Pres­i­dent Trump’s short time in of­fice has been tem­pes­tu­ous. First came tar­iffs and then threats of ter­ri­to­r­i­al an­nex­a­tion or con­quest. Elon Musk and his Or­wellian-ti­tled De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy caused may­hem by wield­ing a sword over many gov­ern­ment de­part­ments and pro­grammes.

A steady flow of world lead­ers has vis­it­ed the White House in the last two weeks, ei­ther to seek terms or to mit­i­gate fur­ther dam­age to their na­tion­al in­ter­ests.

Last week, the Unit­ed States cre­at­ed the equiv­a­lent of a seis­mic shift in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions by vot­ing with Rus­sia and Chi­na on its (US) res­o­lu­tion, which called for an end to the war in Ukraine. The res­o­lu­tion did not de­mand Rus­sia’s with­draw­al or de­fend Ukraine’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty or sov­er­eign­ty. The oth­er per­ma­nent mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Britain and France, tra­di­tion­al al­lies of the US, ab­stained as the res­o­lu­tion con­tra­dict­ed NA­TO’s po­si­tion on the mat­ter.

On Fri­day, Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Ze­len­sky re­ceived a pub­lic dress­ing-down on live tele­vi­sion, broad­cast to the world.

The pub­lic sham­ing of Pres­i­dent Ze­len­sky, to­geth­er with the UN vote, rep­re­sents a marked shift in the post-World War II world. The US was no longer wear­ing gloves, and its West­ern Eu­ro­pean al­lies would have to find their way.

The NA­TO se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tee can­not be re­lied up­on un­der Pres­i­dent Trump. Along with Cana­da and Mex­i­co, Pres­i­dent Ze­len­sky learnt that un­der Pres­i­dent Trump, the de­f­i­n­i­tion of friend­ship with the US has changed. Small­er coun­tries now have rea­son to fear the mean­ing of a hand­shake in the White House, as the US no longer speaks soft­ly while wield­ing a big stick.

Last week was al­so Venezuela’s turn and, by ex­ten­sion, T&T’s, as US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio an­nounced the in­ten­tion to ter­mi­nate “all Biden-era oil and gas li­cences … to the Maduro regime.” The Of­fice of For­eign As­sets Con­trol (OFAC) falls un­der the Trea­sury De­part­ment, but the an­nounce­ment by Sec­re­tary Ru­bio ac­cords with the on­ly voice that now mat­ters in Wash­ing­ton—Pres­i­dent Trump.

Where does that leave the Drag­on deal and oth­er po­ten­tial gas deals in Venezue­lan wa­ters? The short an­swer is that the Drag­on project is in lim­bo, and there will be no in­vest­ment de­ci­sion by the project part­ners any­time soon. The OFAC li­cence had an end date of Oc­to­ber 2025, which was al­ways de­pen­dent on the grace and favour of the US Gov­ern­ment.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, projects are de­vel­oped on firmer ground. No sen­si­ble in­vestor would com­mit to a project un­less all the nec­es­sary per­mis­sions are ob­tained and cast in stone. The short two-year “op­por­tu­ni­ty” af­ford­ed by the OFAC li­cence nev­er amount­ed to much. The quick­er the coun­try em­braces this re­al­i­ty, the quick­er it would be­gin to ad­dress oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties.

The OFAC li­cence on­ly gave enough time for the Shell/NGC joint ven­ture part­ner­ship to se­cure and sign con­trac­tu­al agree­ments with the rel­e­vant Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties. These con­tracts gave the part­ner­ship the right to ex­tract gas from the field and ini­ti­ate the pay­ment of the nec­es­sary fees un­der those rights for the 30-year life of the con­tract, whether the part­ner­ship op­er­at­ed those fields or not. These fees re­main due and payable if the con­tract sub­sists. There may be force ma­jeure claus­es that al­low for ter­mi­na­tion and, there­fore, non-pay­ment of ap­plic­a­ble fees if an event oc­curs (like a with­draw­al of the OFAC li­cence), which could frus­trate the con­tract. This has not yet been dis­closed.

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, in the post-Cab­i­net con­fer­ence on Feb­ru­ary 27, as­sured the pub­lic that the Gov­ern­ment would do all in its pow­er to en­sure that cross-bor­der deals with Venezuela come to fruition. This state­ment was un­help­ful as the de­f­i­n­i­tion of cross-bor­der was too loose and im­pre­cise. Man­a­tee and Man­akin are cross-bor­der gas fields. Drag­on is across the bor­der in Venezue­lan wa­ters. The projects do not fall neat­ly in­to one bas­ket. It is un­like­ly that OFAC could in­ter­fere with the ex­ploita­tion of gas fields in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ters, as these do not re­quire an OFAC li­cence. The Drag­on deal is more com­pli­cat­ed.

In the press con­fer­ence, Mr Young said that there was “no in­di­ca­tion of any neg­a­tive ef­fect on Trinidad and To­ba­go.” Fur­ther, “The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to be en­gaged and con­tin­ues to work on every an­gle we can.”

The re­al­i­ty is that the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion is dif­fi­cult. In the new re­al­i­ty of hege­mon­ic pol­i­tics as prac­tised by the US un­der Trump, small states are even more vul­ner­a­ble. The pub­lic hu­mil­i­a­tion of Pres­i­dent Ze­len­sky be­cause he had no “cards” was a pel­lu­cid­ly clear demon­stra­tion of what US “soft” pow­er now looks like. Lo­cal­ly, there will be some ban­ter and pos­tur­ing among the po­lit­i­cal par­ties. No T&T po­lit­i­cal par­ty could have any mean­ing­ful im­pact on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in the short term.

The road be­fore T&T is not an easy one to trav­el. The op­tions are lim­it­ed, and man­ag­ing these op­tions re­quires a dif­fer­ent style of lead­er­ship, pub­lic en­gage­ment, and prag­ma­tism. The Gov­ern­ment has al­ready stat­ed that the next few years will be dif­fi­cult, im­ply­ing that res­cue would come from Man­a­tee when gas be­gins to flow in 2027. The same hopes were placed on Ju­niper and An­gelin and were not re­alised. One can­not de­pend on a sin­gle project to res­cue a coun­try’s for­tunes. Those vy­ing for lead­er­ship po­si­tions would do well to come to terms with this re­al­i­ty.

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness.