vest­ment.

For what­ev­er T&T of­fers - and the PM dis­cuss­es oth­er­wise - trip re­turns must in­volve tan­gi­bles felt by T&T’s SoE - con­strained pub­lic. While the Op­po­si­tion’s tak­en up the mat­ter, in­ter­nal dif­fer­ences and lead­er­ship di­rec­tion is­sues were con­firmed by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment of­fi­cials, fol­low­ing trea­sur­er Nal Ram­s­ingh’s res­ig­na­tion last week.

Lack of ap­pro­pri­ate re­turns would on­ly mean that the Gov­ern­ment and T&T were re­gard­ed as hold­ing “me­nial” po­si­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al rank­ings - tool rather than team­mate - de­spite be­ing at to­day’s sum­mit lun­cheon ta­ble.